Moving On...

K, so some of you may remember this guy and that he's been gone for a little over a year. 

It has been so hard without him.  Really it has.  I miss him so much, although like any loss, it is fading.

When we first went to Montana, things were too new and exciting, but after a couple weeks, I really started to pine for him or another equine pal.  After moving back to KY it hurt to see the Amish horses and all the other horses around.  I'd see the sun glistening off a flank and it would bring tears to my eyes. 

As the months have gone on, I've been able to look at a horse in a pasture and appreciate the beauty without too much of a stab to the heart. 

That said, I haven't tested myself around horses at all.  Well except for twice.  Once our Amish friend Andy rode down to the house on his mare and I petted and sniffed on her.  He said I could ride her, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  Another time our neighbor Tyler rode over to the house and visited.  I was super stressed out about some things.  It was hot and his mare was drenched with sweat.  As he got off her, I breathed deep.  I swear to you, the smell of that sweaty mare immediately calmed me.  It's true.  I actually felt my pulse slow down.  It was great. 

Anywho I've done lots of soul searching on this matter.  I don't think I want another horse.  I know I don't want one right now.  What Champ and I had was so special and I just don't think I'm ready to replace that.  A horse also doesn't fit in with our homesteading plans.  For what we have planned, every single thing has to contribute and a horse just won't bring enough to the table so to speak.

When my dear friend Jennifer of Our Little Farm got her horse she was very excited for me to come over and see her.  Uh oh.........this wasn't something I was excited to do.  Not at all.  Hurts too much I thought, can't do it, I thought, it's too much to ask, I thought.  I sent Jennifer an email explaining my feelings and of course she was so kind and understanding. 

Then a couple days ago, Jennifer did a blog post about some trouble she's having with her mare.  I thought to myself....Self......you have to go help her.  For the love of horses, and the love of friendship, you have to go help her. 

So I'm going......tomorrow morning when I get off work, I'm going to have my first close up interaction with a pony since Champ.  It's all good though, because God blessed me to have a wonderful horse in my life for 11 years.  The relationship we had was amazing.  I shouldn't be so selfish as to demand to have that again.  So I'm headed to Jennifer's, in the hopes that I can help her and her mare have something like I had with Champ. 

All horses deserve, at least once in their lives, to be loved by a girl.........and every girl to be loved by a horse....

Thank you Lord for letting me have a such a great horse to love and to love me back!

Till next time.........God Bless........

Lets Make a Piggy Potholder!

First off, let me apologize for the quality of these pictures.  My camera is in the glovebox of the car (for reasons I'll reveal very soon) and I took these with The Youngun's ipod, so they aren't the greatest in the world! 

K....now that's out the way!  Moving on........

See this dirty little piggy??

My momma made this little piggy potholder years ago and it's my most favorite one.  This one and one that has a fried egg appliqued on it, but I digress.......Anyway, this little piggy looks so dirty cuz I've caught it on fire more than once on my grill, and I use it all the time cuz did I mention it's my most favoritest hotpad??

Anywho, today after work I decided to construct a new piggy hotpad and this is how it went. 

First.....raid your stash bag and find a piece of fabric that you can double and have the same size as your little piggy......as well as a piece of quilt batting......then trace the outline of said piggy and all his accoutrements.....

Then using a plain zigzag stitch or a pretty, fancy stitch from your friend Steve, you sew all around the outline of the piggy.....

Then cut carefully around the outside edge of the zigzag stitch that you outlined the piggy in.....

Then you want to sew around that same outline stitch again, to make sure it's nice and strong.  

Next you stitch all the little accoutrement lines that make a pig a pig, like the eye and the ears and such.

Then you sew on a pretty little button for an eye....and wall-la...you have a nice little piggy potholder!!

The dark one I made first.........and The Youngun claimed it for her hope chest.  So I raided the stash again and found this fabric, which I used to make another for me!

Now I've got two piggy potholders to match the two little piggys in my backyard!!!

The white gilt is Rebecca of Lardy-brook Farm, and the Hamp gilt is Queen Genevieve of Baconia...

They are gonna fill my freezer up later this year, the yummy little girls!

K.........go sew somethin'....

till next time..........God Bless........

Happy Birthday to Me.....

Today I turn 36 years young!  Uh......that's about all I got.......LOL! 

In other news, sorta birthday related...I've decided not to cut my hair until my 40th birthday (if I even cut it then).  I'm not sure the last time scissors touched my hair, but it was in Montana so it's been close to 8 or 10 months.  That will basically be 5 years of growing my hair and I'm excited to see how long it will get.

This is a picture of my hair after taking it down for the day.  I wear it up all day long for work.  (Yup, I'm a working outside the home woman these days.  A blog about that will come soon.)  Anywho, I took it down last night before showering and had The Man take a picture of it.  I'll update it each year on my birthday so I can see how long it's getting.

I haven't used my homemade shampoo in a loooong time and I miss it.  I may start using it again soon......

Until next time.......may God Bless and keep you!

Who I Am?

Since our lives have changed so drastically this is a question I've asked myself many times.  The Man and I have talked about it, and I know he has felt lost, but he deals with it better than I do.  At times I think his faith is even greater than mine.  He simply says it's a chapter of our life that is done now, and we have to look with excitement and anticipation to the future.  I tend to be like Lot's wife, glancing back all the time, although I'm learning not to do it so often.  I talked to my friend Darlin' Deb on the phone the other day and told her that our place in IL was up for sale, (although I do believe it has since sold).  She asked me if it made me homesick for our old house.  I said no........I do miss my barn though.  See that's who I am.  It really is......animals, critters, barn life.  But.......that's not where God wants me right now and that's ok.  It really is.  Do I want it all again??  You bet, but only if and when He says I can have it. (Even though in reality I'm constantly reminding Him that I'm ready NOW!)

So who am I right now?  I am God's.  I belong to Him and I seek to serve Him in whatever capacity He sees fit.  I am The Man's wife.  I love being his wife, and I'm a goodwife as he is a good husband.  I am The Youngun's mama.  God has blessed The Man and I with this one.  She is a treasure.  A Godly child, and I love the relationship He's allowed us to have. 

I want my entire life to be a testimony.  I want the light of Jesus to burst forth from my every pore.  I'm weak, and I struggle, and I fail God every day, and still He loves.  That is a beautiful thing, and I'm so happy to belong to Him!

This is my current favorite song.  The first time I heard it, I got tears.  I'm so ready to look over and see Jesus coming!!

Until next time..........

How Come We Didn't Stay......

in Montana??? 

Well.......first off I'd like to say that Montana is gorgeous.  And no it didn't have a thing to do with the weather.  That is what we miss the most actually!  Secondly I want to say this, and this is the most important thing....

God never said we had to stay.........He said we had to go!  And go we did!  Would we do it again??  Would we move almost 1700 miles across the country to a place we'd never been, and where we knew no one?  If we felt God leading us we surely would. 

Ok, now to the meat and potatoes of this post.  Life on the ranch wasn't what it was supposed to be.  There, I said it.  We went out there looking to work together.  What happened was that The Man worked 7 days a week and I sat in the house...all...by....my....self.  I begged, pleaded, whined, and nagged to be allowed to help out on the ranch to no avail.  Those few blog posts I did?  That was the only times I was allowed to help.  I didn't want paid, I just wanted to be a part of the ranch.  I was so excited and I had the ability to be a real asset and help, but Mouse just would not let me be a part of anything.  That was a real bummer, to put it mildly.  Mouse was the only woman that worked on the ranch and she was determined to keep it that way. Her mom had the sheep, that was ok because sheep were stupid and they treated Mouse's mom as they would treat a child that you thought was stupid but you humored her and her silly ideas.


Mouse was one of the meanest women I'd ever met in my life.  Picture the meanest girl you went to school with and multiply her by 3, that would be Mouse.  She was awful to Pied, and horrid to her husband PK.  The only person she wasn't mean to was her dad.  The two of them had more of a husband/wife type of relationship.  It was very odd.  The Man began to hate her, and I don't use that word lightly.  I'm married to a good man and a gentleman, but the way she treated her daughter and her husband was just atrocious and embarassing and uncomfortable and awful.  Herry Ford and Mouse were some of the most condescending people I've ever encountered.  They literally acted as if they were the King and Queen of Montana and everybody in the world should be honored to be speaking to them.    Don't get me wrong, they didn't treat us all that badly, but let me tell you the story of Elmer Fudd, the young man hired to help with calving.  Elmer's real name was Jason and he was a really sweet young man.  He had a bit of a lisp, which is how I chose his name for my blog.  He was young, around 22 or so and we took him under our wing.  He lived in what was known as the "cook house" which was a pack rat infested mess of a house.  Anywho, in the evenings after his shift in the calving barn was done, he'd come over to our house and I'd have him a plate of supper covered over with some foil and he would visit with us and pick out a couple of VCR tapes to take to his house and watch in the tiny little portable TV that was his only source of entertainment in the rat house.  The Ranch Family was AWFUL to this kid.  Just horrible.  Mouse saw his truck at our house one evening and informed me that I didn't have to feed him, just to run him off.  I told her we didn't mind him coming over and visiting.  A couple days after that Herry Ford stopped by the house to tell me the same thing, that I certainly didn't have to feed him and that he'd run him off if I wanted him to.  I was horrified.  I said no, he's just fine being over here.  Jason was almost full blood Cherokee Indian and his grandfather had taught him all sorts of neat stuff that I found fascinating so we talked of those things quite a lot.  The Ranch Family never missed a moment to make fun of him and his heritage and the way he spoke.  He was hired for the month of March and about 2 weeks in he was so miserable from the way they were treating him he was ready to quit, however they'd made him sign a contract stating that if he quit before the end of March he would be paid nothing.  Jason had grit because he stuck it out.  I admire him for that and wish him the very best.  He was hired by another rancher in Big Timber and last I knew was working there.

The night time calving guy told Jason that he had been doing the night calving for this ranch for 10 years and they had NEVER had a repeat daytime calver.  In 10 years they couldn't get anybody to come for more than one season.  The only reason he has been doing it so long is because he does it at night and they leave him alone, and because he is a hunting guide and he does it in exchange for hunting rights on 30,000 acres of land.  I myself don't think it would be worth it.  Every single person we met said the same thing, "Oh I'm so sorry you had to get hooked up with them!!!"  The turn over time for their ranch hands is about 6 months, and the longest they've ever had anybody was 5 years.

So...........The Man wasn't happy, and I wasn't happy and The Youngun, being as she marches to a different drummer, wasn't happy.  We talked and we prayed and we decided we'd stick it out until The Youngun got out of school.........in............five............years..............wow, that seemed like a really super long time to live with these people who were so in contrast to everything we believe in and stand for.  Then.......The Man's Granny B had a stroke and we couldn't go home.  Then my dad had another surgery on his back and we couldn't go home.  We were beginning to feel that we were way to far away from family.  We decided we'd save and save and hopefully in a couple years we'd have enough money saved to move back home. 

Then Granny B called us up (her stroke was  minor) and said out of the blue.......I sure wish you kids would move back home, and I'll give you the money to do so.  That was that, The Man gave The Ranch a month's notice and the morning after The Youngun's last day of school we were in a U-haul headed for Kentucky.........

I think that's enough for now, but there is more to come in a few days

until then....I remain yours in Jesus

Is she............

Alive and well??  She is! 

First off I want to thank you loyal blog friends who've emailed to check up on me and mine.  You don't know what it means to me, really you don't! 

Secondly.......we are ok.  We are good!  We are following God in all His Mighty Wisdom. 

Where are we you ask??  Well we aren't in Montana..........and we aren't back in Illinois, but we are back in the great state of Kentucky.

It's a long story........one that I'm not going to tell today, but it is good.  God is good and God is in control.

I'm going to ease back into blogging........I think..........it's such a personal extension of ourselves isn't it?  Such a heartfelt undertaking and my stomach is actually a little "off" as I type this, but I think I'm going to try.

My life is so different than it was back in early May of 2011.  We've been on quite a journey but that's what life is about isn't it?  We have grown so much in our relationship with God, in our relationship as a family.  The Man and The Youngun are so close now, and that warms my heart. 

Anyway, this is all I'm going to post for now and I really do want to thank you all for your care and concern.  I will do a post soon to catch up on where we are and what's going on.


For now, I remain a child of God forever

until next time..........