(end of Nov, '07)

Started snowing about 3:00 yesterday and and just stopped early this morning. Got about 2-3 inches total. Nice and gentle, and lows in the low 20's with highs in the mid 30's for the last couple of days. I spent a little time yesterday "prepping" for winter; cleaning up, winterizing the chicken shed with a heat lamp to warm the chickens and their water. I wondered if the chickens would sleep with a bright light on in their roost, or if we would have a bunch of really sleepy wide-eyed insomiac chickens running around if it never got dark for them. Speaking of chickens, the other night we were sitting around the house with the sliding door open and I heard a great squawking, so I grabbed my little .22 pistol and flashlight and ran out to check it out. Sure enough, there was a nasty old possem sitting there eye-balling my mobile egg factories, fixing on disassembling them piece by piece. So I blasted him, but good. Then after I threw him in a hole, I thought "that would have been a lot more fun with a .357 mag", so I got one. Possems; Look out! You may not be any deader after being shot with my new gun, but you will have larger holes in you! The day after I told Brynn to send Isaiah out to check out the dead possum and take his new toy 6-shooter (so cute, we match now). He was delighted! He was a little scared at first, so he spent a little time warming up to it by yelling at it and shooting at it with his gun. Finally he lost all fear and really started poking it in the eye with sticks and hitting it, dancing around the hole, calling it a monster.
The day before T-day, Brynn was here at the house planning on cooking up a storm, about eight different dishes to take to my parents, when we lost electricity about 5:00 in the Morning. Our stove is electric, as is our water pump, our Microwave, our blenders, our lights and many other things that we get pretty used to being available to us. Luckily for Brynn the power kicked back on for about 10 minutes, enough to run the pump and Cuisinart and half cook some stuff. It finally came back on around 2:00, just barely enough time to get everything cooked before we left for my folks. The crazy thing is that once we got to my parents, we were there for an hour or so and then THEY lost power. Dad was a little more prepared, and we went and started the generator. I had to talk dad into starting it, but it was a good thing, cause the power didn't come back on for several hours. Can you imagine a house with no lights and 16 little kids running around? All that excitement? WOW!
Well, I had better go, Izzy is up and helping brynny make pancakes for his birthday breakfast. We have more presents for him than we ought, but they are almost all from garage sale, and so very cheap. He really resisted having a birthday, though,insisting that 1) he didn't want a birthday, then 2) he had already had one, but I think he will come around yet! Bye