Another Season

Wednesday morning's hazy sunrise.

One year without internet access has gone by quickly.  And I survived it!  Having my hands very full with other things helped to pass the time. 

Our second daughter arrived on March 8th.  She was born with a congenital heart defect called critical pulmonary valve stenosis.  Basically, there wasn't a hole where there should have been.  We spent the first eighteen days of her life in the CTICU at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, OH.  My daughter Ava, now five, thought it was quite a vacation staying at the Ronald McDonald House.  She is a big fan of ol' Ronald.  We even saw him in the Fourth of July Parade.

Savannah Joy is 5 months old now and doing fine.  You'd never believe the difference between how blue she was as a newborn and the big, healthy baby she has become now.  We spent our first month home tied to an oxygen concentrator and a pulse-ox monitor.  Now she squeals and "sings" with some very powerful little lungs.

I had originally coerced my husband to give up the internet, X-box Live and Netflix in an effort to tighten our belts and make a deliberate drive to get out of debt.  We made the last couple of payments on our car and managed to pay off two credit cards.  Although we hit the catastrophic cap on our insurance for this year, paying off those debts has freed up our monthly budget to pay comfortably on a few medical bills.  And we have an adorable, cherub-cheeked, baby girl to show for it.  :)

Ava and I just started our first week of homeschool "tendergarden" and we had a blast.  She is really enjoying the extra attention and togetherness and has applied herself wholeheartedly to everything I have asked her to do.

Today we began a science unit study on insects. After reading and discussing our lesson, we played a game of Cootie and discussed the different parts of insect anatomy and their functions. 

 

We capped off the afternoon with a scavenger hunt and took many pictures of insects we found in our own backyard. We'll come back to our pictures on Monday to attempt to identify them all and Ava will make drawings of them in her observation sketch book.

 

Here are a few of our finds:

This busy mason bee carried a thick load of pollen on his hind legs.

 

 

We were distracted from our hunt for an ant by this cute little roan filly that belongs to our new neighbors.  She came over to say 'hi'.

Of course we saw plenty of honey bees.  My solitary hive is still going strong, although I've not worked them once this year.  If they are still there next spring and I can fit back into my beesuit, I will take up earnest beekeeping again.  Right now I am merely a "bee-have'r", but I'm ok with that.  They are getting along fine without my intervention and I have to admit there is only so much I can keep up with right now, in this season of life.

 

Wasps...not my favorite!

Here we have one of those weird moths that look like a hummingbird.

 

And the Pièce de résistance...

A very large moth, the most beautiful I've ever seen.  What a lovely shade of pink delineated on its wings!  Ava was impressed with the large "eyes" on the moth's hind wings, used for defense.  It was like God gave us a special ending for our first week of homeschooling. 

 

Ava's First Ride

Today I found and edited this video I that took last November of Ava's first ride on Journey, my gaited paint gelding.  I meant to post this before and forgot.

She's a natural, right?  :)  Ava was not afraid at all.

That was such a pleasant, golden, fall day.  The perfect kind of day for making special memories like this one!



I wish I'd had my new camera at that time.  It takes HD video and much better pictures than my old point-and-click.  But I did get some nice shots anyway and these two I framed for my Dad for a Christmas present and a copy for myself as well.



I'm hoping she will just fall in love with horses (which is so easy for a kid to do anyway) and want to ride in 4-H and shows.  I never got that opportunity as a child, so I look forward to living vicariously through Ava!



No Go

Just got off the phone with Rocky's owner.  She rode him "one last time" and realized she couldn't part with him.  I guess I understand... I was wondering how anyone could part with such a handsome horse in the first place.

Well, moral of the story is:  Don't count your horses until they're in the barn!

Satisfaction

I LOVE the feeling of marking another project off the list!

And this one had been nagging at me for a long time.  Well, let's see...we got the fence up in April, bought the lumber in July and just stared at it for a few weeks.  It took us three separate sessions and working past dark tonight, but we got 'er done!

My husband and I are really getting good at working on these projects together.  He's the muscle and I'm the "measure twice, cut once" kind of gal.  We balance each other well!

Now to install a couple of strands of electric along the fence line, cage off the bees their own sector and build a small run-in and we'll be ready for goats.  You didn't think we were going to all this trouble just for a couple dozen chickens, did ya?  ;)  Although it does rest my mind to know the dogs can't pick them off so easily now.

I am also getting a new horse.  Hopefully we can go pick him up tomorrow.  I was looking for a new pasture mate for my gaited paint gelding, Journey.  This new horse, Rocky, is a 12-year-old Tennessee Walker gelding.  He's on rehab from an injury, but is cleared for light work and to build up from there.  He was free to a good home because his current owners needed to downsize.  I will definitely post lots of pictures of him when we get him home.  Here's a picture that was forwarded to me. 

Isn't he a looker!  I'm debating whether or not to change his name.  If you've got any ideas for a good name for this handsome boy, feel free to leave them in the comments section!

Now this is Journey (the Paint) and Lily, his old pasture mate (also a Tennessee Walker).  This picture was taken in October of last year.  I've had Journey since he was a colt.  I won him at the County Fair on a one dollar raffle ticket in 2002.  He's a good boy and I love him.  I hope that Ava can ride him in the Fair here in a few years.



 

Now the horses don't live here on the One Sunny Acre.  They live on my Dad's 44-acre farm 10 minutes down the road.

 

 

Horsey Neighbors

It's always been high on my wish list to be able to look out of my kitchen window and see horses grazing in the field beyond.  Originally this dream came with the desire to have enough acreage to pasture my own horse.  I would love to have 100 acres and more horses!  But with only one acre to our property, my gaited paint gelding, Journey, is kept on my Dad's farm 10 minutes down the road.

We got some new neighbors last April and recently they brought in their four horses, which I will enjoy watching in the 13 acre field below our house almost as much as if they were my own.  I get to enjoy them without having to pay for their feed and care, which sounds like a good deal to me!  ;)

This is their little herd of four mares.  It's been raining a lot lately, but I ran out the door with my camera when I saw they were close enough to the fence line to get some good shots.

This dappled gray mare is my favorite.  Aside from being very pretty, she is also the most friendly of the four.

This mare could be the twin sister of my own horse, Journey, except that she is probably 2 hands taller than him.  Her markings are brown and his are black, but the placement is very similar.

They also have four cattle as well.  Here are the two steers.  (Don't get attached to them.  They probably won't be around long.  I will call them Cheeseburger and Steak'um.)

Here is a cow with her calf.

My chickens came running up to the juncture of the two fence lines as if to say, "hey, we're cute too! "  (Or quite possibly, "hey, where's our treat?")

The grass is always greener on the other side!  The bottom was originally fenced for a couple of dairy goats and for use as a rabbit pen for training the hunting beagles that the previous owner raised.  

I think they said they are also getting "fainting goats".  I'll get pictures of those too when they arrive!