February Photos

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Monday, May 15, 2000 - Field Trips, Mother's Day, and Lace Ripping


Last Saturday afternoon, Hannah, Dorcas, and I went to the church, where Hannah donned her wedding gown and posed for pictures.  I was the photographer... or at least, I tried.  This, because it has a five-foot train on it, and I am going to remove it for use in remodeling purposes, and also to put some of its pearled and sequined appliqués to use on Victoria’s skirt.  Trains are beautiful, but they are impractical--especially since there are plenty of staircases to navigate at church.  So... half a roll of pictures and then--off with the train! 

Last week, our kitten Tad was jumping off Hannah and Dorcas’ bed when he got his left rear foot stuck between the mattress and the wooden frame (it used to be a waterbed).  He cried awfully when he landed on the floor, and every time he tried to stand, he fell back down.  Hannah scooped him up and held him for a while, but he wanted down.  He finally managed to stand and walk, but at first he didn’t use that foot at all.  We took him to the vet the next morning.  She didn’t think his foot was broken, only bruised.  The littles were delighted with the little colorful bandanna the vet had tied around his neck before sending him home.  On the bandanna was sewed a tag with Pet Care Specialists embroidered on it.  

As the week went on, Tad’s little foot has improved more than I expected, and sometimes we could hardly tell which leg he was favoring.  We are glad; it’s so wrenching to see a trusting little animal in pain... especially when he’s never been mistreated, and cannot understand whatever is the matter with him...  Yes, if I am sentimental, I certainly am when it comes to animals.  Well, there are a few other things I am sentimental over...  And I do have a drawer full of jetsam and flotsam, given me by the children, which I would never, ever part with. 

Last Sunday night, people walked out of church to see a fiery glow in the southern sky.  Larry was home with Caleb, and I didn’t see it when I came home from church.  But Lawrence and Norma did, and they rushed off to Larry’s shop to see if it was on fire.  It wasn’t.  Upon arriving home, they called and told us about it, so we jumped in the Suburban and drove south.  

We soon discovered what it was:  The Columbus Sales Pavilion--the part where they keep their machinery, and also bales of hay.  Firetrucks were out in droves, but the place nearly burnt to the ground.  

Monday afternoon, after everyone came home from school, Caleb and Victoria set to playing house under the piano.  They decided it was nighttime, time to sleep, and they lay down under the piano and closed their eyes.  

“I’ll tell you when it’s time to wake up,” Caleb told Victoria.  

“Beep beep beep beep, beep beep beep beep,” Victoria said promptly, making like an alarm clock.  

Caleb sighed and ‘woke up’.  I was going to tell you,” he explained, and rose to his feet.  

Victoria continued, “Beep beep beep beep, beep beep beep beep.”  She watched Caleb head off for his ‘car’ to go to work.  “You forgot to turn off your alarm!” she called after him.  

“Oh!”  He turned and looked at her.  She continued to beep.  He pushed her nose with his index finger.  “There!” he said.  “You’re off!”  And the beeping stopped.  

A friend of ours sent us some pictures--including some of himself in a parasail--a parachute fastened by cable to a boat--and on a bungee jump, high over a river.

My!  What adventures he has!  As for my adventures, why, I once did a triple back flip, in the middle of the night, when I was walking down the hallway in the dark, and stepped on something soft and furry.  

The furry thing moved. 

That’s when I articulated with remarkably swift cognizance, “Aaauuggghh!” --and I flung myself into the air and cartwheeled three times in quick succession. 

However, after turning on the light, I discovered---it was NOT the Kitty, as I had imagined.  It was merely a stuffed toy.

Early one afternoon, Victoria and I heard a Drama of High Excitement on the scanner:  several firetrucks were on their way to a grass fire just west of town, when the first engine was brought to a halt by a blown-out tire.  They called a big wrecker truck to come rescue them, and a firetruck that was called to the fire later stopped to pick up a few of the stranded firefighters before proceeding on to the fire.  Meanwhile, the fire was growing, getting closer to a farm place--

We could hear the sirens as they passed on Howard Boulevard and then continued west, their wailing din growing fainter as they went. 

And then it was suppertime, and tacos it was, for it was ‘Taco Tuesday’ at Taco John’s, just down the Boulevard, when tacos are only $.50 each.  Please pass the Picante Sauce.  No, not mild; I want HOT!

Did I ever tell you about my experience with Spanish moss?  I was traveling with my parents in Florida, and I had discovered that that mossy stuff hanging from the trees was more than just an innocent bit of greenery; for when I put my hand into it, it wrapped around my hand -- slowly -- and gave it a slimy little hug.  Ewwwww.  Well, I pondered this piece of phenomenon for a while, knowing full well that there just had to be something useful a person could do with the stuff.

And then one afternoon, we were stopped at a rest area--one of those with a tourist center in them, where they used to pass out tiny glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice.  My mother and father went inside to get a map and some juice.  Quicker’n a wink, I shinnied up one of those trees with all the moss on them and gathered an armload of the stuff, shuddering when it wrapped its cloying tendrils around my arms.  

I shinnied back down and raced for the trailer.  It was an Airstream, a 31-footer.  I wrapped the moss around the door handle, hid behind some bushes, and waited.  

Soon, along came Daddy and Mama.  Everything went according to plan--even better than ‘plan’, in fact.  Daddy was walking in front of Mama, turning around nearly backwards to ask her something, not looking where he was going; but he knew by how far he had walked from the back of the trailer just exactly when he should reach for the handle.  

He stuck his hand right into that moss.  

Now, explain to me, why would he be yelling my name, before he even came back down to earth, hmm?

Hester’s class went to Mike and Shirley’s farm, Miracle Acres ("Because it's a miracle we have a farm at all," says Shirley), at noon Tuesday.  She then stayed there with Emily when the rest of the class came back to school at 3:30, and came home at 6:30.  Hester and Emily are best of friends.  They are first cousins twice removed, or perhaps second cousins.  Hester wound up with a raging sunburn on her face; her nose is still peeling.

A song was playing on a cassette, “Singing I go, along life’s way; Praising the Lord!  Praising the Lord!”  Caleb sang along gustily,  “Singing I go along life’s way, breaking the law, breaking the law…”  

He really thought that’s what they were singing. 
Meanwhile, Victoria informed Hannah and Dorcas that she can do ‘thundersaults’.  Come to think of it, when Victoria does them, they ARE ‘thundersaults’!  

One time when Hester and Lydia were about ages one and three, they were practicing somersaults, and Hester said, “Do it real fast, Lydia, just like this‑‑“ and then she dived headfirst at the floor from a standing position, and nearly broke her neck, which in turn nearly gave me a heart attack.  

She lay there, not moving, and I, running to get her, felt like I was moving in slow motion.  Then, just before I reached her, she staggered to her feet, and, head spinning, remarked calmly to Lydia, “That’s not quite right.”  

One winter day we took the children ice skating at the pond at Pawnee Park.  Hester, age two and a half, Lydia, six months, and I were sitting in the car, watching from above the pond.  Hester had been on the pond for a little while, with somebody pulling her on a sled, but Larry had brought her back to the car because she was getting too cold.  

We sat there watching the five older children and Larry skate.  Joseph, who was six, went at it sort of like the Pentecostals go at fighting snakes--with hammer and tongs.  (That is how they go at it, isn’t it?)  It’s a wonder the ice holds up, when he’s out there thundering around.  

Here he came now, running more than skating, flank speed emergency.  When he got right smack dab in front of us, he had a terrible, dreadful crash.  His legs went every which way, and down he went.  I couldn’t see how any child could survive that kind of a fall with his legs still intact.  I took a fast breath and held still to see what would happen.  I was quite a distance away, holding a sleeping baby Lydia, and Larry was skating toward Joseph, so I stayed put.  

That’s when Hester said worriedly into my ear (she was standing just behind my seat), “It’s okay, Mama, he didn’t get hurt; it just seems like it.”  

As it turned out, thankfully, he didn’t get hurt.

Lydia, Victoria, and I went for a walk Tuesday night.  We walked past Bobby and Hannah’s house.  A little while later, Bobby told Hannah on the phone that he heard Victoria announce to the entire neighborhood, “Bobby is working really hard on his house!”  

She’s been talking loudly, because her ears are ‘all plugged in’, as Joseph used to say.  When we got home from our walk, she awoke her father and loudly informed him that I cut her bangs that day--because they really needed to really look a lot better, and now they really do, don’t they really?!”  

A short while later, Hannah notified Victoria that her nose was falling off, and proceeded to put a drop of glue on the end of her nose.  (It was fabric glue; she was gluing appliqués on the ringbearer’s pillow.)  Victoria told her, “My chin is falling off, you’d better put some glue on there!”  

Teddy and Dorcas have been having horn and violin practice regularly, preparing for the Spring Program.  Only four more days, now!

Larry took off work early Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. to take an old white van and the four-wheeler to Omaha to try to sell them..  He called from Fremont just before church to tell me he’d sold the four-wheeler for $3,300, and he traded the van for a pickup cab for one of the vehicles he still needs to finish.  The sale of the shop will not become final until June 1, and according to our banker, the government will take 40% of the money (Capital Gains tax).  So Larry is going to ask the the buyers to buy a parcel of land, which they will then trade to us--well, I don’t understand it exactly, but it would wind up keeping the government from taking so much of our money.  I guess that means we will not be able to pay the bank off.  

Larry didn’t get back in time for church, so we went off without him.  That always makes me feel strange, going to church without Larry.  Before the service begins, the pianist and organist play a prelude, usually a couple of songs.  Before the song service ever began, Victoria decided she needed to go to the restroom--and I never argue with a three-year-old about such matters.  Out the door we went.  

We managed to get back in time for the first song; but only fifteen minutes into the sermon, Caleb was having troubles with asthma, and couldn’t quit coughing.  Off I went again, this time with Caleb and Victoria both.  I could’ve left Victoria with Hester, I suppose, but she was coughing, too, so I took her along.  

We hadn’t been home ten minutes before the door opened, and in walked Hester.  She has hay fever something awful, and had been coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose--and had run completely out of kleenexes.  That left only Lydia there in our place, since the older children sit with the young people.  But Keith and Esther were just a little ways away--and Lydia is an independent child.  “Me do by self!” she used to say.  

Guess what happened in the flower bed under the red maple?  Hannah pulled up my poppies.  All of them.  She thought they were weeds.  Good grief; I had such a hard time getting poppies to grow, and finally there were three big plants, they would’ve probably had lots of blossoms on them this year.  Now tell me, why didn’t she pull up the small elm and sugar maple and mulberry trees that insist on growing where they don’t belong?  Why didn’t she pull up some of the 100,000,001 dandelions we have?  Why didn’t she pull up the mint that grows in mass quantities around here?  Bother!

Wellllll…  I guess I should not get too upset at the poor girl, for it was not so very long ago that I planted a snowball bush…  Now, I really like those bushes, and I was looking forward to having one in my yard.  It did nicely the first year.

By the time spring rolled around again, I had forgotten I planted it.  And, right next to the snowball bush, there sprouted a buckeye tree.  (There is a large one in our back yard.)

When I found the buckeye tree, I thought, Oh!  It will be nice to have another buckeye tree here! and I reached down and pulled the weeds around it.

It was not long before Teddy was looking for me.  “Mama!” he exclaimed, sounding somewhat alarmed, “What happened to your snowball bush??!”

I looked at him blankly.  “What snowball bush?” I queried.

“The one you just planted!” he replied.  “All that’s left is a buckeye tree!”

And then I remembered.  Bye-bye, snowball bush.

Onions and Wedding Gowns:  I’ll bet you don’t think those two go together.  Sure they do!  Why, just imagine how many tears a person could shed over either one.

A long time ago, when the world was very young, I used to be able to chop up an onion with nary a trouble, nary a quabble.  But immediately after Keith was born, for some odd reason, I lost that talent.  (My hair went straight, too.  It used to be quite wavy.)  So I turned into a person who, while not dripping a droplet of a tear over that which most people would, wept copiously over every little sliver of onion I sliced, winding up with a tomato for a nose, and a couple of red bell peppers for eyes.  

But I didn’t live all these ensuing years for naught, nosirree, I didn’t.  I learnt a trick:  All I have to do is slice those onions under a steady trickle of cold water, running right onto the part I am cutting, and there is nary a twinge, nary a pingle.  

We had baked chicken for supper Wednesday night, and I sliced an onion with it.  Yum, it was good.  And the whole house smelt scrumptious.  

I took Hannah’s wedding gown apart and put it back together again after cutting off four inches at the waist.  Now I am removing the lace around the bottom.  They put the seams together with such large stitches that if Hannah were to issue forth a boisterous sneeze, the entire gown would fly to bits and pieces.  But let me tell you, they put that lace on to stay.  Whew, what a job.  Do you suppose it is possible I can actually do this job??!  I am going to remove the train and use part of it to remodel the top.  The extra appliqués I will use to decorate Victoria’s dress.  Hannah is putting pearls all over Victoria’s dress; she has one sleeve done, and it’s beautiful.  

The wedding will be here soon, and I need a front-end loader, a dump truck, a caterpillar, a back hoe, and a street cleaner to clean my house.  We don’t have enough children, that’s what the trouble is.  The more children, the more maids and butlers.  (That is the way it works, isn’t it?) 

At Jr. Choir, we were going through the Jr. Choir book, and I was picking out the more unfamiliar songs as I went, so that we could learn them better--and then Esther’s father came in with her maternal grandparents, who were visiting from Florida.  I tell you, carte du jour underwent an abrupt metamorphosis.  We promptly switched to our most well known songs, and the children sang with gusto.  We polished it off at 8:30 with “Hallelu, Hallelu,”  which brought down the house.

I went for a long walk with Victoria and Hannah afterward--and got earaches because it was so windy. 

As the school year winds down, field trips are in full swing.  Hester’s class went to another farm belonging to some friends of ours at noon Thursday, taking her lunch with her.  These people have a stream running through their land, and the children went wading in it.  

That same day, Lydia and Caleb’s class went to the Fire Station and the library.  Fire Chief Marty Weber last week at Ag Park spilt the beans to Lydia that her teacher had called him, asking if the class could go there.  When he realized she didn’t know about it, he made her promise not to tell.  Lydia was thrilled to pieces to know this wonderful secret--and nobody else did.  

Teddy has been cutting Mama’s rhubarb and putting it into our refrigerator.  For a while, I didn’t even know it.  Thursday, Hester washed it, Dorcas ran it through the food processor, and then I made a huge rhubarb/peach streusel pie and a pan full of rhubarb peach jam.  Yummm!  It was one of the best pies I ever made; and the jelly was delicious, too.

The children played outside until suppertime Friday.  When I called for them to come in, only Lydia showed up, telling me the others were at my sister Lura Kay’s house looking at her new Himalayan kitten.  Larry and I walked over to see him, too.  He’s so cute, and seems so tiny.  

My brother-in-law, John, took Lydia and Caleb with him to the dump.  For some reason, that’s always an Exciting Adventure.  He stopped by a friend’s house, which delighted both Lydia and their little girl Amber, who is in Lydia’s class.  She happily showed Lydia her cat.  

Larry and I and the littles--from Hester on down--went to Quail Run, where I took pictures of the Canada geese and their goslings.  We saw both goose families.
 
We proceeded on to Sapp Bros., where we bought presents for Mama and Norma.  For Mama we got a hummingbird clock with a little hummingbird on a pendulum that swings to and fro.  We got Norma a lighthouse figurine.  There is a motion sensor on it, and when it is activated, the noise of seagulls, foghorns, and water can be heard.  

Later that night, Victoria was in the bathtub, and Dorcas was entertaining her (she’s good at that) until I came to wash her hair.  Victoria put a little rubber teddy bear in the tub.  It sank.  

“OH!” she cried.  “He drownded! She got him out.  “Now he’s all right.”  She dropped him again.  “OH!  He drownded again!  There was a moment of silence, then, “He’s all better now.”  

Meanwhile, Larry got himself some pie and put piles of ice cream on it.  Everyone made aghast noises at the heaping mound--so he put it, bowl and all, on the floor and made like he was going to step on it and squish it down to size, provoking peals of laughter.

My lilacs are finally blooming; they are always a few weeks later than everyone else’s.  I wonder why?  They are on the south side of the house, where things usually bloom more quickly.

Once upon a time, we were at the zoo, laboriously working our way through the gorilla house.  It was Labor Day (which explains why we were working laboriously), and the zoo was jam-packed.  Fortunately, the children were of the opinion that they should stick close to their parents, so we were not having troubles with lost kids, as were several families.  We stopped to watch a big gorilla who seemed to be in a foul mood.  He was sitting with his back to the glass, and for all the world he looked like he was engaging in a giant pout.  Somebody tapped on the glass (strictly against the rules), and he abruptly leaped to his feet, whirled around, and struck the glass--hard--with both fists, lips pulled back into a horrible snarl.  

The person who’d knocked on the window screamed, and the crowd backed nervously from the window.  (They do put extra-strength glass in those windows, don’t they?)

When we turned to go, we had to wait a good long while, until a stream of humanity flooded past--and that’s when we noticed:  There was a weighing scale on the floor.  The numbers were digital, and lighted up the wall in the dark building at about the seven- to eight-foot level.  There was a vertical bar that lit up along with the numbers, filling with bright red like a thermometer, as a person stepped on the scale.  Most people had seen the scale, and were avoiding it like the plague.  

I was waiting till everybody was out of the way, so we could go try it out.  And then a very short, very large, very messy, very crabby lady came waddling by with a couple of very crabby, very dirty children.  All eyes rolled inevitably upwards to the numbers on the wall.  The gorilla house quieted.  We held our accumulative breaths.  

She didn’t notice a thing.  

Relentlessly onward she came, turning neither to the left nor to the right...  SPLAP, SPLAP, SPLAP, went her sandaled feet on the scale.  The ‘mercury’ in the bar shot up... and up... and up... 200-- 250-- 300-- 350-- it topped out at 375.  There was a collective muffled gasp from the interior of the gorilla house, and then--silence.  

The woman waddled out of the building, crabbing loudly at her crabby kids.  One of them screamed and slapped at her.  She slapped back.  She was just out of earshot when the gorilla house erupted in laughter, startling several spider monkeys who’d been enjoying the spectacle of all the untamed humans just beyond their window.  

And the Jacksons pulled into the lane of traffic and headed for the scale.

Saturday afternoon, we went to Quail Run--all of us but Dorcas--where we took three golf carts, three of us in each cart, and drove to the far side of the course, over hill and dale, and into the woods.  There are several ponds amongst the trees and hills, and there we found the goose families with their goslings.  I shot several rolls of film.  

Joseph goes lickety-split and likes to turn corners on a dime--at top velocity.  Hester and Hannah rode with him.  (We thought Hannah would make a good enough governor.)  Hester was tickled pink, because she got to drive the cart for a little while.  Caleb, riding with Teddy and Lydia, spent a good deal of the time giggling.  Teddy stopped, and the kids bailed out.  When he was ready to go, he called out, “All aboard!”  

As we were driving along, having just left the cart corral, and still going one after the other (as Larry said, “We’ve got us a convoy.”), Teddy called, “Look at that big mower!”  

Larry answered, loudly enough that Teddy, some distance behind us, could hear him, “That’s not a mower; that’s a ball picker.” 

Teddy immediately cried out, just as energetically as the first time, and in exactly the same tone of voice, “Look at that ball picker!”   

It was chilly and windy; I even wore my rabbit fur earmuffs.  With Victoria in the cart beside me, I drove to the lake beside which were the goose families, and commenced to shooting.  Photos, that is.  So long as I didn’t steer straight at the geese, and so long as I went slowly and we stayed in the golf cart, I could get quite close to them.  

I leaned down to change lenses--my camera bag was on the floor of the cart--and then sat up straight again.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered, smack-dab in front of me, two golf carts bearing five of my very own children!  They were barreling along, without regard to the nervous Canada geese, who were starting to head for the lake, honking a warning to their babies, who were scrambling to their feet and starting to scurry for the water.  The kids were grinning, and Lydia jumped out and started running toward me.

I waved my arms and pointed back the way they had come, trying to get them to go back.  They looked at me wonderingly, gazed back up the hill, and then several of them yelled, “What??”
 
The geese looked to be leaving any minute, so I gave up trying to keep still and yelled, “Go back!  You’re frightening the geese!”

They hadn’t noticed the geese, because they were along the banks of the lake, just under a small rise.  Lydia jumped back into the golf cart, and Hester and Joseph backed their carts up a ways until they could turn around and head off another way.  The geese relaxed, and I managed to get quite a few more pictures.

Saturday night, Teddy practiced with a boys’ group, Life is Like a Mountain Railroad, a song they will sing for the Spring Program.  I put the tenor notes into the song for him, because they were not written in.  I practiced too, singing the mother’s day song, Dearer Than All.  I sang it for our Sunday night service.

Keith called later that night and asked if Larry could cut his hair.  I said yes, I was sure he could, if Keith would then reciprocate by cutting his father’s hair, since Larry’s barber has just retired, and Larry has not found a new barber yet.  Keith and Esther both came, and we watched part of a video Dorcas shot at Bobby and Hannah’s house the night before.  (No, Larry did not let Keith cut his hair.)

I took a video of Teddy holding Tad while he was playing with his yo-yo.  Tad kept batting at it, and finally caught it in his fluffy little paws.  That big roly-poly kitten still thinks he’s a wee infant and needs his mother to feed him.  Every now and then she takes exception to his ideas, grabs him around the head with her front paws, and beats him silly with her rear feet -- claws sheathed.

As usual, the children, with the exception of Caleb, could not wait, and gave me my Mother’s Day presents a day early.  Keith and Esther gave me a large begonia, which I plan to hang from the eave above the front porch.  Teddy gave me a box of 50 floppy disks.  Joseph gave me a long-handled spray nozzle with nine settings for watering my flowers, and a stainless steel scoop for transplanting, planting bulbs, etc.  Hannah gave me the picture entitled The Pilot’s Hand on Me and three packets of flower seeds; and Dorcas gave me a flower swag she made, which I am going to hang over Keith and Esther’s wedding picture.  She also gave me a small ceramic pin she painted and a little gold-trimmed glass with a pheasant etched on it.  

Hester gave me a card with crinkled 3-D crepe-paper flowers on the front, and a miniature poke-bonnet basket with flowers in it that she’d made, which we hung from a shelf in my room.  From Lydia and Caleb I received a card, on the front of which they affixed a plastic scrubber with a brad, and then drew a stem and leaves under it, effectively turning it into a flower.  

Victoria, seeing all this flurry of Giving Mama Presents, immediately found a piece of paper and a pair of scissors, and sat down to create a masterpiece.  In a few minutes, she happily brought me my ‘present’:  “Here, Mama,” she told me, “I made you a triangle, a ‘squir’, and a round.”  

Sunday, Loren gave a sermon about Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son.  I love that story, how David, so typical of the Lord with his mercy and kindness, treated the lame son of his very best friend.  And Mephibosheth, with his crippled feet, is representative of us, with our stumbling, faltering walk.  Yet David seated him at his royal table, and fed him food fit for a king.  He gave him the rich inheritance he had coming from his father’s family, although David could have rightly kept it for himself.  Just that way does the Lord love us--with generosity and without reservation.  We have done nothing to merit our incredible inheritance--eternal life.

After the morning church service, we gave Mama her hummingbird clock.  Keith and Esther were just leaving when we arrived.  

Tad fell in the toilet this morning before Sunday School.  I was standing at the counter curling Hester’s hair when Tad decided to get himself a drink out of the loo.  But the water was a little too low--and Tad was a little too small--and his pads were a little too slippery--and into the drink he went.  He came clambering up, shaking and kicking, and I am quite sure I wound up a good deal damper than Tad did.  His face, as he scrambled wildly back out, was a study in amazement and shock, anguish and wretchedness.  I couldn’t help it; I burst out laughing at him; he looked so funny.  

Tad takes exception to being laughed at.  He looked back over his shoulder at me as he went out the door, shaking first one paw and then the other, and swiping his sandpaper tongue at various soggy spots on his feline person.  “Mrrrrrddddhhrrddhhrr!” he said reproachfully, switching his tail in indignation.

Sunday evening, Victoria was running a big Tonka dump truck madly up and down the hall, where Hannah was standing ironing--in bare feet.  Hannah nervously sidestepped the dump truck yet another time.  “That thing bares its teeth every time it comes my way!” she exclaimed, pulling her feet back even farther.  

After church last night, Lawrence and Norma came visiting, and we gave Norma her lighthouse figurine.  We also gave both grandmothers magnets on which was printed flowers and a verse about grandmothers.  

The roast Larry started before church finally got done.  It was nearly 12:00 a.m.  That's the right time for a midnight snack.  Isn't it?  We served everyone sandwiches with Sweet Onion Barbecue Sauce.  Mmmm, it was good. 

Just as I was ready to start typing this letter, Teddy came home, eleven-page report on Desert Storm in hand, and informed me that he had just learnt it was due today.  So I typed it for him.  

At noon today, I took nine girls from Hester’s class to Frank and Elaine’s farm on the edge of Richland, a small town about seven miles east of Columbus.  There were twenty children all together, and they had a splendid time touring the place and looking at the many animals.  

There were twin lambs, only a month old.  Frank caught one and held it for the children to pet, and it cried “Maa--aa--aa--aa!” piteously the entire while.  There was a baby goat just about the same age, and, strangely enough, he was tamer than the lambs.  The children were allowed to hold the ducklings , and they peeked inside a shelter where was a nest with three goose eggs.  There were a few dramatic moments when the young chickens suddenly noticed an open gate and, with one accord, turned and made a mad dash for freedom,  careering along with single-minded purpose.  Elaine noticed in the nick of time, and ran quickly to head ’em off at the pass.

We have just finished supper, and the showers and bathtub are in high gear (do showers and tubs have gears?).  Soon there will be a temporary lull, while the water heater gives valiant endeavor to catching up. 

Now I must get back to work ripping the lace from Hannah’s dress.  Am I making any headway at all?!

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