As long as we were up anyway, Susan made a batch of peanut butter cookies and we played with Scott until around 2:00 AM then we all went to bed ... again ... so we all slept late Thursday morning ...
But not too late! We went to Eureka where our youngest son and his wife treated us to some bowling. I haven't done much bowling in many, many years but managed to not embarrass myself too much. We all had a great time and will hopefully do it again soon.
Scott couldn't quite understand why he wasn't allowed to bowl too but was content to play with his own bowling ball on the next (vacant) lane over.
One of his favorite times was when the balls came up the return chute. For some reason he found gutter balls uproariously funny and would clap when they occurred.
We're parking away from our usual place in order to make it easier to get through with the snowmobiles. We use a sled to bring groceries and water jugs from the car to the house. The white bag has 50 lbs. of wheat in it. We'll use it for chicken feed.
I picked up some things at the hardware store to repair my snow rake. This is the part that broke.
I went with a slightly different set-up hoping it will be stronger. Time will tell.
The handle for the "rake" in 1 in. PVC pipe. The head part is a section of cedar fencing about two feet wide. It does a fair job of cleaning snow off the roof.
I'm grinding grain for the chickens. We're mixing equal parts of wheat, barley, and oats along with smaller parts of corn and dried beans. We set the grinder to a very coarse grind. It takes several hours of grinding to do a hundred pounds of grain by hand. Scott is in the backpack because Susan was washing diapers in the laundry room behind me. I clamped the grain mill to the loft stairs. This picture was taken on the 20th.
Scot is getting better and better at walking. He seldom falls anymore and has learned that he can carry more when walking than crawling. Here he's traipsing around with a lid off the kettle we use for melting snow.
Then he acquired a fly-swatter ... er, I mean a sword. Now he has a sword and shield and is a Viking warrior. Watch out cat!!!
Susan is collecting snow in the bucket to dump in the kettles on the wood stove. We've filled up our 55 gallon water barrel and the twenty-gallon barrel we pump into the tank over the sink. We use a lot more now than last year because Susan is now washing diapers and baby clothes in addition to our own clothes.
Now she's brushing snow off the solar panels. The wind was out of the north so she and Scott got dusted with falling snow. It was about 28 degrees at the time.
Tristan and his wife came for a visit and spent some time on the snowmobile. Barbara watched Scott for awhile so that Susan and I had some time together to ride the snowmobiles. It's been an adjustment having Scott here because one of us has to be with him at all times. Makes it kinda' hard to do some things together.
Barbara was right behind them on the other snowmobile. They didn't go far, it was late afternoon and the temperature was dropping fast.
Here, I'm trying to finish up grinding the chicken food. Susan was cleaning upstairs so I had Scott in the back pack. He likes being where he can see what's going on and takes an interest in everything.
Well, at least he takes an interest until I bore him to sleep. The rhythmic rocking as I turned the handle was too much and he fell asleep in the back pack. We took him out and put him to bed but he woke up again. He played with his toys in his crib until I finished about an hour later. Susan went up and got him when he began to fuss a bit. We shouldn't need to grind grain again for about three months. It's a lot cheaper to buy grain and grind/mix it yourself than to buy the feed already mixed.
These two pictures were taken on the 22nd.
Sunrise this morning. The picture was taken at 9:28 AM. It's nice to see the days getting longer.
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