What is cuter than one lamb?

If you guessed "three baby lambs," then you're correct.









On Friday, one sheep gave birth to two lambs, one of which we found dead later that day. However, this morning two more lambs were birthed. All but one sheep (the male) are/were pregnant, so now it's just a waiting game for all of the lambs to pop out.

We're also extremely close to finishing the work on the cow's summer home. We've been adding new places to sleep, gates, and other finishing touches for when the cows finally leave the stall for the summer. Neighbor cows are out and about and I'm sure they can hear the bells echoing throughout the valley, spawning a longing feeling to eat fresh grass and poop even more freely. From what I understand they'll be heading there tomorrow or Tuesday.







The gate's to freedom; the high road or the low road:



Wednesday I had a relatively free afternoon. I say 'relatively' because it didn't involve any work. Instead, I went with the family to "Sinnorama," which reminded me of a Halloween haunted house, except the theme was the Old Testament made so 5-10 year old's could understand the Bible. It had trapdoors, a light show, and our guide was named Johannes. I think I would rather have stayed home and worked than go.

On Friday, Dirk and I spent the entire day (it seemed like) planting three trees, an apple, pear and walnut. It's quite an intensive process which I won't bore you with, but keep in my head for the next time I plant a tree.

As I was finishing the stall in the late afternoon, the skies were darkening and the wind was blowing harder. Suddenly the skies opened and the thunder crashed, with rain coming down in sheets. It made a part of me miss those wonderful Kansas thunderstorms that you can see rolling in from Colorado.







You might be able to notice the yellowness on the hillsides. Daffodils are beginning to bloom and die, releasing their seeds. The hills have been many different colors since February. First white with snow. When that melted, it revealed green hills. As soon as the snow was completely gone and everything was green, they immediately turned brown with poop farmers spread over their fields. After a couple of rains and some grass growth, the grass turned a brighter green and less brown. Now they're greenish-yellow. I look forward to seeing what other colors the hills will turn. (And if one of you even thinks of singing "The hills are alive..."...)

This weekend I had no plans, so I woke up at 10 am on Saturday and stayed there for 30-45 minutes. It was fantastic. Then I got out of bed for lunch which was at the school where Maya teaches. She teaches at a home for troubled youth and they were having an open house with free brats for lunch. I had two. While there, one of the girls from church came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to the youth group (Jugi) meeting that night. I had nothing else going on so I said yes. I'm kind of glad I did. What I thought was going to be a night of intense experience sharing (which I couldn't dream of doing in German), turned out to be a pleasant night of game playing. I did speak German. They're happy to help and understand when words might get misplaced (and quick to correct). I got a compliment or two about how good my German is considering the only class I've taken is a beginner 9 week course. At church today, I was asked if I wanted to come over to someone's house for a spaghetti lunch and an afternoon playing soccer. I borrowed some shorts and now have some nicely reddish shoulders. I also got another compliment on my German, this time from a teacher of German. That really made me feel good.
-----------------------------------------------
READER PARTICIPATION!

How would you cook frozen green beans?

Respond in the 'comments' section.
-----------------------------------------------
Have a good week,
Jon