Catching up

Hello, everyone that reads this blog.  I am sorry it has taken me so long to update but you see life has continued to interrupt my feeble attempts to keep this up to date.  Here are a few images of the last two months – A beautiful fall day about 5 o’clock and we – Mandy, Nathan and I – went down to feed the fish in the back pond. The scattering of clouds were pink tinged with the setting sun and at least a dozen dragon flies were soaring and dipping above the pond.  It was a magical moment.

 

I look out across the pasture and see my  5 year old son and his puppy running full tilt across the grass and know that I will blink and both the boy and the dog will be grown before I want them to be.

 

I am walking to the work shop and see a ½ dozen butterflies in different colors hovering over a large bush with small delicate purple flowers covering it

 

We just had a wonderful Thanksgiving week.  Kathie came in the Thursday before and we had a great week organizing and cleaning and cooking.  Cyndi and Jeremy and boys came down and Glenn came in from Washington D.C.  We had 30 people on Thursday for lunch an it was wonderful.  We had James and Sharon Miller and family (Bob’s sister-in-lway and family), a friend of Shelly’s and her son, some friends of Cyndi and Jeremy’s from Austin and of course, our Beth join us.  We had plenty of food and dessert and then everyone just relaxed.  We had a  childrens baseball game (kind of), football on the grass, fishing, boat rowing and I looked up once and one of our guys was sound asleep in the pasture in the shade of a tree.  It was the perfect day full of wonderful people and food.

 

On Friday, we celebrated Andrew’s 4^th birthday with family and plenty of dinosaurs!  Cyndi made a great cake and we had a dinosaur egg toss, dinosaur, dinosaur, dragon (done to the tune of duck, duck, goose), colored dinosaur pictures with stickers and everyone just had a wonderful time.

 

Then on Saturday, Samantha (our Sammi) Turpin turned 8 years old and was baptized by her father, Jason.  It does not seem like 8 years ago, Shelly made that crazy drive from Katy to Spring in a panic because her water had broken and had this wonderful free spirited little being we all call Sammi.  We were all very proud of her.  Following the baptism we all went over to Shelly’s house for cake and ice cream and Sammi opened her presents and spent time with her family.  The friend party will be a little later.

 

On Sunday, November 26^th our Mandy was blessed by her father, Glenn with Jeremy Selim, Jason Turpin, Bishop Stutz, and Brad Leavitt at our Ward in Magnolia.  We all came back to the farm afterward and had a wonderful lunch.  The Turpins had to head out to attend their Ward and the Leavitt’s had something in Sugarland.  Kathie had set up the Christmas tree the day before and Debbie and Cyndi put on the lights on Saturday night and then we all finished decorating the tree on Sunday before everyone took off to get back to the regular schedule of work and school.

 

So, simply we had the most wonderful week of Thanksgiving that I can remember. I hope to get Jason to post some pictures (I confess I still don’t know how to add pictures) and I will be back up to date on the workings of the Ball farm.  Oh, I forgot we are working on our first purchase of chickens that will be delivered in February and have found that our neighbors are moving and will be buying several cows from them before they leave.