Since it's the end of October I thought why not post photos that I took in the month of October that just didn't make it into a post.

I think I'll definitely try to do this at the end of each month, post photos that just didn't make the cut in a blog post.

Oh wow, where have the months gone?  I had meant to continue posting but life just seemed to have gotten in the way.  Let me give you an update of what’s been happening here at the farm. 

Christmas was spent in Illinois with a couple of our sons and taking the train and spending the day in Chicago, and then a stop in Michigan to see kids there.

We had or what seemed like we had was a very long winter, seemed like it just wasn’t going to quit. We even had snow early April luckily I was in Washington state helping with a new grand baby, so hubby was holding down the fort here.  I was in Paducah Kentucky enjoying Quilt Week and the beautiful weather down there and hit some bad weather going home, traveling in rain, sleet and wind is not fun.

After my last post we traveled down to Texas and made a short stop in South Carolina to see some friends.  South Carolina isn’t really on the way but we made a road trip out of it. After Texas was sugaring time,  sugaring started later this year and only went for a couple weeks. Though it was a short season it was our second best season of the year for quantity. 

I’ve been doing some quilting, not much knitting I hate to say. Spring has finally arrived and the baltimore orioles are back and a couple of hummingbirds.  We have lots of yard work to do still, getting the gardens ready for planting and my flower gardens cleaned out.  

I’m hoping I’m not gone from the blog for as long as I was this last time. 

Life just seems to get busier as the years go by.  Jim and I are doing good here in Southwest Wisconsin. The Christmas season is fast approaching and I have no idea where the year went. At the end of September we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary and I had meant to share our anniversary trip with you. We had an awesome time, we headed to northern Wisconsin and made a loop and ended up in Door County. I will share it here soon. 

I’ve been on a few quilt retreats, the boys came hunting again this year, we can now call it an annual event, which is great. I make sure the boys are fed which is pretty much my job the whole time they are here. It’s a great time for everyone. 

We have snow still up on the ridge here, though down in the valley and especially in town all the snow is mostly gone. The other day it was warm enough for me to go outside and wash my windows and for the snow to melt off the deck. It felt like a spring day.  Jim worked out in our woods cutting up a huge tree that had fallen during a storm, it’s also in the path where we drive during sugaring time so the tree had to go and it was the perfect day to be outside in the woods, plus it’s a start for the 2019 wood supply, which is a never ending job when we heat with wood. 

Life keeps moving on and we’re trying our best to keep up with it. 

It’s definitely been a long time since I’ve posted.  Winter is still here but instead of a snowstorm we are having freezing rain which is not nice to drive in so we are hunkering down and staying in since we really have no place we need to be.

Here’s what I’ve been doing, the guys came out hunting in early November, some of the kids came for thanksgiving and we went to Texas for Christmas this year and stayed down there for a month. We had a wonderful time. The weather was pretty chilly but we sure didn’t mind, being with our family down there was why we go.

We spent a lot of time with our kids and grandkids and had quite a few sleepovers with the grands.

I did manage to get some UFO’s finished.  I finished my Chicago Cubs socks...yay!

Hopefully this will be the start of my blogging again. 

The minute she got out of the car I knew in my heart of hearts that the woman who came here from the other side of the world (Australia) was a kindred spirit.  I have known her through blogging since 2009 but we have not met until now, and it was like we have known each other forever, cut from the same cloth.  At times it was almost crazy how much in common we were with likes and dislikes  

The author of this lovely book Gail Pan is a very good friend of Ramona's and if you read her blog the Ramona Gail mentions is this Ramona. I don't do a lot of embroidery work but this book is so lovely that I plan to start. 

Ramona and her husband Theo stayed with us for 4 days, 4 glorious days.  They brought some goodies, and if you've never had a Tim Tam, you are missing out big time, we haven't opened the Mint Slice package yet but I'm sure they're just as yummy!

I can't wait to make something with these beautiful fibers.

We spent an evening with an Amish family we know and had conversation over pie and coffee, a few other outings we did and spent a relaxing day just doing nothing. I took Ramona to my monthly quilt guild meeting and it was one of the longest meetings we had, so much excitement when they found out they had an Australian quilter in the house :) 

So sad to see them go, knowing it might be a long time before we meet again. 

Wow, where do I begin?  I can't believe that life just got so busy that I've neglected this blog again for the umpteenth time.

Since I've been gone we have had two new grandchildren born within a few days of each other, a granddaughter and a grandson.  I flew to Spokane twice and we drove to lower Michiagn to see the new babies.  

I've done a bit of quilting and this quilt is for a baby whose parents are diehard Cubs fans and the mom beat breast cancer and had their baby at the age of 40. This summer we had 5 granddaughters visiting 2 were from Texas and came here for the week, and now we have 4 more for the week.

It's been raining here lately so everything is green and lush, the garden and flowers are doing great this year.

^{We call this the leaning barn and always look for it on our way to town to see if it has fallen over yet.  The day it does we'll be surprised as we always think every time we have a bad wind storm that it has to be down now, and there it will be standing.}

Our cherry trees this year produced pretty good that we were able to can some for the winter months  

Fog hovered over our farm one day so Mr and I jumped in the Kubota to take a look around and this is what we saw.

This is just a bit of what has been happening around here.  I hope you all are doing great and that you are having a wonderful summer. 

I did some blog cleaning here.  Not sure if that will get me to post more, we'll see how that goes...LOL!

I've been messing with my blog look, especially with the colors so if you came here and it was one color and then came again and it was another, that was me just seeing which color I liked.  For now I think I'll stick with this color.  So, I hope you like the "new look" here on the old blog.

These two lilies can be found in my yard and I just love them both. 

Still waiting for the new bulbs I planted to bloom, but they are getting there.

Our bonfire went well last night, I have to say after the rains stopped it got pretty warm, and Sadie found the perfect spot to stay cool.

Today is a beautiful day and it's Fathers Day.  Y'All have an awesome day!

Typepad has been having major issues and has been duking it out with a DDoS attack that started last Thursday, and since I had no idea as to what that is I looked it up, and since I'm able to get on at the moment I thought I would do a quick post and let you all know that I'm fine, my blogs fine and tho there are a lot of folks not happy at the moment with Typepad for being down for so long, I'm just happy that they are the ones who can fix it, cause I sure have no idea as to how to fix the problem.  I left Blogger a few months after I started blogging and came over to Typepad and have not regretted it once, not even now with all the problems they have been having.  I think they are doing a wonderful job getting us back up and running.  Thanks Typepad team!!!

Sitting around the kitchen table drinking coffee with one of my favorite mugs is wonderful, especially if it's with good company.

Mr had a birthday on Sunday and I made Trisha's Magic Lemon Meringue Pie.  I have to say it was pretty good, sweet, but good.  I guess since cutting back on sugar in my diet things will be a bit sweeter tasting.  We had a wonderful Easter and birthday celebration.

I transplanted some wild tiger lilies that I found close to our property and transplanted them down along the road, the ditches there are so steep that it's very hard to mow, or even mow at all.  I thought planting wild flowers would be nice, and I was so excited to see that they took and are growing, can't wait to see if the wild flower seeds I planted last fall have take as well.

Meanwhile, while my blog has been down, I have not really been on the computer, I've been helping Mr around the farm.  It sure does feel good to get outside and work around the property.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!