November in the old year 2010

This mostly-meant-to be-photo blog is for ourselves, our widespread family, and my parents, because I love you. It is hard for me to do this, silly enough- but you deserve it. So I dive in, but starting around when we saw Mom and Dad last......November happiness was a litter of five soft, warm and romping puppies. What a handful. 7 dogs! We miss them, but what an eager, lovable rumpus while it lasted. For those folks who find these puppy pictures while searching for english shepherd images, (though these pics are morphed for our own fun, just so we can remember what raising them was like)- the puppies are 3/4's english shepherd (mom and dad), 1/4 (dad)show, now very fine farm collie. All tested well over 5 months repeated testing on herding, guarding and tracking apptitudes. Some superbly. We kept a sweet one for a daughter. We recommend the American Working Farm Collie Association and support their breeding goals. We have no plans for new litters. We love our purebred English Shepherd, almost too smart to handle, and we REALLY love our rough collie/english shepherd cross. For a family farm dog, there's just nobody like him... but I've a case of pride and prejudice.


Black walnut harvest, Neverfinished leafing, a metalworking merit badge completed (even though done without his uncles help, who, he is sure, would've helped him make swords...

And November, for the first time ever- it's a momentous thing to begin a new tradition, even unaware- means NA NO WRI MO. Nanowrimo. Do an internet search. Our whole family wrote 'great works' of novels- in 30 days with the support and help of a large internet community and great kid author materials...quantity, habit, commitment, accountability and the writing identity over quality, and what do you know.... they are still writing large, four months later, and looking forward to next November. (Who knew I was raising writers?) Now, for an adult, that's 50,000 words. That's like, cancel Christmas and invite yourself somewhere else for Thanksgiving. Much self imposed stress with little sympathy.. but it was fun.

And we discovered an archaic invention... the Alphasmart, or Neo in a later model. = An old fashioned, small, featherweight word processor like thing- more like just a typewriter-that does one thing magnificently- let you write. no internet, no boot-up, no malfunction, no screen past 3 lines so it lets you plow on without corrections or perfections, stores 8 separate files, and then types your writing leter for letter, inside any open application on the computer. Ready for editing and formating. Runs a whole year on 3 double A's, 100 percent fabulously portable. Camping. fishing. Little Philmont, library, roadtrips, canoeing, sacrament meeting. seminary. Absolutely a wanabe productive writer or notetaker's dream. Two of us have one, hardly more than pennies on ebay. The rest of the kids want one, and fill my empty file slots with storylines every time they find it laying around.
Creating is absorbing... but we were starting to get really cold in November- and February-first of March are our coldest months. That means cut, split, haul and stack wood. We take fewer showers, blunt to say, when we know personally how much effort they cost. But we have One-Mean-With-A-Chainsaw-Dedicated Dad, (heating entirely with wood they haul themselves, mostly in garden carts= supreme work-teaching oppourtunity).... Here, with the help of one wonderful home teacher.