Oh deer!

On Saturday, Tara's learning component happened to be something that is illegal in several surrounding states! She took us to a local deer farm belonging to a World Vision Storehouse customer. Deer farming is a surprisingly lucrative business, let's just say that many deer cost more than alpacas. There are about 40 farms in West Virginia and there is an official association. The deer are bred and raised to sell to other people for breeding or to sell to forest preserves for hunting. We were hoping to buy some meat for a meal this week but they aren't allowed to sell any meat.

In about a month, the does will start giving birth and everyone wants to go back because the fawns will be bottle-fed, and we just can't pass up that opportunity! Plus the Roses (the farm owners) were really nice and hospitable.





We had a family from church over for supper one night this week. Since Justina just celebrated her 15th birthday they brought her birthday cake along to help finish. We did pretty well! And of course when there's birthday cake, the hats come out.


This weeks challenge
This week we will not be driving unless absolutely necessary, finding alternate modes of transportation. Christina, Mike and Heidi already walk or ride bike to work so it won't affect them much in that way. Ranita will be taking the transit and getting rides to and from the clinic, and if it's nice she'd like to walk home one day just to do it; it's a pretty long walk and all up hill going from home. Tara lucks out on school days because McHugh's will still take Ian (he will not be riding the bus for the week) so she still gets a ride. She also had an offer to be picked up for work one day at World Vision but will have to get out her bike for the other! We also walked to church, though we'd like to do that more often if we could just plan ahead to get ourselves ready early enough.

McHugh's are cooking this week so alternate travel for getting groceries had to be arranged. Since Monday and Tuesday were supposed to have rain, we decided to load up our bike trailer and get them Sunday afternoon while it was still nice (we don't usually like to shop Sunday's, but Heidi didn't particularly want to get stuck at the grocery store with the trailer and Ella and a bunch of groceries!) So here's how we looked getting back, with the trailer packed, the kids holding bags, and Heidi carried a bag on her shoulder (though she still had the easier haul)! But we made it with nothing broken or too smushed!