Abigail Marie Frazer
Born: Wednesday, April 10, 2019 3:28 p.m.
Weight: 7 lbs 4 oz
Congratulations Nathanael and Samantha! We are praising the Lord for the new little life He has entrusted to you. You are in our prayers as you strive faithfully to bring up your little daughter in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
The Christmas season is usually a busy one in the Frazer home. Though we had less concerts lined up than often, this year was no different on the busyness scale.
The first concert as well as a chalk art presentation was at the Wales Home on the 1st of December.
And, as always, we had our Christmas Eve concert at the Grace Village.
Christmas preparations crowded the kitchen. The oven worked overtime!
And in the middle of all the preparations, Josiah made his appearance. Of course everyone wanted to get acquainted!
As can be seen from the photos, Michael joined us for the Christmas season, much to my delight! He was able to meet my grandparents as well as join in the Christmas festivities.
Christmas Day is always a special family time of exchanging gifts, playing games, and reading books. At at the end of the day, we finish with our candlelight Christmas dinner during which we recite together the account of Christ’s birth as recorded in Luke 2.
All this time, of course, “normal life” continued… milking the cow, separating the cream, making butter and cheese, preparing meals, along with a few additional farm-related activities like rabbit butchering and stall cleaning.
milking the cow
separating
butter making
cleaning up after cheese making
making pancakes
the butchering team
packaging meat
Trying out the new pitchfork!
I hope all you blog readers had a wonderful Christmas, remembering why Christ came to earth!
Elizabeth and Keziah came down with Erica to visit with the aunties and horsies. Keziah enjoyed the pony ride, but liked the HUGE sandbox even better.
Elizabeth loved the pony, too.
After a bit, however, she wanted to ride the bigger horse…
…who was apparently quite relaxed with a little rider!
Yawn!
She got so confident in the saddle, that she wanted to go trotting.
“Make the horsie run, please!” 🙂
After a rather odd winter of next to no snow, March hailed several “good” snowstorms and it kept coming even into April. We may have received much less snow that usual this year, but the amount left on the ground at present is certainly more than other years.
Many spring birds are returning and some winter ones have left for the north. I was excited to have an opportunity to photograph one of the Eastern Township’s winter sojourners not long before they left for the summer. Snow buntings are quite striking.
A recent snowfall created the perfect opportunity to do sugar on snow. Everyone enjoys this, but somehow the kids seem to love it most!
In the barn changes have occurred. We sold our faithful cow, Mocha, last month, and butchered Coffee Crisp not long after. With increased space in the barn, our thoughts began to go toward another farming enterprise. The rabbits moved into a larger, better pen at the far end of the barn, and a stall was constructed to contain… sheep! We bought three ewes two weeks ago. It was quite an adjustment for them to go from a big farm with lots of sheep and very little handling to our little “mini farm” with lots of people visiting. They are getting more friendly by the day, though, and have learned that people carry grain! Yum! The kids enjoyed meeting the sheep.
Chipit is the youngest and most inquisitive of the three and has only been through one lambing before. She’s supposed to be expecting for July or August.
Maple, according to the farmer from whom we bought her, is somewhere around 4 or 5 years old. She is hopefully due to lamb in May, but she isn’t showing it yet. Though very wild at first, she is becoming much less timid and loves back rubs.
Ice Cream is supposedly about the same age as Maple. She’s the shyest of our ewes, but being far along in her pregnancy may explain that a bit. She is due to lamb anytime now. Does anyone want to take a guess at how many lambs she’ll have and what gender it/they will be?
Oh, and while we on the topic of baby animals… Smokey had another batch of kittens last month – 11 this time, but one died. The 10 remaining ones are now weaned and for sale.
I’m looking forward to having lambs as photography subjects!
Since a picture is worth a thousands words, I shall just post 17,014 words. 🙂
Well, I guessed correctly that I wouldn’t have time for an update before Christmas. But I didn’t expect to leave this much time between posts!
Our Christmas chalk talk was presented several times. Evelyn joined the chalk artists this year which turned out to be very providential as she ended up having to take over on drawing David’s part in one presentation due to sick girls in his family.
Christmas this year was very unique. Since the 25th landed on Sunday, we decided to postpone our usual celebrations until the 26th and had our regular Sunday meeting and fellowship meal Christmas Day followed by a fun time of games in the afternoon.
Our own Christmas celebration was a quiet, pleasant day with our traditional turkey diner. New dining room tables called for elegant dishes to match.
The next event was a New Year’s Eve party with the M______ family. Skating, sliding, and Christian fellowship made for a wonderful afternoon.
Several of the S_____ family also joined the New Year’s Eve celebration and came to spend a day with us afterwards. We had an enjoyable time with more skating and pingpong.
The year had hardly begun when we undertook the HUGE project of cleaning up the house from top to bottom… or rather, from bottom to top. We started with the basement meeting room: sorting all the fabric and boxing them neatly, doing repairs that materialised as we organised, throwing out junk that had accumulated, and generally straightening everything up. As soon as that was done, we tackled the workroom. We call it the workroom, but the truth was that it had turned into a “catch all,” storage place. It hasn’t been thoroughly cleaned in a VERY long time. Usually we say that during cleaning, a place looks worse before it looks better, but I’m not sure that was the case this time! The end results were a radical improvement. We can actually do some woodworking now! Evelyn and I did some reupholstering on some broken chairs that had been awaiting repairs.
Other projects came up as things broke down. The faucet in the bathtub began leaking, necessitating not only a new faucet and shower, but also a new tub surround. We are glad for the pressure sensitive valve that was installed! The heater in the same bathroom needed changing not long afterwards.
And in all the busyness, the buttermaking kept on with an output of about 20lbs a week…
… until the mixer broke down!
Thankfully, it is fixed now. But it wasn’t the only thing to break down… We woke one Saturday morning to find that the fridge was “operating” at room temperature. Though the repairman managed to get it running again, he said it won’t last much longer. A new fridge was in order.
On the “mini farm” side of things, the rabbits are multiplying in leaps and bounds (pun intended 🙂 ), the calves are growing nicely and cows are giving lots of milk… too much, so we’re selling Mocha. It looks likes she’ll have a nice home on a beef farm where a little family cow is wanted for some milk. And while I was out taking pictures of Mocha for the “For Sale” sign, I shot a few of the other cows just because I like photographing animals!
Aren’t I cute?
Oh, and of course the cat. She had to sneak into the blog post somewhere!
So, that is what has been going on in the Frazer home! Well, no, not quite all that has been going on… An update wouldn’t be complete without mentioning the little ones! But photos of them would make this post rather long, so I’ll give them an entry all to themselves! 🙂
How time flies! The little ones are growing up so quickly.
Little Brayden
Caleb is learning how to use this machine!
Keziah isn’t so little anymore!
A happy uncle
I missed getting a good one of Elizabeth this Sunday. I’ll have to try again next time!
It has been feeling more and more like summer. Even the Sunday dessert a week ago looked like it!
But though the BBQ Saturday was a beautiful day, Sunday arrived with rain showers. Notwithstanding, we had a nice afternoon of playing game indoors… Apparently chess playing can begin quite young!
And a few extra photos… 🙂
Mommy, may I have some please?
Summer is certainly coming and the warm days draw us outdoors for summer activities. Recently we had the privilege of joining some friends for a BBQ at their farm.
I couldn’t resist seizing the opportunity to get some photos of cows, calves, and horses.
The young ones enjoyed all the space to run around.
And the not so young ones enjoyed themselves thoroughly too, doing things like photographing, horseback riding, and of course, barbecuing! 
I got a lessons on how to drive a tractor, something I’ve wanted to do for years. Happily, Evelyn grabbed my camera and succeeded in photographing the event!
Meanwhile, William was learning to drive another vehicle.
Many thanks to the R family for their wonderful hospitality! We had a delightful time fellowshipping with you all!
We looked out our window one day and here is what we saw…
Then, when the aunts and uncles came out to see, he volunteered to help with watering the garden. Great job, Caleb! You can never start helping too young!
And praise the Lord for parents who are diligently training their children up in the ways of the Lord!