Lessons

This Christmas, among other things, the kids received "lessons" for gifts:

• Adam: Piano lessons
• Tanner: Hunting lessons (well, the Game & Fish Hunter Safety Course, along with the promise of an elk hunt with Uncle John and Dad)
• Macy: Piano lessons
• Karlie: Roping lessons (actually, she was already taking lessons; we gave her a bright pink rope, a roping dummy calf head and a straw bale to stick it in so she can practice at home)

If we had a 5th child, I predict we would have named her Sara and she would be about 6 years old, and we would have given her banjo lessons for Christmas.

Then, when the kittens that will likely be born in about 9 or 10 weeks come into the world, little gap-toothed Sara could have stood over their basket as they snuggled up next to their momma, and plucked that catchy little tune from "Deliverance."

Because, at some point, surely this perpetual practice of brother cats and sister cats making baby cats is going to start showing in the kittens. This whole barn cat - animal kingdom "love the one you're with" thing has me baffled. As far as we know, these will be 3rd generation "Deliverance" kittens, and so far, each generation has been as beautiful, fluffy and 4-limbed as the last.

We hope our luck holds with this new batch and that lots of people will come forward, looking for barn cats of their own to take home. And, that the disruptive, blatant, right-in-the-front-yard-for-all-the-world-to-see caterwauling of recent days will soon come to an end.

Love from the farm,

Teri