A bit of humor...

My children think in terms of little  boys and little girls, so no matter what age or size a stranger is they're either a "little boy" or a "little girl"... This past week we enjoyed a visit from my Aunt Karen, Uncle Mark and cousin, Juanita who was a former nurse at Allegre. The last time they were here was 3 years ago, so my children barely remember them or not at all... Different times I  heard them refer to Uncle Mark as "the little boy" but didn't think a whole lot about it... We were really amused this morning to hear Rachel (5) asking Uncle Mark where his wife was by saying, "Uncle Mark, where is your little girl?" :)

15 weeks...

                        

15 weeks ago today, this is the little fellow that showed up at our door step... He was a 5 day old preemie and weighed 4 lbs. 3 oz. He couldn't keep his own body temperature up, and could only drink a quarter of an ounce at a time... Many prayers went up on his behalf...

                          
                             


                                                 

God answered our prayers, and today, 15 weeks later...

Here he is!!!

...our jolly, chubby Weston...

...it's hard to believe he really looked so bad...

... now he weighs 14lbs 4 oz...

...and he brings SO much joy to us!!!

We love you, Weston!!! :)

Sand Pit On The Side Of The Mountain...

 We'd never been there before but we knew that we could get in there because we've seen the dump trucks come and go from there... I went along for the first load to translate... We wound in and out around the hills on a road so small that it looked like walking trails at times...

and here we are... with little piles of sand here and there... we bargained how much we'd pay per load and started loading....

... then they said the rest of the sand would come out of the pit below...

in this picture you can see how it really was on the side of the mountain!

Hauling Rock...

The older children enjoyed taking turns going with Dad to get rock for the shop foundation. Then one time I allowed all the little ones to go along. They loved it!!!

People pile the rocks that they get out of their gardens. They are delighted for a chance to sell them! We would find the piles of rock beside the road and buy them by the truck load...

Loading rock...

Rain!

It's raining! And today is the fourth day! My children are getting buggy from needing to stay inside all the time!! It started raining on Sunday afternoon, and has rained off and on ever since... There's tropical weather systems in the area, so we have times of lots of wind, and it's really neat to hear the rain pounding on the windows... We're probably going on 3" of rain since Sunday. And it's cold... just the kind of weather that makes you feel like curling up with a blanket and a book...

Taking the Wind Turbine down...

Several weeks ago, I noticed that the wind turbine wasn't charging the batteries anymore... A call to the company revealed that there was probably a short up there somewhere, and that we would need to bring the tower down to find out what's going on and fix it... It's a 60' tower and not the easiest thing to do... It hasn't been down since we put it up 2 1/2 years ago... We all breathed a big sigh of relief when it was down safely... Here's pictures of the process... In the background you can see the white truck...that truck is the all important part of getting it on the ground safely. The tower was connected to it by cable, and we were able to bring it down by slowly driving forward...

Adjusting the top tension wires....

Coming down...

A little further....

... and further...

...almost down...

On the ground!!!!

Now comes the troubleshooting part...

... but we have enough guys to figure it out...

They discovered that it was the rectifier that was shorted, so the turbine will be out of commission for a few more weeks until we are able to get the part and put it back in service...

Degaje!

We were amused to see this moto drive by our house the other day with the wheelbarrow coming on behind!!