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Which is not necessarily a good thing.

We, or at least I, enjoyed Christmas break immensely. One of my multi-talented, hard working husbands many jobs is in town at the local school from which he gets the same break the kids do. We have loved having him home a little more often than usual. His other job is working here on the farm, he doesn’t get days off from that one.

We got used to sleeping late and eating lunch at home. Unfortunately everybody got sick, but it was nice that my poor sick husband didn’t have to go into work all day. Instead he only had to go feed every morning in the sub zero temperatures and work on “stuff” outside. I really don’t know what they were doing out there in the cold all morning, I was not going out in that miserable cold to see. He might have preferred to be at his job in town, at least it would have been inside where it was warm.

I offered to go feed for him a couple of times but the weather was so bad I wasn’t sure that we would be able to get to town should something untoward happen. In the end I sat inside where it was warm and relatively safe with the child and let him freeze.

The weather was awful most of the time. Besides cold we got lots of snow. Walking across our yard the snow is high enough to fill winter boots. When it got done blowing and drifting from one direction it would switch and blow new drifts in another direction. By the time we fought our way out Sunday the drive way had been dug out multiple times and the road was blown over.

Today it was my job to help feed again. I’m sure my father-in-law is as sad as I to see his son back at work, he is far better help at feeding than I am. I am not only not as competent as he but unwilling to spend a whole morning out in the cold working on things and hugely pregnant as well as toting one child along with me already which excuses me from many little tasks. My poor father-in-law is reduced to getting gates and such.

The Goblin Child lived up to her name trying to get dressed for the bone chilling cold. She has gotten used to being excused from feeding by crying and refusing to set foot outside. Today she had no choice. She’s not quite old enough to stay home alone and I had to go feed. She cried and pushed clothes off as fast as I could get them on her. Faster probably I wasn’t having much luck. Until I held her up to see the pay-loader out the window. Then she cried because she wanted to see out some more.

By the time we got to the feed truck she was a little more enthused. And once the handheld radio started talking she was really getting into it. Driving the truck with her tuck up tight against my arm is not the easiest thing, we go pretty slow. She sat with the radio in her lap perfectly still until her papas voice came through with instructions. She would jump and start whoaing and wowing, often making the instructions a little hard to hear. I showed her how to push the little button and she had a blast talking to papa.

Hopefully she enjoyed it enough that tomorrow it wont be as much of a fight to get out of the house.