The air was warm, the wind was roaring,
‘Tis the night for spells, and witches soaring.
The veil between worlds is thin this night,
Ghosts of our ancesters, no need for fright.
Leave a treat for them, a cookie or two,
Or they’ll return next year with a trick for you.

Halloween, my favorite holiday. For many people, it means dressing up in costumes and going trick or treating for candy. But, that is not how the holiday first started. Halloween in Ancient times was known as Samhain. Samhain is pronounce sow-in. It is an ancient Celtic festival. For Pagans, Wiccans and other Earth based religions, it is the start of the New Year.
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Ah, finally. We get to go to the next step in the adoption of Samantha. We have a disclosure meeting set for Nov 6. Wow, we are so excited. We drive down to Massachusetts early that morning. Anticipation is brewing.

I know the old expression is Where’s the Beef ?, but around here lately, we have been saying “Where’s the Eggs?”. For some strange reason the hens are on strike. We have 25 laying hens, and they should still be laying. At this time of year, they do slow down, but they normally don’t stop. I have had a talk with them, but this does not seem to have helped. Even with the normal slowdown, we should still be getting at least 18 or so a day. Today, we got 6. It is kind of ridiculous.

It is days like this that I wish I had a video camera.
We got up early, had breakfast and headed out to the pig pen. With help from Bob, we thought getting the pigs off to the butcher would be easy. Well, at least easier than what it turned out to be. [Read more...]

Today, we got a call from Samantha’s case worker down in Massachusetts. He got the message that we want to go forward with the disclosure meeting. He will read over our home study and get back to us soon. I guess there are a couple of families that are interested in her, so he wants to pick out the one most suitable. Oh, I do hope it is us that he picks.

Pork and Chop are set to go to the butcher on Saturday. We have borrowed a crate, and a truck from neighbors. We are trading them for a pound of ham, and some eggs. A cheap trade I think.
Unless we get kids in the house soon (and lots of them), I don’t think we will be able to eat all the meat from the pigs this winter. We will get  close to 300 pounds of ham, bacon, and pork. That is a lot of meat for just the two of us. At this rate, we may not have to get pigs again next year.

Tiera had an ultrasound today, and we were invited to go to get to see our grand child for the first time.
It was an awe inspiring event. There she was up on the screen with her little fingers, and her itty bitty toes. She even sucked her thumb for a moment. The best picture they got of her was when she actually put up her tiny little arm, and made the peace symbol. That was just awesome.

 The phone rang.
It was the garage on the other end of the line. The man spoke softly as he gave her the news of her beloved mini-van. “Sorry,” he said. “There really wasn’t much we could do to save it.”
As Taps played softly …in the distance, she knew the van would want her to move on. They had alot of fun together, but it was time to move on to her new car…

Being that our car is probably on it’s last legs, we decided to purchase a new one. We went to one car lot, and test drove a couple of SUV’s. Each one seemed to have an issue, and decided to hold out.
On the way home, we decided to get some lunch. As we sat in the car having a picnic, we thought about going over to see Bruce to see if he had found anything for us.  We decided while we were already in town, we might as well go see him.
At first, he said he didn’t have anything. We had told him a few weeks ago to keep his eye out for a mini-van for us. Then he told us about a great deal on a Buick Century. We told him we would take a look at it.
The moment I saw it, I knew it was ours…it was maroon. For some odd reason, I like maroon cars. As far back as I can remember I have had a maroon car.
We took it for a drive, and told him we would be back in town tomorrow. We were going to think on it overnight. We got out to the car, started the loaner. We both knew it was a great deal. We shut off the car and went back in and bought it.