Happy Spring!

I did it! I met Reeve's challenge and I finished the winter chair in my four seasons cross-stitch...now I'm on to the more colorful Spring chair.

We actually had a very nice last day of winter. It was sunny and the temps were in the 40's.

For those of you with curbside trash/recycling pick-up please consider yourselves very fortunate. We do not have that luxury and there is nothing more sobering than having to deal with the storage and then removal of your own trash. We're very aware of how much garbage we produce and we try very hard to minimize our waste. I seriously think the last time Tom went to the dump was way back in September. I have a recycling system setup in the garage for paper, bottles, plastic, and cans. We actually have 3 to 4 times as many recyclables than we do garbage. Since we had an early snow this winter season that stayed around all winter Tom wasn't able to get his truck moved from in front of the wood pile. His little red truck has been our garbage truck, but I couldn't take the pile up any longer.

It took me about an hour yesterday to load up the mini van with just recyclables. I removed about a quarter of what we have in the garage. Incredible! The kids could barely fit in the back seat.

For the Love of Joe

Our neighbor and friend with the goats also has an adorable baby (he'll be a year in the summer) donkey named Joe. He's the sweetest donkey I've ever met. He loves hugs and is super calm.

Many a time we've told Kyle not to run up to Joe from behind, and many a time Kyle doesn't process instructions of the warning nature. Kyle is wild, loud, and Joe is patient and calm with him.

Joe is also very patient with Brenda's friendly and playful doberman Angel. Angel loves nothing better than to run up to Joe and jump on his back to wrestle with him. I guess we have Angel to thank for tempering Joe...Angel is way more rowdy than Kyle. We were all cracking up at Joe running around with a doberman playfully on his back. Joe loves it and really knows how to get Angel going.

Even though Joe is still a baby Brenda hoisted the kids up on his back for a test ride.

We're going to have a lot of fun visiting Brenda this summer. Reeve absolutely LOVED riding on Joe, and we all loved Joe's wonderful temperment and sweet personality.

Today is the last day of winter and I'm almost done with the winter chair in my cross-stitch. I'll post the picture tomorrow and hopefully I'll meet Reeve's challenge.

100th Birthday for the Elroy Public Library

Our local library had it's 100th Birthday recently. They had a drawing contest and an essay contest to mark the occasion. Kyle kept making excuses as to why he didn't want to work on his drawing and essay. I didn't want to press the issue with him. Reeve reluctantly wrote an essay, which I made into a cursive writing worksheet using a great little website that I've discovered recently:

Well I'm happy to say that Reeve won first place for both his drawing and his essay. If you click on the picture above you can see the picture and essay better.

He was a little nervous when he had to go up in front of everyone to accept his prize money, but he was also very stoked! He never expected to win, but he secretly hoped he would.

The Library was very generous and the 1st Place Prize was $15 for the Drawing Contest (1st-4th Grade...Reeve's technically in 2nd Grade) and $15 for 1st Place in the Essay contest (1st-4th Grade).

When we got home Reeve told me that he felt very special. After he won he had lots of people that he didn't know come up to him and congratulate him. He told me later that he felt like Harry Potter, because everyone seemed to know who he was and they were very glad to shake his hand.