The Last Errand Before Christmas

This morning Adam and I had just a few more Christmas errands to run before settling down at the farm with the rest of the family to celebrate Christmas. We needed to take a gift to a friend of mine, also named Alexandra. She had surprized me with one, earlier in the week. We also had a card returned with forwarding time expired, and I did some research, found the new address and repackaged the card to go to friends in Utah. Our post office is a general store in the middle of nowhere in farm country. It's a beautiful bucolic setting, and a meeting place of sorts. Some days we sit there talking to neighbors and farmers getting the news and hearing about our areas interesting concerns. There is bookcase there with framed pictures of people from the area. Daniel's picture is prominently displayed there, well known to the regulars as the really articulate homeschooled boy who used to come to the post office each day with his mom, and sometimes with his older siblings after they learned to drive. As we left the post office and headed past several farms, we noticed about eight lovely goats of different colors, sizes and ages. We remembered that a friend down the street had goats, and so we drove immediately to tell him. We got there to find that he already knew, and that these were not his goats. He was not concerned and thought they would likely return to where they were fed. Adam talked to him while I sat in the car. All the while Adam was patting a very large sheep who seemed very friendly. When we finally left, Adam told me that the man had offered to give him the sheep. She was a New Zealand haired sheep, meaning that she does not need sheering. She was apparently one of their first sheep and was socialized to human beings and doesn't like sheep much. He thought Adam would be attentive to her. Adam thanked him very much, but he also felt that he could not be as attentive to her as she deserved. We have many animals and sometimes it's hard to spend as much time with them as we would like, other than feeding, watering, and pen maintenance. Still, it's nice to be offered live creatures, as Adam is, fairly often.

This is a lovely scene and not unlike our home, but this year, we have not yet had snow.