Time is fleeting...

So we had our first actual guest come stay!! It was a girl I knew back in High School and who I lived with for a time afterward, in the basement of another friends parents house. Neither of us went to college so since this was during 'that time', it was the closest thing we both had to seeing an old college buddy. It was wonderful! She still lives down somewhat near where we grew up and lives with another guy I knew from High School. She still sees many of those people so hearing all the names of people I used to know was very interesting. ((We also had similar experiences in that our fathers were both violent and used to beat us. She had 5 sisters and found the courage to stand up to him and ended up working out a relationship with him before he passed. Mine is still alive but I haven't spoken to him in many years because of the continued emotional and verbal abuse. I think that's why I moved so far away in the first place.))
She brought with her, her two dogs and she actually came up to get a third one! She wanted to be sure that they all got along before bringing the new one home. I'm happy to say that they all got along great and he is home with her now and enjoying a terrific new life.
As far as the farm goes... we are expecting 50 new chicks next week and 15 Indian Runner Ducks! Our current eight hens are doing very well and seem to be quite happy wandering the property finding all kinds of tasty morsels. With the heat they have discovered a cool spot under our porch ~ so I imagine there are no predator types under there or else we would likely be short a hen or two... Our dog Buffy understood quickly that they were not her 'toys' and mostly leaves them alone. Though she seems to enjoy occasionally trying to chase one, it's like she just does it and then 'laughs' at having made one of the squawk and flap around.
So we decided to invite my 26 year old son out for a visit. His uncle offered to use his huge supply of frequent flier miles if Jon would come help them put in a ceiling fan. As Jon was considering how long to come, he apparently decided he'd drive himself and move out here for a while. So in a week or so we'll have another family member here and his dog too. Corbin is a mix of chocolate lab and pit bull. He is very mellow which is a good thing since he is also very large. They will be taking over the family room downstairs.
Stephanie only has two weeks of school left now. This last week she spent on a field trip up to a place called Wolf Ridge. It's actually an accredited wilderness school. She loved it. They had ropes courses (that's her one of the courses in the photo) and rock walls and many nature related things. This is an example of some nature artwork. They had to go into the forest and just using what they found there, make art. This a wolf made out of lichen.
I was so proud to here how she tackled so many different obstacles and how she pushed herself to do more than she's ever done before. Now I hope she's ready to tackle taking care of her ducks!