almost november!!

Ok, I am not liking the fact that I haven't written in 3 weeks. Part of it is that while I am looking at the photos and getting them ready to upload, I can't remember when things happened because I waited so long! Bummer. I'll do my best, though.

I think it all started out with our first snow. It was quite incredible. 2nd week in October, I think? Not exactly sure of the date. I know it was blizzarding on a Thursday night--ok, it started Wed. night on the 11th. School was canceled on Thursday, and the kids already had Friday off. Sitting at the KBC looking outside was crazy--we could hardly see anything. It had tapered off a bit by the time I left so the drive back wasn't so bad, but still. It was the whole point of getting snow in the middle of October. A bit depressing.

The good news is that it melted by the weekend and it got me totally inspired to get all those winter prep chores done, and pronto! And we have had excellent fall weather since. A bit cold at times, but not so cold that I couldn't get work done outside.

Here is a picture of the snow, but this was taken Thursday am. We ended up getting quite a bit more than is shown here.


That weekend, I worked like a madwoman to get the chimney repaired. Because of the storm we ended up having tons of water in the house again. It was definitely starting to get worse and worse. I finally built a ladder with 2 16 ft pcs of scrap wood lying around and hooked it over the top of the roof. It held fine, actually, which I was pretty happy about. Rio had to get on the roof with me to help me--that thing was freaking heavy! We made it safely, though. After it was hooked up I dry-locked the chimney a couple of times and caulked as well. So far, there has been no more leaking. I'm quite proud of my work!


Here are some other pictures of the animals that the guys took:



And on the 21st we got our goats! We renamed them Hershey and Nutmeg, and I think they really like us. They are doing really well. This picture of Nutmeg isn't the clearest, but I'll get some more later this afternoon when the guys are here. I took them for a walk/run in the woods yesterday. They really liked it a lot, alternately running and grazing as we went. They seemed to enjoy trying to catch up with Vanna. It's really nice having them here. Another level of responsibility, but it's good that we will have a year before they have kids to get us all prepared for even more responsibility!