The Porch Light copyright by Revka (2006-2010). All rights reserved.

Monday, January 15, 2007

On the go

If you come by here regularly, you probably noticed that I haven't posted anything since Friday - gasp! Since I often post more than once a day, this is highly unusual. What's wrong? Nothing except that I've been on the go. Frankly, I could use one of those energy pills right about now. *grin*

I was gone all day Friday. The girls and I left our house at 10:30 a.m. I stopped by my brother's place and spent about 4 hours helping my sister-in-law by doing laundry and cleaning her daughter's room. The kids had so much fun playing together, and my brother/SIL had been given a tiny Jack Russell terrier the day before so the kids enjoyed playing with Rocco (or Paco as Pookie Bear called him). When we had to leave, my little niece got all teary-eyed and said, "I don't want them to leave." We promised that we would come back again some other time.

After leaving there, we stopped by Mr. Incredible's grandparents' place to get my mother's headboards from the pack house and to load up on vegetables and meat for our new freezer. (PaPa raises a small herd of cattle- maybe 10 at most- to butcher for meat for the family, and he and MaMa plant and tend a large vegetable garden every year. They will slaughter 1 or 2 cows each year, which provides meat for 5 families. PaPa pays for raising the cows, and the other 4 families pay for the butchering. At about $200 per cow, that is either $50 or $100 for all the meat we can use in a year. Most of the meat is made into hamburger, and the remaining beef is cut into various steaks. My mom made the comment that eating the hamburger from the farm is like eating ground steak. I hate when I have to buy store meat. The hamburger is so greasy, and one pound of the store meat cooks down to about half of what I'm used to having from a pound of farm hamburger. The vegetables are from the garden that PaPa plants and MaMa tends. It, too, provides the year's food the the families. Summer time means going to the farm to help pick and put up corn, butter beans, field peas, string beans, squash, peppers, tomatoes, and all the other vegetables they plant. It's definitely hard work, but I'm thankful for the end result.) We had just enough time to pop in and say hi to PaPa and MaMa and Robert's uncle and aunt who live right beside his grandparents.

We then took the headboards to my mother at work, went to Target looking for a Celtic Woman CD (if you haven't heard them, they are GOOD!), picked up my husband's comic books, stopped by my sister's house to drop off some dish towels for her, and headed home. We stopped at one more Target on the way home to look for the CD and FINALLY found it. We didn't stop after that and made it home about 8:15 p.m.

Saturday, Mr. Incredible's parents and grandparents came down. They helped Mr. Incredible rake leaves all day while I worked on changing out clothes in the girls' rooms.

Yesterday was church. I sang in the Sunday morning service and taught the 2-3 year old class on Sunday night. Afterward we went out to McDonald's with a family that we are getting to know. We have a lot in common, and it's nice to find some new friends. All of our kids have a lot of fun together.

That's what has kept me away from my beloved blog. I'm sure you're just thrilled to hear all the details - ha ha ha. How have you been doing lately?

top photo courtesy of fotoseach.com
CD cover photo courtesy of Wikipedia

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, I will say that the part about the farm and beef was totally interesting (smile). Have you and the children watched the slaughter of the cows for food?
I've always thought it was important for children to learn (over time) that we do kill our food to eat. It raises the notion of how disconnected our culture generally is from the food we eat. It does sound like you had a really full weekend. Welcome back.

Revka said...

No, frank, we have never watched the cows get slaughtered, but when the girls feed the cows, I do tell them that we eat them later. Thanks for the welcome back.

Karen, I feel the same way about fresh veggies and home grown meat. You can't buy that in the store! It does save a ton of money on our grocery bill, too.
That is so great that 5 kids rededicated their lives at camp! I hope things go well for you guys. I'm praying for you.