The dog days of summer are gone.....

Today is a wonderful, misty day. We've had a little rain, more will be coming tonight, but right now, it is beautiful! Next post....Thanksgiving in Kentucky!!! I can hardly wait!

The eggs have arrived!!

Stan has spent many hours on the internet researching chickens, what kind he wants, which are the calmest, which are good dual purpose, etc. So, when we arrived, he put in his order for eggs. The last group arrived today, the incubator is almost full (as full as it will get), and here we go. His research says we should have 75% success rate in the hatching. More pictures to come....

Fall, beautiful Fall...

When we arrived on November 5, 2011, this is what our property and the roads leading to our property looked like. It has been so beautiful! The weather has been in the high 50's to the high 60's everyday. We have had one night that it frosted in the week we have been here. The other nights were in the low to mid 40's. This is one of the reasons we have wanted to leave Northern Cache Valley. It gets and stays SO cold for SO long. The day I took these pictures, Weston had 6 inches of snow, and the day time highs have barely been above freezing. I know we will have some miserable times in the summer with the humidity, but we will love having a 200 day growing season, compared to the 90-100 days we had in Weston. We could still have tomatoes, etc. here, if we had a garden this year. They would have had to be covered a couple of times, but we would have had them. Since we love to garden and preserve our harvest, this will be a wonderful place to live. We also are fortunate to live closer to most of our family. It will be nice to see those we have seen so seldom a bit more.

We'd like a garden next year, but.....

The people, probably several people, before us made some really nice raised beds with weed barrier, really good weed barrier, at the bottom of top soil they had hauled in. However, they, or those after them, let them go fallow. In Missouri, if it is fallow, it goes back to forest.

Stan and I spent a VERY productive day and got the trees out! It was a lot of pulling, prying, shoveling, and at the end with the big ones, the truck and a chain. We were very pleased with the beds and the huge pile we created! However, our little Mantis rototiller quit. I worked and worked on it, but couldn't get it going:( I will need a tiller in there, but that will be another day. The pile doesn't look very big, I should have parked the truck behind it, it would almost hide it!

Home...FINALLY!!!

The road home from the hospital took 5 days, but we finally made it. It is a loonnnggg and extremely irritating story, which I will not go into at length. Let's just say there were some very needless tests done, which required incubation time, which meant Marsi could not leave the hospital. Then, when the time was almost up, they wanted to do more, which Rachel put her foot down, talked with the head Doctor of the unit, who agreed that additional testing was unnecessary.

We were able to put on a New Born outfit Rachel had bought for the occasion, that is the only time Marsi will be able to wear it, strapped her in her new car seat and came home!

At home, Marsi and Endrit had some good look in each other's eyes time. It is so fun to watch Endrit with his little girl. He has been hesitant to hold babies, but he has had no problem with his own, bonding has definitely happened.

Marsi was introduced to Dexter and Jimmie. Dexter is pretty nonchalant, but Jimmie is a little terrified and has been in hiding.

Endrit's parents were able to spend some time with Marsi. The looks on their faces tell the whole story, I don't need to say a thing. It's been great to be home. I'll be here for just a couple more days. It will be so hard to say goodbye. Later this week we will be moving to Missouri, for good. I don't know when the next time will be that I'll see and hold her. Rachel promises pictures.

Marsi is here!!!!

Day finally arrived...Marsi decided to make her debut at 3:46 PM on October 24, 2011.

These were Rachel's midwives...I say were, because she ended up needing to be transferred to the hospital, the University of Utah Medical Center. It is situations like these that I am so grateful for modern medicine!! Marsi was posterior, but turned enough to be transverse. Anyway, after 3 hours of pushing, forceps were used to bring Marsi into the world. We are all grateful it didn't need to be a C-section.

Rachel is smiling...after the epidural!

Endrit has a bit of a rough time with blood, hence, he said, he has a PhD, not an MD. He didn't want to lose anything, so he didn't watch anything. The container over his head was the barf bowl the nurse gave him. Besides that, he is so protective of Rachel and their cats, I just can't imagine how protective he will be of his little girl.

Nicole was in the room with us while Stan and Phillip were outside the door.

Marsi turned out to be not so little; 9 lbs. .3 ozs. with a head of hair you cannot believe! Rachel was very pleased with the result of all of her hard work, in the womb and the coming out there of. Endrit was pretty happy with the result as well!

This little girl was well taken care of, proof of which is in her little rolls and the dimples on her fingers. It's so nice to have her here with us. When they leave the hospital, I will go and spend some time with them....wow what a hardship....NOT!

Paris...here I AM!!!

Our first day in Paris, we wanted to get out and do some walking, so that we would be able to not have jet lag. It was a great day. Not long after we started out, it started raining. I thought it was funny that everyone, almost, took cover by a sidewalk toilet.

Of course we needed to see the Eiffel Tower. It's quite the structure! It was fun to see all of the old architecture.

There are a lot of scooters. These were all Domino Pizza delivery scooters. We also went to where Nepoleon is entombed. We didn't go in, but I guess he is suspended from the ceiling under the gold dome.

We stood in line and went to the top of the Eiffeil Tower at night. Every hour glittering lights, light up the tower. Rob made sure I had great looking ears! The lights of the city are very pretty. This is looking down the river Seine.