Fun & Fellowship

It's been a good month.
I've been blessed to have a number of long-distance friends visit... which is quite an unusual treat. At the beginning of the month my friend Sandy had a baby shower and so my friends Courtney and Hannah were up for that event.

 I caught this birdy in flight.... So majestic.

 My sister, Nellie, with some of our fuzzy kittens.

 Myself, Courtney and Hannah... milkin' da cows. :)

 It was Hannah's first time... so we made sure to have a lot of fun!

 That's a lot of people in the pit at once!!!!

 Paddy standing up on our friendly cow, Crabby!

 A cute "diaper cake" at the baby shower.

The lovely Hannah P.

Then I had the privilege of getting another visit from Courtney along with her brother Chris two weekends ago! It was very spur-of-the-moment but quite a great time! We even went for a walk at night as there was a brilliant, full moon to illuminate our way. I think we walked something like 3 miles before we decided we were freezing to death and called someone to come pick us up!

Then this past weekend the La Chance family came to visit!!! Both families have been trying to get together for a couple months now and this time everything worked out and they came to stay for a few days. While they were visiting we had other friends come over as well, and my brother's family so it was always a full house and an excellent time of fellowship, music.... and of course delicious food. ;) haha!  I had a lot of help milking cows too, which was not only a lot of fun, but it saved a lot of time. 

 Here I am milking with Mr. La Chance.

Here's a picture of Hannah and I milking together.

It was Hannah's first time milking cows, but she'd already had experience milking goats so she caught on quickly! One night after milking cows we decided to run to the top of a hill near the house and sang the national anthem at the top of our lungs! I love doing that. :) It's sort of a tradition some friends and I started a couple of years ago that is fun to repeat every so often.

One of the many trailer loads of pine tips that my brothers and I helped package.

On top of having friends visit I also had an opportunity to work for my dad's boss. Mr. E. normally specializes in doing concrete but about this time every year he takes a few days to gather pine tree tips, box them and load them onto a trailer.... and of course he hires other people to help him do it as it's a rather large job. It was great exercise and my brother's Channing, Pat and I were all exhausted after each day of working for Mr. E. ...and we still had our farm chores to do when we got home! It was a good experience though and I hope we'll get the opportunity to do it again next year. 

Also regarding work, as of this past Monday I have no relief milker. No nights/days off work. I get to do all of the milkings, both morning and night. I'm looking forward to this as an exciting challenge. Milking more milkings in a row than I have ever done before. We'll see how long I last before I end up needing my brother to do a milking or two. It's not a really hard job but with around 100 cows due to freshen I'm thinking the work load will be quite wearing. Anyways, ....I'll keep ya posted. 

All in all, it's amazing how quickly a month can go by but somehow time seems to augment when it is well spent. Until next time...