Well, she made it to Alaska today, safe and sound. Hopefully her return trip next week will be a little less eventful.

A beautiful day today. We spent part of it just wandering around the farm. Meredith and Samuel and I took the donkeys for a little walk. Or maybe the donkeys took us for a little walk. I did put Samuel on one of them for a moment and, while Samuel wasn't thrilled, the donkey didn't seem to mind at all!

We'll be eating fresh chicken tomorrow night. Some friends who raise meat birds are having a butchering day at their place. I have three lone meat birds left, so Nathan will be taking them over and processing them. We still have 10 or so whole birds in the freezer, so I'll just roast these up. I'm hoping not to end up helping much - I did most of ours earlier this summer, and I have a boatload of other things to do.

I'm planning on taking some photos for Sam's book. I have a couple of albums that I want to fill with photos of people and things that Sam knows, along with cards printed with the name of the person or object, and make a book that we can use to help him along with his speech. He loves books, will spend 20 minutes or more sitting and looking at pages, even books without a lot of pictures, he likes the print. He had a new sign he kept doing tonight, over and over, trying to tell us something, but it wasn't clear what he meant and none of us recognized the sign. He would point his finger, tap it to his cheek, and then sort of twist it. Then he'd look at us, smile and sort of nod his head, like, "hey, guys, wasn't that good? Now get me what I asked for!" We never did figure it out. He was wearing overalls today and looked like such a BOY, not a baby. Time is going so fast.