The Scottish Lamb

Selfish Thankful

Carole had a great idea to have "Thankful Thursdays".  I thought, "What a great way for me to at least post once a week during November."

It's really hard to be thankful right now with today's events at Ft. Hood, but I am for one very selfish reason. Dan, who would have been in the thick of it, was safe and sound at a class in Missouri.  I'm also thankful for all the friends and family that have called and emailed to make sure we were okay as they heard of this tragedy. We are about 8 miles from the front gate and thankfully the kids had a short day of school today.

Please keep the families in your prayers.

Too Much Wool... There really is such a thing...

Howdy Y'all.

All is well and it's finally cooling off.  That means it's not going over 95 degrees anymore.  Knock on wood.  With the cooler weather, my garden is starting to produce.  I'll be harvesting well into November.  Even later than that with lettuces and cool weather plants.

I'm still trying to get settled in if you can believe it.  The only way that's going to happen is if I lighten my load.... a lot.

This just in.... there's not a lot of use here in Central Texas for wool.  The fact is I haven't even been able to think about even touching it since we got here.  Even when my beautiful Cherry Schacht Matchless that I ordered from Kim arrived.  I just listed some gorgeous wool yarn on Etsy so go take a look.  There's more to come as I go through it all. 

Here's a sneak peak:

 

 

Now I Can Share Pictures

I was a little leary of putting pictures up of the new house while it was still listed online.  I know most of my readers are innocent fiber people, but one never knows in that crazy world out there.  It's offline now because we closed on Friday so now I can share.

Our new house is almost 2400sf.  Twice the size of this one that the Army has had us in for the last two years.  We will also have a garage again.  And 1/2 acre of yard.   The first order of business is enclosing the whole yard in the privacy fencing and putting in Silestone countertops.  I'd like to put in wood floors but the carpet is high quality and only 2 yrs old, so that can wait.  The kitchen and bathrooms have beautiful tile so those will stay the same.  We thought about putting in an in-ground pool, but we may only live in this house for four years so we'd never get our money back.  Even in Central Texas.

We had a hard time when we were shopping because we had to keep in mind that this is not our forever house.  It's just until the boys are out of school.  We are in a neighborhood with great schools within walking distance and lots of kids.   My craft room will also be our guest room. I guess I can share.  I'm thinking about a murphy bed with a fold out table underneath of it so that when it's folded up to the wall, I have a sewing table. 

Hard to believe we move next week.   We're taking a week to get down there so we can stop and see friends along the way.  I have it planned so that we don't drive more than seven hours any one day (and most are 4-6) so it should be a good easy drive.  We're pulling the camper so we'll stay in it one night but the rest are with friends or at hotels.  We stopping in Canton for the Football Hall of Fame and in St. Louis to hit Six Flags.  The boys don't know yet.  Kansas is next to visit old friends and then on to Texas with one more stop in OKC to meet a fellow Hudson Valley Fiber Farm Shareholder.

So here's our new home in the Lone Star State.  We took this house off of our list twice because pictures just don't do it justice.  We decided to swing by and look at it because we were only a few streets down looking at another one.  The minute we drove up we knew it was better than the pictures and when we walked in the door to all that openess and brightness, we knew it was the one.  We took these pictures back in March, so obviously, it's not our furniture. :

Part of the backyard (we also have a HUGE side yard that you can't really see in these pics):





Office/Media Room:



Formal Dining Room:



Eat-in Kitchen:


Living Room:
  

Master Bedroom (there are three other bedrooms also.  All but one have huge walk-in closets):

Drafted

Remember this from a previous post?

I've had a couple of requests to show the draft.  You can download the pdf by clicking here.

Remember that I am a newbie... big time so proceed with caution!  :-)

It's been a busy few weeks getting ready for the big move next month.  Yikes.  I can't believe it's next month.

 A couple of weeks ago Kim and Ken came for a visit.  We had a BLAST.  We went to see Rock of Ages on Broadway.  Hysterical.  Seriously, if you can go, GO!  I had no idea it was going to be funny.  It's a boy meets girl story told with the songs of the 80's.  They even handed out little flashlights that looked like lighters so that the audience could sway back and forth to the music.  It was a lot of fun! 

Come rain or shine we're headed to NH Sheep and Wool Festival this weekend!! YEAH!!!

Sweet Babies

Here are some of the pictures I took at the on Sunday:

Georgia loves Joe:

Joe loves Georgia:

More pictures later.....

Make that ten seconds of fame....

Remember this?

That five-minute interview turned into this short segment.  They definitely edited it down and switched around the way I said the yarn part, but it was fun.

We went up to the farm yesterday and just missed a birth.  I'm going back up to spend the night tonight to give them a break on baby watch.

I'll fill you in with lots of pics in the next post.

I'm Gonna Be A Landlord!

I didn't tell you all that our house has a rental property on it, did I?

Yep.  We were landlords once before and swore we'd never do it again, but this time is different.  This time it will be a joy to have tenants.  We aren't even going to charge them rent.  Their last name is Martin.   Are you following me yet? 

Here's a picture of our our side yard at the new house:

See it?  There's a Purple Martin house! 

My aunt said that my grandparent's always had a Martin house at their place in NH.  That's funny because when we went to look at the house I knew what it was but I wasn't really sure why I knew it. lol.  I knew they come back to the same place each Spring but that's about it.  I've been doing some research since this house will be left in our yard when the current owners move out.  I'm really excited about it.  The current owner was thrilled that I'm this interested.

There are some really awesome videos about them linked below.  You have to check them out. 

BBC Purple Martin Story

Animal Planet Purple Martin Story 

Pretty amazing little creatures.  You can even watch a webcam on them here:
Purple Martin Webcam  - if you click the link under the video window you can see the webcam on the outside.  Way cool. The eggs should hatch any day now.

Kinda Left You Hangin', Didn't I?

I didn't mean to leave you hanging.  It's been a whirlwind of getting caught up, getting paperwork in order and just daily life.

Yes!  We found an AWESOME house!!  It's not the one that I thought we wanted.  The backyard at that house was to die for.  A baby goat baa'd on the connecting farm as if on cue.  The house was just too small though.  Sadly.  I didn't admit that right away though. :-)  I thought we were going to be on a fight because Dan liked a couple of the new houses that we looked at.  As soon as we walked in the house we chose, I knew.  I just knew.  We both loved it.  It's beautiful, open, in a perfect location, almost a 1/2 an acre of land, 4bdrms with an office and formal dining room.  All wrapped up in 2311 square feet.

I'd love to show you pictures, but some people are pretty savvy and I'd rather not put up any pictures that can be identified from the real estate websites where the address is listed, so it'll have to wait til they take them off the real estate sites.

So thanks for all the well wishing and I'll so you pictures as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, check out the lambcam.  Babies due VERY soon!

It's Time! Wish Us Luck!

This afternoon Dan and I will be boarding a plane for Texas.  I hope we get to see some bluebonnes while we're there.  It's the perfect time.  Sadly, we'll be landing in Austin after dark, but maybe tomorrow....

After 16 years of living in Army housing (because most of our tours were in Germany), we'll own our own home again and I am SO excited that I'm about to pee my pants!  We look at the first house at 8am tomorrow morning.  Hopefully it's the one.  We have a list of about 15 serious contenders and we have two full days to look.  Oddly, our favorite one is the least fancy on the list and the smallest by a couple hundred square feet.  There's something about it though that just says, "HOME".  Hopefully it whispers the same thing when we walk in the door in the morning.  I'll let you know how it went when we get home Saturday afternoon!  Wish us luck.  

My 15 Seconds of Fame

So yesterday we went back up to the farm.  I took so many pictures yesterday that I've put them in this photo album.

The Weather Channel came to do a special that will air around Earth Day next month.  Susan needed people for the background.  We couldn't have asked for a better day.  It was a little crisp, but gorgeous.  We thought we were just going to be background props but they asked a couple of us if they could interview us.

 

Getting miked up.  That's a showbiz term, you know... lol...
I'm so full of crap.  They probably call it, "putting the microphone on"
or something crazy like that.  Daniel was very interested in the camera.

Getting interviewed.  I have no idea what I said, if it made sense or how badly I'm going to embarrass my family but it was fun. 
 

But enough about me... I suppose you'd like to see the cute little buggers.  I tell you, I fall more in love with these goats every time I see them.  They are hilarious.  The sheep are pretty cute too, but I really heart the goats.  And the dogs.  Here are some of the photos from the photo album.