There's no place like..........

home. Really. It was lovely to have a break from the routine, but I'm so happy to be back home. I missed Mike and my animals and no bed ever feels as comfortable as my own. I don't know about anyone else, but being away for a while gives me a fresh perspective on home. I almost always come back with renewed energy and enthusiasm for my "normal" life. (I know that to most people, there is nothing normal about my life!)

These girls are just biding their time now. It's time for all of us to start thinking about and planning for shearing and lambing. I like to get the barn set up and gather my supplies well ahead of time. The shearer is coming in a few weeks to do the pregnant ewes and then he'll come again a little later to do the yearlings. That's not how I usually schedule things, but the way it has to be this year. I'm anxious to see how lambing goes and hoping it is not a repeat of last year. We had 7 sets of triplets last year and it will be perfectly okay with me (not to mention the ewes themselves) if we don't have any triplets this year! The up-side of having all those triplets and having to bottle feed or supplement so many lambs is that nearly all the yearlings are very sweet and friendly because they were handled so much as babies. Every year is a different experience, so we'll see.

Here's a quote from the "mindwise" column in the March issue of Oprah magazine: "According to research at the Harvard-affiliated Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine, the repetitive motion and focus of needlework can elicit what's known as the relaxation response - a calming meditation-like state that slows heart rate and causes blood pressure to drop. In addition, a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society suggests that knitting is associated with a lower risk of dementia for those 65 and older." Well, okay! That's all the validation I need to continue to do something I love.