Monster Truck Day!

Woody walked 12 miles on this frosty morning. A bit later he went to the grocery store. When he got home, I helped put the groceries away. Then came the "fun" part to my day...stewing two chickens. Such a messy cooking job! I got them cooked and let them cool a bit before I took the meat off the bones. I put the bones back into the pot to make chicken broth/stock. Abigail and Esther helped me get the veggies ready to put into the stock. They (especially Esther) were a bit confused as to why I was putting bones into my soup! I did give them an explanation and assured them that when I used this that there would be no bones in it! We got the stock simmering and then left it to simmer for about four hours. I just got finished straining it and putting it into the refrigerator to cool so I can skim the fat off the top. Not long after Woody got home from the grocery store it was time for a trip to Lowe's for our young builders! Joy joined the group today. So Woody got Graham, Abigail and Joy all buckled into the back seat and headed off to Lowe's to build "monster trucks." Tonight's picture shows the end results of endeavors! They are pretty pleased with their monster trucks and Elijah couldn't wait to get his hands on one or more of them! After lunch Woody went to the library. He got several books for me along with some for himself and for the children. Abigail read at least one of the ones he got. Before lunch Joy went upstairs and was looking through our children's books and found The Little Red Hen. I asked her if she could read it and she said, "Yes, all except for some of the words." So I helped her with those words that she needed help with. She is really enjoying the challenges of reading...or, at least, seems to be. The girls filtered in and out today while their parents and Graham worked on raking and blowing the leaves in their yard to the edge of their yard...all ready for the leaf truck to make its first appearance of the "leaf season." These leaves were just a bit heavier than usual (unless the dry leaves are wet) because they were not all dried up...these were mostly leaves that got knocked down during the hail storm earlier this week. The storm knocked down (too many to count) small branches that still had ten or more leaves on each of these small branches. Our yards and gardens literally looked like they were carpeted with these leaves/branches. Definitely the hail storm is a much talked about event in our town at the moment. Yesterday I saw the tent that is set up in the parking lot of Lowe's...folks are taking their hail damaged vehicles there to be inspected and to file claims. At 4:30 yesterday afternoon the cars were still lined up in three or four lines and probably 10 or more cars in each line. I know of several people who had their cars totaled due to the hail. We do see some hail dents in our red car...but our car is so old that those little dents don't bother us very much! Now...the hole in the new siding on our house...that we will probably get fixed.

Well, Woody is downstairs cheering on "his" team in the third game of the World Series. I enjoy watching baseball...but I'm afraid that I will talk at an inappropriate moment so I'm going to go finish a book and hope that I don't fall asleep before I'm finished! I haven't done much resting today and my back is ready to flop on the bed. (Well, I changed my mind and decided that I will go downstairs with my book and try to be real quiet...but at least will know what is going on without having to check on the internet from time to time!)