July highlights

July has been a busy month of haying for the guys and working in town for us girls.  In between making lunches for everyone, we've been trying to get caught up with the garden.  Cora and I both are disappointed with how it has turned out this year.  It looks as though many of the seeds must have rotted in the very wet Spring as many of the rows have spots with nothing growing.  We are thankful, though, for the many volunteer tomatoes from last year so at least we ought to have an abundant tomato harvest.  The absence of garden pictures in our blogs this Summer indicates our disappointment in how it is producing.

One can't work constantly, though, so I'm thankful for Sabbaths.  Today was a lazy day at home but 2 weeks ago we had some excitement in our lives.  The little town of Robinson was celebrating it's 100th birthday so we went up to help them celebrate.  They had a wonderful parade with something for everyone.

I don't speak of it often but I truly do love horses. I guess the reason that's such a big secret is that in 2002 my favorite horse, Gabe, the one that the children all loved, got West Nile.  The vet came and treated our Gabe.  He showed Robert how to give the treatments and we all stood out in the dark, after Robert got home at night, holding the lantern for the process.  It ended up that all 3 of the children got bit by infected mosquitoes and got West Nile too.

It was a nightmare week for us and it ended with Gabe's death.  I remember crying my heart out as Robert loaded Gabe's body in the tractor bucket and hauled him out to the pasture.  He dug a big hole for Gabe in the side of a hill and we buried him there.  All the way back to the house, I wept and I promised myself that I would never love another horse again as long as I lived.   Then I went into the house to my 3 sick children and tried to comfort them somehow.

 I've never given my heart to a horse since then but I do love their beauty, the way that they carry themselves, and yes, even the way that they smell.  I wonder, if I would do some BT on Gabe's death, could I possibly ever truly love another horse????????????  I know that I love to watch these magnificent creatures work together as a team and I'm very thankful to those who bring them to parades for us to admire! 

This little guy was filling his hat with candy that the folks on the floats were throwing out. 

Do you recognize these folks?  We've been staying away from parades (as far as I'm concerned) because we always got so much candy.  Even with using sparingly afterwards, we'd end up with colds 2 weeks later.  I never imagined that we'd be collecting any now but Andrew had a bag tucked away in his camcorder bag so we came home with some anyway.  I guess larger bodies can handle it better as nobody has had any sniffles yet. 

I thought that this couple was so cute together.  They had matching shirts and she was riding by her man just as proud as she could be.  Oh, how I love being part of the farm community! 

 This young lady had her pony all dressed up for the parade. 

 There were lots of family farms who had floats.

 The guys liked this cool rig.

 After the parade, we took our picnic lunch to the park and watched them set up the bouncing palace for the little people to jump in.

 This looked like a good inexpensive idea for fun.  It was just a large piece of plastic on the side of the hill.  An adult had a garden hose running on it and the children were sliding down with great squeals of delight.

 As we ate our picnic lunch, the trucks and tractors started pulling in for the tractor pull.

 Cora snapped this of me.  I'm going to look at this picture next Winter and remember how roasting it was that day.  My goodness was it HOT out!!!!!!!!!!

I got this one of Cora in return.  The guys were over looking at the trucks and tractors.

Here they are.  These guys are real die-hards as they sat out there almost 5 hours in that wretched heat.  I guess that goes to show that you can tune out the heat when you're really interested in something.

When I couldn't handle the heat anymore, I went under the tent.  You couldn't see much from there but it sure was a lot cooler.  I got a couple of great shots for my newest photo fancy which is catching parents with their children bonding.  These 2 were inseparable all afternoon.

These 2 were great buddies too.

At 6:00 Cora and I went over to the rodeo arena and watched the cowboy rodeo.  We didn't know anybody but started cheering for this cowboy with the paint because his mother was sitting beside Cora.  I'm sorry that all of these photos have the corralling in them, but that's how it was. 
This was a ranch rodeo and there were 6 different ranches that supplied teams.

One fun event we've seen at the Mandan rodeo.  The team of 4 men has to get the steer in the stock trailer.  This one was VERY ornery as you can see he had 3 of the cowboy's ropes on him before they got him in.  Man do they ever have brakes when you want them to move.

These pictures got mixed up but here is another team who went through the parade.

Here is one of Jacob's favorite entries in the parade.  He sure loves them loud hot rods.







My big purchase for the month was a juicer that Dr. Mercola recommended for getting more greens into my diet! 










Here Cora snapped me opening the box. 








This is a photo of the pulp that came out the first time I made juice.  It was apple/carrot juice and it was wonderful.  The children all enjoyed the juice and I took the pulp; added peanut butter and coconut oil; stirred it up; and had it for breakfast!  YUM!  I've liked all of the juice that I've made so far except broccoli juice.  Maybe it'll grow on me.

Here we are after Sabbath feast last week.  Cora surprised us by making doughnuts. You know, as much as I love going away for fellowship, the sweetest fellowship is right here at home.  How I love my precious family!

The only other bit of news that we have is that we had an unexpected guest for lunch yesterday.  Chris S. called us yesterday and said that he was in Napoleon.  Seeing as it was lunch time, we invited him to come out and join us for lunch. 

You may recall him bringing his family here when the baby goats were small and sharing with us about the John Birch Society?  We've been spending some time reading the literature that he left us on Sabbaths and we are very impressed with the organization.  Well, when he asked us this time if we'd like to join, we were ready.  After lunch, we filled out the paperwork and are now members.

We visited a little bit and before Chris left he said, "You guys have been Birchers all along, you just didn't know it!"  OH, SO THAT'S WHAT WE ARE!

I'm excited to be part of a network of others who see hope for our country in getting back to the Constitution that our country was founded on.  Who knows what kind of wonderful people we're going to meet now.  Who knows what kind of interesting meetings we're going to attend......  I know that you all know the answer to those questions.  God knows.  OH HOW I LOVE KNOWING THAT MY LOVING HEAVENLY FATHER HAS A PLAN FOR MY LIFE.  The song that I used to sing when my voice was a wee little girl's voice is ringing through my mind now, "AND ALL I HAVE TO DO IS FOLLOW!"

Have a great week everyone!

Dawn