Detours Along the Way to Heaven: An Afternoon at the Farm

Sunday being a beautiful, slightly cool day, Zenith and I felt like getting out of the house to go for a walk somewhere. After looking around online for nearby walking trails, I bumped into the website for a local farm we drive by a lot. They just happened to be having a "Farm Day" where they open to the public and have local crafters and vendors come set up booths and let people walk around their farm. So after William's nap, we all headed over to check it out. It must be a pretty big local event since there were lots of people there, and they did a really nice job with it. A lot of local cafes were selling food and drinks, they had face painting for the kids, booths with crafts and handmade items, pottery making, wool spinning, petting zoo, hay rides, horse drawn carriage rides, and even a beekeeping booth where we had a really good chat with a local beekeeper. He was able to give us lots of information and it's all so interesting! Maybe someday when we have our homestead, we'll have some honey bees. :P

I don't know who was more excited...Zenith or William :P

He knew just what to do and was "driving" the tractor, making all the sound effects.

I would have been happy to hop on one of these!

He's not so sure about these big animals...clung to Daddy a bit at first

The little petting zoo they had set up.

Didn't want to get too close and then he finally warmed up and wanted to walk around

"This one is me-sized, Mom!"

"It's getting a little too close now..."

Zenith wanted to take this guy home :P

On the way home, we started seeing smoke and just across the river from our place, we happened upon this:

We were there so soon after it started that the fire department was just starting to arrive. An old abandoned mill building went up in flames and turned into a 7 alarm fire, needing aid from quite a few surrounding towns. 2 days later and they're still down there dousing the remains which is still smoking.

We could see the smoke from our apartment and had to keep the windows shut tight that night because there was so much ash and smoke in the air. Thank God there were no injuries and the fire didn't spread!

So that was our exciting Sunday. It was a lovely family day out. I just love this time of year with the crisper air (which makes it a lot easier to breathe!) and the changing colors. I've been sifting through the warmer clothes and pulling out what we have. Hopefully soon we'll be able to go out apple picking and then I can get on canning applesauce and baking apples into everything. :)

The antibiotic treatment is going ok. It's been stirring up a lot of my Lyme symptoms, which is common, so I haven't been feeling the best. But being just about 34 weeks pregnant also doesn't help so I'm hoping to feel better once I have the baby. I have a follow up with the doctor in a month so we'll see what the next step will be. This is going to be a long road to recovery and I don't expect to see much change or be feeling better any time soon. However, this is the cross Our Lord sent me, and I will try to learn as much from it as possible. He knows how much I need this and it's making me realize how much I rely on Him and need Him in every aspect of my life. So blessed be God!

Here are a couple snapshots from where Zenith was working.