view at your own risk...

So we found the battery charger for our camera's battery pack just in time for Butchering! Our extended family butchers every year around Thanksgiving over two days, sometimes just two pigs, once as many as five. This year we did three. Everyone who is getting meat has to help and this is the first time that Greg and I have decided to participate. Friday is the killing, skinning, gutting day. Since Greg is a little squeamish he didn't go that day, but he was our representative on Saturday when they cut up the meat and ground up, seasoned and packaged the sausage. I went on Friday and helped with the skinning mostly, something I actually didn't mind much at all. This is the first time in our family history that a woman has helped with the first day of butchering and there were a lot of other young cousins there for the first time that day too. I know it sounds awful but both days were actually pretty fun. I guess it's spending time with people you love that makes it fun, even though the task is a lot of work and can be pretty gross at times. Greg took a video clip the second day, when it looks more like meat than a pig. We also eat borscht together for lunch the second day according to the tradition and so there are a few pics of Luke and cousins Eli and Addie playing together in front of my aunt Donna's Christmas tree which she got up the day after Thanksgiving.



Eating borscht...

And cobbler!


Luke and Eli are best friends. (Eli is reading Luke's favorite book to him here.) At our Thanksgiving reunion a few days earlier we were all sitting in the living room in a circle and when Eli came to sit down Luke crawled right up to him and put his hands on Eli's shoulders. Then he touched noses with Eli and then he laid his head on Eli's chest for a moment. Then he touched noses again and gave Eli a big wet kiss! He sat there with Eli giving kisses and patting him and smiling at him for several minutes before becoming interested in something else, and even then he kept checking to make sure Eli was close by. I haven't seen him do that with anyone before, and it was SOOOOO sweet! All the aunts were hunting for their cameras.

More of the butchering pics...

Making cracklings...

Today (Sunday, November 30) we had the Bartel Thanksgiving get together and I think after three days of being with other people he was just a little worn out because he was pretty whiny, but he did manage to be pretty cute too. When we got home I decided to attempt the hair cut I mentioned before. We have a short video clip of it but no pics because Luke was so exhausted that he fell asleep while I was working on it. We started out with Luke in the tub but that was short lived and we ended up doing the rest downstairs while he sat/lay on my lap. It didn't turn out great, I'm probably going to have to get someone else to fix it tomorrow and will most likely cry about doing it in the first place. He was so wiggly that one side got too short really quickly. I do think he might still have curls as it grows out, tomorrow when he gets up I'll take another look at it and wet it down and see what it does.

.....Ok, so I'm having trouble uploading the videos I took, will try again later, for now enjoy the pics. Once I have Luke's hair cut done I'll post some more.