It turns out my banishment was very temporary. Whatever the problem was has fixed itself.

I’m so excited! Tomorrow my friends Kelli and Mark who train horses for a living are coming over to help me get on Lucy for the first time! I promise pictures! And hopefully, no broken bones. I don’t expect any trouble – Lucy is as gentle as Bubba and very sensible for a 3-year-old.

Lucy was a gift to me two years ago from my friends Merle and Fran. Merle has since passed away from cancer and Fran had a scary experience a few weeks ago. She still lives on the 320 acre place she and Merle owned, along with their remaining 3 horses. She was at home one stormy afternoon and her lights began to flicker. She looked out at the western sky and thought it looked like it might rain, and proceeded to go down to the basement to check her fuse box. She was downstairs for maybe 2 minutes and when she came back up, a large, old fashioned hog barn and half of a cattle shed were a pile of rubble. Huge sheets of roofing tin (from a neighbor’s building) were laying here and there in her pasture. A tornado had hit while she was in the basement and she hadn’t even heard it. She was kicking herself for not having the radio or TV on to check for weather warnings, but decided God was looking out for her and sent her to the basement at the right moment. Within 20 minutes, the chief of the local volunteer fire & rescue was knocking on her door to see if she was okay, which helped to set her mind at ease. We are all so thankful that she is okay, but her adult children and I are hoping that the sale of her place will come through quickly now so she can move to Omaha and be near them.
When she does move to town, we are going to adopt her 10-year-old black lab, Cody. We haven’t had a dog in over 22 years. Big changes for everyone!

Jack and Emily are finished up with their classes for this semester, so they are both in a good mood.

Yesterday, we borrowed a tiller from our landlord and worked a whole bunch of horse manure into our little garden plot, so now I’m ready to put in my tomatoes and peppers. It’s really been such nice weather the past couple of days – warm and sunny. Very cheery.

I had a visitor to my blog from Sweden today! How cool is that?