Missing Willow Farm

Jack evidently saw a mouse here once… He’s been digging to China there for over a week now.  It’s right outside our feed room so I’m sure it’s possible.  He leaps with joy in our pumpkin patch chasing field mice.  Simple pleasures.

This was a surprise from our daughter Tracy.  She does apparel design for a living and thought we needed new tees.  We do!  She’s also responsible for our farm logo and website design.  🙂

Our sheep tentatively peek into the barn looking for Jack.  They think they’d like to come in, but not if he’s around.

My Gus is one of the original three sheep we purchased for our farm.  She’s one of only two of our sheep (Beatrice is the other) who comes when I call her.  I think it’s because she knows I’ll protect her from Jack.  She likes to sniff my face.

Here’s one of those tiny baby chicks that was born just 7 weeks ago.  This breed, cornish cross, grows incredibly fast.

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A few months ago, my daughter Tracy and I planned to meet in NYC to see Evita which is back on Broadway.  Little did we know that Hurricane Sandy would hit the region just four days prior to our visit.  We carefully watched the news for updates.  Our hotel had power and LaGuardia and Broadway reopened so we decided to go for it.  Our biggest concern was getting from the airport into midtown since not all bridges and tunnels were reopened and there were massive images of gridlock on the news.  We opted for a city bus to a subway station and an hour later we were in our hotel.  The city was encouraging people to use public transportation so our trip was  free.
The first thing we did was head for NBC to get standby tickets for the Jimmy Fallon show.  We got tickets #92 and 93 but were not discouraged because we figured some folks with regular tickets would not be able to make it into the city. With standby tickets in hand, we headed for indian food and saw Lucy Liu walking her dog.  We snuck a bad cell phone photo of her.  🙂  After lunch we headed to the Museum of Modern Art where we got in for free (IBM is a corporate sponsor).  Then it was time to line up for our standby tickets and we got in!  NBC was filming the hurricane benefit concert just across the hall.  When Jimmy Fallon’s band was announced, who walks in with them but Sting!  He sang “Walking on the Moon” then went back to the benefit.  The guests that night were Christina Aguilera and Colin Quinn.  A night to remember!

On Saturday, we headed to NBC again and were in the Today Show audience.  We stood right next to Lenny.  Did you see us? 😀  From there, we headed to the Museum of Natural History (free again) for a few hours.  We opted to get cheap evening Evita tickets so we could cram a second show in and caught a really great matinee performance of Chicago.  On Sunday, we crammed as much of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (thanks IBM!) as we could before heading back to the airport.

Tracy just started her second trimester, so this was a very special trip (yep, we’re going to be grandparents!).  We crammed a LOT into two memorable mother daughter days.  Now Claire and I need to decide on a magical destination.

Dropping a toy isn’t a skill that Jack has learned yet but we’re working on it.  He so very loves to play, though.