Alpacas And Easter

Let's start with Saturday! I met up with my friend, Uvet, at the Parks Mercantile, to start drawing out a mural. Uvet is a teacher at the kids school, and we have really clicked, and she is in charge of this project for the school. Kent and Samantha were with us too, while Jeff was checking out 4960, running for none other than, Earth Day. Back to the mural...it is going to be very similar, to the mural I painted in Kent's room, except bigger scale and more aspen trees and flowers. Uvet kinda corralled me into it, because she has never painted a mural before, and nobody else at the kids school wanted to help. That brings me to the reason for the mural...it's to represent our Maine school, and once the painting gets on it's way, we will be having the school children paint flowers, grass, etc. How sweet is that?! Samantha had the privilege to be the first student, to help. We only got the drawing out part going, but I told Uvet, I paint more than draw for a mural, and it will really get going once we get that paint out! I'm really looking forward to having the school kids getting involved. After a couple hours working on that mural, Uvet and I went to our homes to grab lunch, then I met up with her, to head to the "Mystic Pines Alpaca Fiber Processing & Alpaca Ranch," off of hwy 64, out of Williams. I contacted the owners of this ranch last week, informing them that I plan to own some alpacas, and I would love to visit their fiber mill and alpacas. So Uvet, Samantha and I went in our there, and it was so much fun! These people, Rob and Donna, are the sweetest, hardworking folks, more than willing to show me the "lay out of the land." Their property was darn right awesome, and they have become self sufficient, for the most part, on their ten acres of land, a huge beautiful timber home, garage and barn (which they built, all of them); and then the huge steel building that houses their 1940s fiber processing mill (the picture shows only half of the mill. It's big!), among other machines, to make this a successful business. I was in awe. We got to see the mill working and it was a sight to see. That machinery was shipped in three different sections, riding on semis, from Montana. They went up there last year and purchased it...a long trip to Northern AZ, that's forsure! Next we walked over to the barn, to see their 30 alpacas and two guard dogs, Maremma Sheppard, for the alpacas, and those dogs were HUGE! Never have I seen a dog so large, but they were the sweetest dogs, a brother and sister named Molly and Clyde. I learned a lot talking to Rob and Donna, about alpacas, and they have an open door for me, if I have any more questions, concerns, or fiber, once we get our alpacas. Awesome day! Samantha enjoyed seeing the alpacas too, but the dogs kind of made her nervous, due to their massive size. The dogs just wanted to lick her. So funny. The alpacas are very curious animals, but very shy animals; and they don't like to be handled (unless they get trained with lots of human contact). I'm looking forward to being an alpaca owner! Saturday night it was time to dye eggs for Easter; and today we watched our Easter service, with pastor Charles Stanley, and Jeff read the bible story to the kids and then we had the Easter egg hunt. What a success! The weather was so great today. Started off sunny, then big ol' thunder clouds came rolling in. Only sprinkles fell, but still brought the dramatic skies. Very blessed by our good Lord, for these special times we get to spend together.