Suzuki

Last Wednesday, Timnah and Elias had their very first violin lessons. One of the first things they did at the lesson was to trace their feet on a piece of poster-board: once with feet together, once with feet shoulder width apart and at a slight angle; "red feet" and "green feet" respectively.

The deal is, that during the lesson they are to stay standing on the board in one of the two positions, with their teacher giving directions as to which one.

If, through this process, Elias-The-Bouncy-Boy can learn to stand still for thirty minutes at a time, I might not even care if he has learned how to play the violin.

Cheese

Zaiah

Okay- since my little brother is such a punk, I decided to go public with pictures of Zaiah. Not like the interested parties have not either been emailed pictures or seen him in person (or both), but because Brent made comments about having new goats without posting any proof. Here is proof of Isaiah William Roberts. According to Heather's Dr. (during an unspecified procedure done only on males), he will become a "formidable young man." This will definitely be repeated at an important moment causing much embarassment (his wedding rehearsal dinner:) However, by God's grace, I hope and pray that those very words do become true- that this young man will arise and shine, and may he reveal the Lord's glory by his very life. I love you little man- Welcome to the world!

Beating the Heat

Andrea and I are the captains of exceptional timing. The last time we tried to have a bonfire, Middle Tennessee received 13-inches of rain in matter of two days. Since the roads were closed we decided reluctantly to reschedule.

This past Saturday was the day. Despite a heat index of right around 100 degrees, and that still holding steady until about 7pm, a good time was had by all. Ninety-degree weather is actually pretty good for making s'mores, because chocolate that is already melting melts pretty easily when you had a half-burnt marshmallow.

Elias spent the whole evening making a triangle from the food table to the fire to my chair: "Can I eat this?" "Yes, Elias, you can eat that."

Timnah caught a handful -- literally a handful -- of lightning bugs, and got to show everyone the frog she caught in the backyard.

Same Frog, different afternoon. This was from the end of May.

One of Timnah's other friends, The Lizzard.

Kids...

Supposedly Brooke and Heather had a baby boy, but I've heard nothing about it here on the blog. So I suppose now is a good enough time as any to let everyone know that we had three more goat kids around the Memorial Day break. Two does, Semmie-Aneed and Daisy, and one buck, Elias.

You can thank Timnah for naming the buck Elias, and we can thank Elias (the boy, not the goat) for naming Semmie-Aneed (which name will probably put this blog on a federal watch-list for potential jihad-ism threats). Andrea and I are responsible for naming Daisy.

Sorry to disappoint anyone out there, but I think we already have potential buyers for both of the girls.

High and Dry

We got about 18" of rain in about 30 hours. The weekend was a wee bit soggy. Here are some pictures.

Looking North from our porch.

You can hear the river rushing from our porch (something you can't normally do).

Barn.

There is a very wet John Deere in there somewhere. We could barely see the steering wheel and exhaust pipe.

The North end of Boxley Valley Road.
There is a fence on the left side of the street that is completely under water. I can zoom in to the full size picture and see that the water at the end of the street is only about 4" to 6" down from the bottom of the stop sign. Our neighbors, who own the pasture across the street, can only access their home via boat. The blackberry farm is underwater.

Other than a wet basement (which had little to do with the flood, and more to do with a tennis ball being stuck in the corrugated pipe) we stayed high and dry and fared pretty well.

Aravis's First Giggles

Bumper Crop

With all of white flowers now in bloom, were bound to have a banner year with our strawberries. The asparagus was looking good, too, but we paid someone to cut our grass and he took care of that for us. But the story of the year has to be the dandelions. These are absolutely EVERYWHERE.

If only they were a little more life-sustaining. Or at least tasty.

Hay Goat (where you goin' with that gun in your hand)

I was doing some ruminating while cleaning out the goat barn (sharp ones will notice the pun in that last comment). Goats are notorious for wasting hay. But its way more fascinating than just that; goats actually defy the law of conservation of mass. If you feed a goat one bale of hay, they will scatter two bales of hay on the floor right below the feeder, and the empirical evidence dotted all over the yard indicates that they ate something along in the line, too.

This discovery is not quite as revolutionary as the invention of the flux capacitor, but almost. Who needs the Large Hadron Collider?

Cherry Blossoms!

And what a cute one she is!