Catch up time

August on a friend's zip line.

"Mr. Meanie" who will be one of the first roosters to be butchered.

One morning's harvest.

A sampling of our refrigerator pickles that are threatening to take over our kitchen!

Our living room could now be dubbed Lego Land after Aidan's 7th birthday. The boys spend hours (I'm not exaggerating!) constructing all varieties of vehicles, space ships, houses, weapons, you name it. It is so fun to watch them create endlessly.

Aidan is now officially an independent reader. Why I ever worried about him, I'll never know. He loves to read the comics in the paper everyday and he pours over history and story books by the dozens. My challenge now is to provide him with a rich and varied selection of materials from which to choose.

Aidan and I share a birthday kiss. It really is something special to share your birthday with your first born. What a gift, the day that he was born and every year thereafter!!!

This is Beulah. We drove to the ends of the earth to get her for free. Her dad was an Australian Shepherd and her mom was a Beagle-mix. She is absolutely adorable and she is absolutely more work than I EVER imagined. Half of why I haven't blogged this summer is because of the immense amount of time I spend making sure that she isn't peeing in the house, sneaking into a room where she doesn't belong or biting holes in my pant legs as I walk about minding my own business. It has been an intense month and I'm still praying that it will all be worth it in the end. When she is calm and sweet and loving, I get a foretaste of glory divine, when she is all that I wanted in a dog. In the meantime, I'm really trying not to curse more than ten times a day.

We've been busy this summer and thus there has been very little blogging on my part. What with chickens, a new puppy, a garden that won't stop and all of the other things that make summer "summer" I've simply put this to the wayside. But life is full and good and tiring and challenging and I want to write about all of that. I'm trying to figure out how to make use of my very early rising to care for the chickens and Beulah dog, as that seems a logical time and space within which to write. But it's hard.
And then we will be starting to reintroduce "school" to our daily routine soon so...
you see what happens.
I will do my best.