Balloon Festival at Memorial Park in Town

You can see some of the thousands of people who gather in the early morning for this annual event.Another balloon being blown up.
I got this photo from underneath one balloon and its basket.

Danny sits on his daddy's shoulders, watching another balloon come down to skim the water of the lake. This is a feat that requires a lot of skill, as you want to only dip just a bit into the water and not go too far in! There are many cheers and whistles and clapping as the ballooonists successfully dip and then rise again without sinking!

Watching the many balloons float away into the sky.

Wild Currants from the Mountains

While up in the mountains, we found lots of loaded currant bushes near the mountain stream. Here we are picking.The bushes were just loaded! Some of them had several fat berries on one stem. There was something peaceful about taking time to just quietly pick berries. However, I still have a pricker or two in my thumb or fingers from all the tiny thorns on those bushes! We managed to gather about 2 quarts of berries, which isn't much when you compare it to other fruit, but it is a lot when you consider picking these tiny berries on prickly bushes!
Once we got home, we found a recipe for blueberry currant jam, and added frozen raspberries to one recipe, too. Here Rose has added lemon juice and pectin and a minimum of sugar to make our own jam!

Hannah loves to help! She is mashing currants or thawed blueberries with her masher.

Below, Carrie is taking her turn at another batch of jam.

Cisterns and Sisters

A cloud formation that we saw out our back door one day. Last week our cistern was almost dry, so Jonathan took the opportunity to go down inside it and clean it out. Hannah had thrown a cowpie into it a while back, once when they had the lids off and were checking the water depth. That cowpie, said Jonathan, was in there sort of fermenting, or however you would describe it.... So I was glad the water comes through at least two or three filters before we drink it! Plus there was plenty of dirt down in there. So Jonathan cleaned it out and fixed a leaking pipe at the same time.

The next morning, there was no water at all. Thankfully we were leaving for a few days away, but when we came back after four days, the cistern wasn't even half full. Jonathan figures the well is producing less than one hundred gallons a day for our family of nine. With less than ten gallons a day apiece, we are to drink, wash hands, bathe, launder, flush toilets, and water animals. That sounds like not very much till you read about the famine in Somalia where camels have to travel 40 or 50 miles for a drink, and that only twice a month.

Well, below you see two lovely sisters, sitting in a mountain meadow near Windy Ridge where we visited last weekend.

Here is mother and youngest little daughter near the same place. These particular mountains were rather bare in this area, but the meadows were full of pretty flowers.

Here is a family photo we took on one of those ancient bristlecone pine trees.

Our Seventeenth Anniversary

We stayed at this cute Black Forest Bed and Breakfast, not far from home, for a couple nights and parts of days of very much needed rest and recuperation. There were several cabins, but the lady let us have a nice, cozy, large room in this quiet lodge building for the same price as a small room elsewhere. There was a kitchen and lots of room to lounge.

Jonathan bought me not just a dozen roses, but eighteen! Seventeen for our seventeen years of marriage, he said, and one to go on! Isn't he sweet?
Both of us with the roses in front of the quilt hanging in our room.

We had a ball getting some fun pictures.

Above is in the corner of the lodge where they have wedding receptions. So we thought a smooch above the anniversary roses was very much in order. Jonathan does a great job of getting the camera to take pictures all by itself.

Below, Jonathan is trying to snap a photo on his phone of this handsome buck by the wedding gazebo. Unfortunately, the lighting is not good and you can't see Pikes Peak in the background directly behind the gazebo, but the Peak is there. It was a beautiful setting. We loved watching three bucks and a doe graze peacefully nearby the second evening there.

August Interests

Here is our new calf with his mommy, Mrs. Wow.I know most of you had garden salads from your own garden long ago, but finally our gardens bore enough to actually make a 100% homegrown salad! The children were so proud!
The extra project for August was to try to get our garage under control. I would have taken a "before" picture if I hadn't been so ashamed. But here the boys are assembling one of the five shelves Jonathan bought to make a difference in the garage. The reason you don't see much stuff is that much of it is outside. Don't ask me to take a picture of the outside of our garage right now!!

I managed to get the above picture before the boys caught on. By now they have caught on and are trying to NOT get their picture taken. With the mother they have, that does not work. They get a picture taken of them anyway, and she puts it on the blog--like this!! Next time, they may as well grin and bear it.

Daddy having several children help him stain the cedar swing I bought for our anniversary.

Roping, Kids, and Puppies

Now it was Bro. Reiff's turn to share an object lesson. He had two little ropes that he tied around his neck. There were two of them and he tied both around his neck. He could never break those ropes. Then he had at least three or four children take turns tying the ropes into even more knots. There was no way he could ever get free from those ropes and those knots!

Bro. Reiff compared the way he was all caught in those ropes to the way some people are caught in sin. Some are so deep in sin that they think they can never come loose. They can never get free. Then he asked if we thought he could get free. We didn't think so. Except that we thought there must be some trick to it. And sure enough there was. Bro. Reiff grabbed hold of each rope and gave a quick yank and behold! The ropes broke! You better believe we all gathered around to watch him explain the trick! But maybe someday we will come to your place and do this object lesson, and we don't want you to know the trick, so either you will have to come visit us or we will have to come visit you to show you. Ask us next time.

Well, about two weeks ago, we had a harrowing day when our black nanny goat couldn't have her kids. I ended up taking her to the vet, expecting whatever kids she was going to have would be stillborn. Instead, when the vet delivered the first dead kid--it ended up being alive! That poky vet hurried up really fast! He ended up delivering triplets! Here they are in the little pen in the garage that we fixed for them.

Unfortunately, one kid did not make it, but the others are fine and dandy (see below in the wagon), and I will have to take them to the vet again in a couple days for them to be disbudded. I decided not to try to do it myself this time.

And below is one of our newest batch of goldendoodle puppies. Yesterday we took pictures and have them advertised.

Here is another picture with some of our flowers in the front flowerbed.

Rosie's Birthday

Rose and the girls had a wonderful time decorating her blueberry cake with real flowers--petunias and marigolds from our flower garden! I knew marigolds were edible, and we hoped petunias wouldn't hurt anything either! There were a few candy butterflies.

Here is Rose with her cake. We had her party at our nearby park, and invited two other families, Grandma and pa, and Bro. Glen and Sis. Helen Reiff, who are filling in for a few weeks at our church while we are waiting to find a pastor. We like to have the fill-in pastors out if we can, and this was a nice excuse since Grandma and pa could bring them.

Sis. Helen Reiff is tremendous with object lessons for children and adults alike. (As you can see in the photo, young and old are crowded around watching her give an object lesson----EEEEKKS! Hannah and Danny just came in with two toads to proudly show me. I try, oh, I try so hard to be appreciative, but it really is hard for me to enjoy an upside down toad being handed so near my eyeballs by my smallest daughter. I mean, Danny with a big toad is bad enough, but to have my little daughter bringing in toads leaves me wondering what kind of daughter I have!!) So much for that, and back to the object lesson (perhaps Sis. Reiff could come up with object lessons from toads, too!)

I had asked Sis. Reiff to bring an object lesson for all the children, and she shared a little story from her life. A young fellow at GBS showed her how to balance ten nails on one nail without the ten ever touching the board that the first nail was nailed through. When Sis. Reiff had tried to figure out how to balance them, she couldn't. But when she turned the nails over to the young fellow who knew the trick, all the nails balanced perfectly!

Mrs. Reiff compared that to how her life was all messed up and out of balance before she turned everything over to Jesus. After that, Jesus took all the broken pieces of her life and brought balance into her life.

Then Sis. Reiff asked several volunteers to try to balance these nails. Sammy was first, then Jonathan, then another boy. Here are the ten nails balancing on the head of the first nail.
Can you figure out how they did it?