snow, cows, and bonfires

So, it did snow here this weekend. Friday night, 12 girlfriends and I got together for a friend's birthday at Applebees. We're all crammed around tables, laughing and having a good time, when someone said "look, it's snowing out". And it was a pretty decent, blowing snow. The kind where I might have gone off in to a corner and sulked. But, when you're surrounded by friends, having a great time, that doesn't happen often enough due to: work, kids, husband, busyness, etc., snow seemed like a pretty small thing. And it melted all away by the next day. Perfect. Saturday, I woke up to breakfast in bed. My family decided I was going to have Mother's Day weekend. They made pancakes and bacon, but due to a shortage of batter, we all had one pancake a piece, and a smidgen of bacon. They were so proud that I was suprised. Then we all had to get ready and rush around to get my daughter to two different birthday parties on the same day. Now, I tried my best to remember when I was a kid, but I never had two birthday parties on the same day. She was ecstatic, and really, what kid wouldn't be? She got to eat pizza and candy and cake all day, and run around wild with kids her age. Sounds like the perfect day for ME. My brother called later that day and said, oh, by the way, I have 30 chickens that are halfway ready to be butchered. Want to come and help? My experience with butchering chickens hasn't always been great. The above said brother used to come into the house with a butchered chicken on each hand, and sometimes, just to be gross, would put one on his head. Yuck. Last year, we bit the bullet and grew organic chickens at a friend's house and then helped with the butchering. I don't know if you have thought much about where your meat comes from, but I can tell you that I have to have some time between when I butcher a chicken and then eat it. My kids thought it was the coolest thing ever. Even my son, who was 2 last year, loved it. So I guess we are gearing up for round two. The other highlight of my weeknd came from above brother's little 2 1/2 year old son who called me on the telephone and told me that he just named his new cow Jessica, after me. How sweet. Sunday was great. Good church service, cheesecake and flowers afterward, and a bonfire that night. My husband's idea of a good bonfire is to save the Christmas tree and then stick the whole thing on to the fire and see how high the flames can go. It has actually been pretty wet here, given the snow, but the flames managed to shoot up into the tree, and essentially kill a bunch of leaves. Both of my kids asked if they could do their marshmallows as we now had a huge tower of fire. Um, not exactly safe, but the tree was so dry it literally burned up in about 3 minutes. So we did marshmallows then, after most of the threat of the flaming Chistmas tree was over. All in all, an eventful, definitely not boring weekend. Hope your's was good!