Last Week - A Very Challenging One

Last week was very challenging for us in many ways. We arrived home late Sunday night after Buddy did church services in Winchester, Indiana. We had a great time of fellowship at the church and were able to arrive safely home at 11:00 pm.

We got our dogs out of the kennel and noticed Buffy's (our Golden Retriever)leg was swelled. Just three months earlier, we had a tumor removed from Buffy's leg that was cancerous. We were told that they got it all. We didn't know what to think about this so we took Buffy to the vet on Monday at noon. The vet told us that this didn't look good because she was pretty confident that the cancer was back. We were given options on what to do. Needless to say, we were heartbroken. The cancer was in her lymph node in her leg and the kind of cancer that she has spreads rapidly. They gave us some antibiotics and diuretics for the swelling. They also did a biopsy to see if what they had suspected was true. The result was what they had suspected so our options were to take the leg off or just make her comfortable. We chose not to have the surgery and we took her home. Right now she is doing OK. Her leg is still swelled but she is eating and actually running around. She seems to feel pretty good right now. We are going to spoil her and keep her as long as she is not in any pain.
That was our week.

We also did some work on the new workshop coming up. We took step by step photos of each craft and worked on the content of the talk that goes with the workshop. We are now putting together a PowerPoint of the crafts.

Buddy is going mule deer hunting in Montana next month with our pastor so he is busy doing a lot of walking and exercising. He is looking forward to the trip.

He is hoping to take Cricket (our English Setter) out for a pheasant hunt before he goes to Montana. He really enjoys this type of hunt because it is a lot of walking!

This week at the Museum

We had a great time yesterday at the museum. There were 1500 people who visited on Labor Day. Buddy's 3:00 concert had a full house and they were very enthusiastic and sang along and had lots of fun. The workshop was well attended and the kids made lots of cool looking spiders and dinosaur sculptures.

Today we had a special visitor, Dan Breeding and his two children from North Carolina. Dan is an animal handler and has a wonderful ministry all over the U.S.
Dan brought with him a six month old Red Kangaroo that he brought into the office. He said it takes about 5 bottles of milk a day. It was very cute and we all got our pictures taken with it. He let it down to hop all over the office and when it was time to go, put it in a pouch to carry it.

We are working on getting the new workshop all finalized. We are still working on the craft. We have a triceratops dinosaur sculpturing project and a dragonfly craft. We start the new workshop in October.

Getting Things Done!

We are back at the museum after having two weeks at home. We finished up at home by digging out a small pond that catches the sediment before going into the big pond. We had neighbors help us as they removed 40 dump truck loads of dirt. Each load had 14 bucket loads from a trac hoe that we rented. That is a lot of dirt!

We also cut some firewood and now have enough to last the winter. We cleaned out our chimney and put new rope insulation around the wood stove.

Buddy wrote more new songs and now he has enough for the sequel to "Let the Rain Come". If the sequel doesn't happen, he will use the songs that he wrote for a new CD.

Yesterday, we had about 40 in the children's workshop. The museum crowds have gone down because of schools starting up.