Our new pet(s)

 There has been talk about getting a pet here, and since some of us are allergic to cats, and a house-trained, year-old, non-shedding dog was a little hard to come by, we all decided on fish! Knowing little to nothing about caring for fish, we all drove out to a pet store and picked out some pretty fish. Then we found out since we hadn't been preparing our tank for several weeks, the fish would most likely die within a couple days. So instead of buying all the pretty fish, we picked up a beta since they can't be kept with other fish anyway. We went with a good Mennonite name for this guy - J. Robert Fish.

In the meantime, we filled our 10 gallon tank with water and started it's cycling process. Then we found out that one of our friends at Philippi Mennonite Church raises fish and could do a learning component on caring for fish, and he'd even give us some starter fish! Kenny was excited to show us all his tanks and various kinds of fish. He gave us a catfish that swims upside down, a snake-like fish, and a couple other small ones. You can see our tank below but the fish are hard to spot. They like to hide out in the shells and under rocks. Hopefully they'll become a little more friendly over time, but they've been a nice addition.

We are working on some Christmas related posts and hope to get them up soon! Hope all your holiday travels and time with friends and family has been good.

Ben's perfect shot

The week of Thanksgiving in West Virginia marks the beginning of buck hunting season and a couple people from our house were excited to try our hands at hunting. Ben spent most of the week at Shepherd's field hunting with Mike and Dennis, getting up just before dawn each day with few breaks until sun down. Mike planned to go out with Lester Tuesday afternoon but Ella got sick and had to stay home with daddy. Then Wednesday, Heidi and Ian ended up travelling to Goshen to be with her family for the rest of the week as her grandmother become ill and needed surgery and a hospital stay. She has since recovered and is home again, but it changed our house's Thanksgiving plans quite a bit. But back to hunting because Ben would be disappointed if I didn't share his exciting story. If you want to hear a more lengthy and detailed version, ask Ben, but he had success his second morning and took down a nice doe that we all processed Thanksgiving weekend. In you're interested in seeing all the lovely pictures, click on the photo below.



We spent the good portion of a Saturday afternoon skinning, chopping, grinding, and wrapping up venison from Ben's doe (and two others). Not everyone was excited about the whole process. In fact, some were downright squeamish at first (Ian never really got over it). Everyone took turns slicing and dicing, and some had enough after a few minutes, but others really got into it. Micah was hesitant at first but really got into the meat, and Abby found the bone and ligaments fascinating :) We are thankful now to have a good amount of venison in our freezer for the next couple months. Ben has already cooked up sloppy joes for us to enjoy using some of the meat.