I smell like a cow. In fact a lot of us smell like a cow. It’s not because we didn’t take a shower this morning either.

Our family is home schooled and this leaves room for some fun out of the ordinary field trips. We took a trip up to the farm, and armed with sharp knives, diagrams, hacksaws, gloves, and one apron we proceeded to butcher a 1000 lb cow. (We also had the help of other items we won't mention here.)



It needed butchering so don’t feel too bad for it. It’s out of it’s misery now.

Anyway….there were a lot of blood and guts involved. It was rather interesting though to see all the stomachs. Cows have 4 I believe. Some of them were FULL with grass. There was one shaped like a basket ball…Bonnie's got her hand on it there. (Warning: proceed with caution if you don't like blood.)



It look liked this inside.



We ended up with a lot of meat - mostly for stewing and ground beef.



What’s for dinner, Bonnie?



If you’re all dying to see more photos, mostly blood and guts type stuff, you can click on the links below. Some of them are just too gross to post in the open. Sorry guys. I’m sure someone will be glad I did this. All you ‘aww, but what’s wrong with blood and guts!?’ people in the background can just be quiet and click. ; )

Heart

Gutting

Red Meat

Skinning

Chest Cavity

Wow. I think I’m going to get changed now. ;-)

That last post was pretty short, but we got the point across! We are home as of Tuesday at 8:00pm and now…..

- We don’t say ‘excuse me’ 50 times a day. Instead we only say it 3 times day.
- No one hears you talk in your sleep!
- We can wash clothes when ever we want to. (And, I do mean more often, as opposed to less often…)
- An internet connection is only a computer away.

There are other perks of being home as well, but we won’t bore you with the full list… : )

We had some good house clean-up time and we seems to be back to some semblance of order. The thieves were caught and are being detained at the moment.

Special thanks to Donnie and April for the ‘welcome home’ Tuesday night. : ) The cookies were great!

Thanks all for your prayers and support on this last trip. We thank God for His continued mercy on our lives and strength for each part of our journey.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Colossians 3:16 & 17 NIV

Home, sweet home! : )

March 18th - New Jersey - 8:56am

We sure have been enjoying the first signs of SPRING here and in the various places we’ve been for the last few days.







We are so excited to be so close to home, which is only about 5 hours away!

March 11th - Georgia - 8:18pm

It was a blessing to be able to meet up with the Wissmanns this past week.





May you all have a safe trip home and ‘finish strong.’ ; )

We got up at 0228 with the Wissmanns to watch the space shuttle launch! (Yes, that’s 2:28AM) And we certainly weren’t the only ones up since traffic in front of the church got awful busy right after it was over!



As you can see I did not get a good picture. Basically all you can see is sky all lit up. It was very cloudy so we only saw it for a few seconds. The BOOM from take off took a little while to reach us but it was pretty neat.

This morning we received pictures of our house which had been broken into and trashed. Some of the details of what was taken are still unknown, though the losses could be large we are trusting God for His will to be done in our lives and in the life of the person who did this. We’re reminded of the verse, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” May our goal be storing treasure in heaven where thieves do not break in an steal and moths and rust cannot destroy.

We also received word of the death of a friend back home after a battle with chronic illnesses. Prayers for Beverly Priestley’s family would be appreciated.

Our stop at a rest area brought some excitement with a private truck trailer with Ron Paul all over it!



Awesome! Oh how our bumper stickers pale in comparison. : (

By the time we find wifi and post this we will only have 4 days left of this trip. Home is in sight. : ) May the Lord grant strength to finish out these last few days.



P.S. We’re not in Georgia now! We’ve traveled a little ways since the 11th and we’re in North Carolina. Home is getting closer everyday!

March 10th - Bradenton, FL - 9:34am

Our time in Florida is coming to a close. : ( We thank the Lord for the generous hospitality of friendly Floridians! Especially for the King family for letting us stay at the ranch almost the whole time we were here.



The Ben King family. Thanks Jenna for taking that pic!

We did a concert at Horseshoe Cove on Friday and stayed a few nights there. The concert was again like last time, a packed out house. Standing room only. The next morning a few generous anonymous donors bought tickets for us to eat breakfast with folks from the community.

At our stay at the park we saw this heron trying to eat from the cute little fish pond. The staff got a net over those fish shortly after!





We sang Sunday night at our last scheduled Florida concert. We were treated to a delicious home made meal by Ed and Hilda & friends.

So, anyway, we’ve said our last few goodbyes to the folks down here. We sure had a wonderful blessed time here. Thank you to everyone who made our stay so enjoyable!

Here are a few more pictures of the past two weeks…
















Have a blessed day and seek the Lord above all!

March 3rd - Bradenton, FL - 6:32pm

This is the last week before Daylight Savings Time kicks in. We got acclimated to Central Time and as of Saturday night we’ll be jumping two hours forward from that!

We sure have lots of pictures to share with you all this time! We’re trying a smaller picture size today and we would like to get feedback on that from you all. Do you like them bigger (like in previous posts) or smaller?

Mr. Ed took pictures (and video!) again from our two concerts this week. Here are a few shots from those nights.










As we were about to eat on Sunday night we were so excited to see this (Sandhill) crane outside the window.



Vincent took that shot. : )

On Monday we had the chance to tour and work on a vegetable/blueberry farm, thanks to Farmer Ben! We got to get out and get a little dirty, too!




It was quite an education on farming equipment, also. It’s simply amazing all the tools used on a modern farm.

'

:EDIT


These are the rows which have been covered in plastic from that machine above.:

The blueberry plants were planted row after row!



The ‘work’ part of the trip happened when we helped plant thousands of little cantaloupe plants!





They were really cute looking plants. : )

The process of planting these goes as follows.

grab a flat of of 128 plants
PLANT THEM AS FAST AS YOU CAN!

Within reason, of course! Vincent and Bonnie had a competition to see who could plant faster. Vincent ended slightly ahead at 9 flats. We would have gotten a picture of us in the field but the camera was accidentally left behind and forgotten to be retrieved by two people. We did eventually find the camera and took a picture of us on the way back in from the field.



THEN!



Clay pidgin shooting!





Matthew got almost 100%







We wished we could have stayed longer but we had to get back up to Bradenton for a concert! Most of us were quite tired by then. The sun was so very hot in the field, water never tasted so good!

Now. This afternoon we were treated to the Golden Corral by the Bartlett family!

We had a spontaneous meeting of the Blue Shirt Club. :-P



And, the Grey Shirt Club met shortly after.



Happy memories!



After we walked around at Wal-Mart trying to get the food to digest. :-P

We’re looking forward to being home….but we’re also looking forward to 3 more concerts here in Florida!
-
As you can see I wrote this all this evening. Right now some of us are watching this show.

March 1 - Bradenton, FL - 1630

Last night we were in Sarasota and Mr. Ed got some shots from the balcony!









It was a very pretty stage. :-)



Hannah and Mrs. B.

This coming week we have 4 concerts, a little slower pace then last week! It looks like we might try to hit the beach ones of these days off. Today was relaxing in the outdoors and in the bus. The weather is absolutely beautiful! Calling back home we found it looks like an ‘old fashioned snow town’ with snow banks so high they are hard to look over and around! I guess we ought to brace ourselves for snow and cold when we return. One good thing is we’re not going home for another 2 weeks and, of course, winter isn’t forever. It’s only for a season as so many other times in our lives are.