Twins

In form and feature, face and limb,
I grew so like my brother,
That folks got taking me for him,
And each for one another.
It puzzled all our kith and kin,
It reached a fearful pitch;
For one of us was born a twin,
Yet not a soul knew which.

One day, to make the matter worse,
Before our names were fixed,
As we were being washed by nurse,
We got completely mixed;
And thus, you see, by fate's decree,
Or rather nurse's whim,
My brother John got christened me,
And I got christened him.

This fatal likeness even dogged
My footsteps when at school,
And I was always getting flogged,
For John turned out a fool.
I put this question, fruitlessly,
To everyone I knew,
"What would you do, if you were me,
To prove that you were you?"

Our close resemblance turned the tide
Of my domestic life,
For somehow, my intended bride
Became my brother's wife.
In fact, year after year the same
Absurd mistakes went on,
And when I died, the neighbors came
And buried brother John.
~Henry Sambrooke Leigh

It's no wonder we are confusing them from the back.

God touched our hearts so deep inside, our special blessing multiplied. ~Author Unknown

I may be a twin but I'm one of a kind. ~Author Unknown

Two faces to wash, and four dirty hands
Two insistent voices, making demands
Twice as much crying, when things go wrong
The four eyes closing, with slumber song
Twice as many garments, blowing on the line
Two cherubs in the wagon, soaking up sunshine
Work I do for twins, naturally comes double
But four arms to hug me, repay all my trouble.
~Author Unknown


Twice as much to love, two blessings from above. ~Author Unknown

A good neighbor will babysit. A great neighbor will babysit twins. ~Author Unknown (We left Brady and Brock with their aunts and uncles a few times.....completely failing to help them fully identify which was which before we left!)

It's double the giggles and double the grins, and double the trouble (ya think??) if you're blessed with twins. ~Author Unknown

OK: Name that twin. Think you know which is which in this picture? Leave a comment with your best guess. (P.S., Christine, you wait to guess 'cuz we know you'll know the answer. -wink-)

Random

Here's another random post:

Best Pals

Mom cleaning the shop


Working hard, but having fun.

Alfalfa??

Don't you just love Trevor in this picture!!! He likes to help play the piano

How could we forget...

On the 23rd was Clark's 4th birthday.

More of painting Grandma's house

These two didn't do much painting :)

These two fight like a cat and a dog

It's funny to watch these two. The cat actually is quite clever and the dog winds up chased sometimes!

Making Lard

Here Brock is washing up the lard kettle.


We get all our hog fat back from the butcher, saving up for the big "lard week" every year. Our good friends Doug and Janet always come to help. Here everyone is pitching in to cut it all into chunks.


Time to get the fire started under the kettle.

And then the guys stir....

...and stir...

...and stir some more....

Logan is feeding and tending the fire. If you get things too hot, you scorch the whole batch and ruin it all.


You need to run it through a cheese cloth like Maria is doing to strain out all the little cracklings. Shannah failed to photograph the pressing process in which you squeeze the cracklings in the device hinted at in the third photo up from here. She also didn't get very good pictures of the ladling out of the strained lard (still in it's liquid state) to later be removed to the cooler/freezer.

Of busy days, pianos, and pig fat

I was going to write a "Meet Micha" post, and I still might....but for now I will just usher him into our blog with a nod and a brief introduction.

Micha is from Germany and has come to stay with our family until January as an exchange student. We did not, however, have to exchange anyone from our family for this privilege. He goes to school during the day, getting up for the bus before anyone barely stirs here. He very handily helps himself to a bite to eat before leaving. He then reappears without much fanfare at 3PM each afternoon. It often takes us by surprise that "it's that time a day again" as he walks up the driveway with his big smile!

As I sit typing, he is taking his turn at the piano for an evening recital. Shannah played from a song book for awhile. Micha is playing some lovely tunes from memory. I am guessing there are going to be lessons shared up ahead.

For what seems like 1/2 of forever, we've been rendering pig fat into lard. In fact, Logan and Paul are out tending the last of it right now. The girls were ladling up pintfuls upon pintfuls earlier tonight. We save boxes of fat from the butcher until we have enough collected to make it a BIG project!!

My post is a little scattered tonight, I think. It's been a long week so far. We dressed around 100 chickens today along with everything else.

Micha showing Miles some piano tune.

Here we are laughing about something on one of the MANY papers Micha brought home from school to have us sign.


~Colleen

Friends

Our friend Katrina joined us for some Hartzler's ice cream.

'We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend. '~ Robert Louis Stevenson

'A true friend reaches for your hand and touches your heart.'

Matching...

We were so happy to have our dear friend Kaylee around for a while.

We all went out for banana splits, which were good, minus the banana!


Then we went and found someone that could snap a few photos for us.
Got to get arranged...



"Ok, now how do we stand?"


We ran to get our picture in front of this buggy. We are all there, just one is at the bottom of the hill on a bike.



ok, that was a good one, wait... Logan was in the background!

Great, no one in the background this time!

Can you tell we are tired of smiling???

Logan was SOO impressed...:-)

Let's get ourselves dizzy now...

"Just tip me over and pour me out" =)