Happy Wednesday!

Good morning once again! Although it is a pretty day outside, it is far too hot and too humid. We have a pretty good chance of rain this afternoon; I am hoping we have a downpour. When I took the dogs out this morning for their walk, there was no dew on the grass; none. Completely dry. That is unusual. There was a really cool spider web; I hope the pictures I took turned out well.

This is the spider web. It definately looks better in person.

Yesterday was a good day to stay home and do nothing so that’s almost what I did. I had written Laura’s birthday story the day before but yesterday afternoon I looked through pictures to find some of her when she was a baby. I don’t have a lot of any of the girls. I know that many of the pictures I had were in photo albums which were left in New Mexico (I still have a hard time believing someone could be dumb enough to do that). I have some of Daniel but I know that there were more. The three younger boys, I have lots. I did find a few of Laura. They needed to be scanned (which is not a problem—I have to do that in my room and it happens to be the only room with AC so I’m happy, at this point, to do things up there). It is posted now (http://mywindingroadtomidwifery.blogspot.com/2012/07/lauras-birthday.html). If you really like Obama and/or do not like Romney, please feel free to not look at that post (it is from this morning).

Yesterday, being Tuesday, we had the missionaries coming over for supper. Paul had invited Ruth Britt (the grandma of one of Daniel’s friends from church—Paul’s known her for years and is her home teacher). I invited Laurie and Jared Orzel (Laurie is Ruth’s daughter [and she is only 10 months younger than me] and Jared’s mom and I am her visiting teacher). Adam and Ryan showed up too so we had a houseful (thirteen people—I think it’s good that Joanna and Amena are at girl’s camp because fifteen would have really taxed the space available [but, we would have managed because we always do]). We had leftovers from Sunday because there were lots. I just stuck everything, including the noodles, with an addition of four hot Italian sausages in the crock pot and everything was good in time for supper. Ruth and Laurie brought some garlic Texas toast so that with a salad made for a good supper.

I had been wanting to make a berry tart with the currants and blueberries we have. The only part that really has to be baked is the crust so I did that yesterday. I used Oreo’s but I didn’t want the middles so Joseph helped me eat them and I used the cookie part for the crust. It looked good until I forgot to take it out of the oven when I got sidetracked upstairs. It turned black. The goats got it for a snack with some other scraps last night. I gave it another go later. This time I divided up the middles between Laura and the little boys. They were watching the second Transformers movie because it was so hot outside. For this one, I turned the oven on and put the crust in when it was ready. When the oven beeped at me to let me know it was done, I turned it off but kept the crust in to let it cool. That worked well and ended with a useable crust. The rest of the tart really is just vanilla pudding with currants and blueberries on top and then currant jelly melted and poured over. Because the currants are red and white, the top is red, white and blue. Very cool.

As you can see, I actually made two; the smaller one Paul took for his lunch today. This was taken before I put the currant jelly on.

Milking this morning wasn’t bad. Laura didn’t show up but Cedric and Seth were both out. Cedric decided not to use the gate and that worked pretty well. Goldilocks really does not like to be milked. The other two are pretty good but Goldilocks kicks and just does what she can to not be touched. However, I’ve been around goats more than she’s been milked so she’d in trouble. The last couple of days, Laura would hold onto her hind legs while I milked. Goldilocks did not like that and she’d go up and down and try dancing and it was just generally fun milking but we were successful and got nearly a quart each time. Today, since Laura wasn’t there, I just milked one handed while I held onto her right left foot. I don’t like milking one handed but it worked and I still got almost a full quart. Tomorrow I will start putting her milk in with the others; the worming medicine ought to have gone through her system by then and even if it hasn’t, the really icky medicine that I wouldn’t want to eat she only got an injection of the night of her kidding. The stuff she’s been taking since then is herbal and shouldn’t kill anyone; especially since her milk would only constitute approximately one third of the total each day. Hmmm, maybe it will worm us!

Before showering today, I am planning on giving Scooter a haircut. She gets so hot. Her fur is very thick and black and dense. Trista’s isn’t so bad so I probably won’t give her one since doing Scooter will be fun enough (she hates getting trimmed. I said that wrong—she HATES getting trimmed).

Other than that, my only plans for today are showering, taking children to church this evening for Institute (Laura) and Scouts (Cedric and Seth), reading, working on Joanna's birthday story and waiting for the rain.

Have a wonderful day!