Around here...

   Stomach bugs...Isn't that something that every mom just loves to deal with? Not this mom... I will go to great length to avoid  exposing my children to a stomach bug... But sometimes it's unavoidable... My sister's family is with us for 3 weeks and her three children must have picked it up somewhere along the way in traveling down... Gina tried to comfort me that it's only a 24 hour bug, and that is a comfort. BUT when there's vomiting involved multiplied by 11 children most of whom won't hit a bucket... well... let's just say that cleaning up vomit is not something I find enjoyable (!), and even just 24 hour bugs can seem to last forever when there's 11 children! Weston already had his turn and was the worst so far. Even water or juice would make him throw up, but he was a brave little thing and was soon his happy little self again...  Last night it was my birthday girl... poor thing... She threw up twice in her sleep and kept right on sleeping... we had to wake her up to get her cleaned up! She seems to be feeling better this morning, though, and I hope that she's on the mend again. Four of the children had the bug already, and I'm waiting to see if the remaining 7 get it! :(

Can you all pray that we would get rain? We collect our rain water, but when it doesn't rain, we have to buy our water... Oh for a well!!! We plan to build a cistern when we build the addition this winter, Lord willing, but in the meantime we have 2 - 600 gallon water tanks... With the houseful we have right now, and running the washers almost constantly, we're using a lot of water, and it's not been raining... Every night it thunders and I'm sure it's going to rain, but it doesn't! It would be such a blessing to have a good rain to fill our barrels... I'm having a hard time getting ladies to haul water for us, because they're all busy with other work... and we've been running out of water every day. Could you pray that it would rain today? And please do keep praying that we would be able to get a well dug up here!

I hope to post pictures from Rachel's birthday soon...