Newsletter, febrile seizures, Baby Sweets, chickens and Christmas. Whew!

I snapped this picture tonight. When I said the first issue of This Blessed Life newsletter would be sent out by January 1st, I honestly thought it would be. Then I sat down with the scanner, printer, and copy machine to simply put it together. I mean, it can't be that difficult, right? LOL! Gee did we have a lot to learn about the simpleness of getting pages to line up just so, the ins and outs of getting things dark enough to be readable.... It is a very good thing that we invested in extra copy machine ink and white-out for this venture! They will be done very soon, though.

This is a picture of a miserable boy. This happened on December 20th. We had a cold virus moving through our family. Just a regular, minor one. On this day my just-turned 4 year old woke up feeling ill. I got him comfy on the couch, gave him vitamin C and D3 and juice with some garlic in it. About an hour later he began seizuring. I've been truly terrified down into my bones only a few times in my life. This little son of mine has had 2 febrile seizures now - this one that was the day after his 4th birthday, and another one the day after his 1st birthday (how weird is that coincidence?!). And those were two of my most terrifying moments. I know what febrile seizures are, I know that they are almost never permanently damaging. I know how to treat them and that they are not normally an emergency. But when you are watching your baby convulse, drool and roll his eyes unconsciously in your arms, you have to fight to recall all these things. It's terrifying! I felt like I had post traumatic stress syndrome for the next 4 days.

That's all for the sad and scary news.

Here are more adorable chick pictures! :p

And here's little miss farm girl. She's kind of an adorable chick, right?

More apple canning helpers.

My 13 yr old son and one of his many, many K'Nex creations.

And his Christmas cookies.:)

Our record breaking enormous egg.  It weighed exactly twice as much as the other large eggs.




A chicken egg on the left, a guinea egg on the right. The guinea egg is very gray.

The kids helped me take inventory of all my canned foods I had stuffed in the back of every cupboard. There were quite a few stuffed back there!

I snapped this picture out the van window as I was driving recently. The ice covered trees were so pretty in the sunlight.

Our own ice covered trees, with guineas below.

These are the Christmas cards we made this year. Each member of our family put an orange thumbprint on the paper. Then I and the kids added antlers and painted eyes and noses. They were a lot of fun & I was pleased with how they turned out. :) My favorite part is the little miss farm chick's teeny tiny thumbprint on the far right of each card.

Grendel during a rare moment that he actually held still for the camera. Our one year old Leonberger.

Now I must go fetch all my littles' toothbrushes and get bedtime stories underway.