i could title all my posts “catching up”

Another birthday! 8 years!

The pathetic Christmas tree.

Fun at Uncle Sam’s.

Kids ruled the dance floor at the wedding.

A sleigh ride with all the cousins. Thanks Auntie Joanna and Uncle Mike!

Warming up.

Some sample donuts from our Jan. 1st donut day!

Skating! Skating! Skating!

I could write a series of posts on how NOT to make a rink.

The gals getting out for some fresh air while the coop was cleaned. Seven or eight of the nine are laying again. Glad we didn’t eat them after all.

As always, there is much I think about blogging about, but when it comes time I hastily catch up with some photos, few words, and race off to bed! 🙂

I exerted an inordinate amount of energy on making a skating rink over the holidays for a nearly complete failure. After a series of setbacks – nearly breaking the roof rack hauling lumber home, ancient relic loaner water pump starving for fuel, rental water pump with not enough hose, borrowed hose from neighbour, torquing a knee hauling pump down steep embanking to lake, extremely uneven surface for rink (even more than I thought), building up edge to compensate, still too uneven, containment tarp springing leaks from sharp shale beneath, leaky water forming glacier in front of front door, and so on and so forth – the rink efforts have come to an end and we have about two thirds of a surface to skate on. The reward in this is that it actually got several hours of use. And then it started to melt. Ah….

Aside from that we’ve been getting in some other skating (Cloud Bay and arena with homeschool group), and some classic and skate skiing (the snow is limited). A stomach bug has been working it’s way through the family over the past week. Gabe and I were the most recent to have it. Hoping for the last couple who haven’t had it to stay that way.

My mind and heart are full of things…. ideas, challenges, fuel from recent/current reads, inspirations, resolves….. too much to try to put down in words at the moment. One of my resolves, though, is to practice and improve on taking things from the jumble in my brain and putting them into coherent sentences that other humans could comprehend.