Pascal the Calculating Cat

We have a new cat. His name is Pascal after the famous mathematician. This is due to him being found by a math professor at Texas Tech. Evidently, the kitten a jumped up into the professor's engine compartment of his car and rode home with him. When he got home, there was this nice little kitten. Happily for us, the professor's cat did not like this new kitten, so instead of dropping the kitten back at Texas Tech he felt compelled to find a home for it.
(This is where we come in.)
Taylor heard about this kitten from his math connections, and so we decided to go and get the cat after we caught three mice recently. Glory and Alesha decided that he needed a "math" name. So together we thought about all manner of math names that many people would recognize and be a reasonable for a cat.

You may recall the name Pascal from high school when you learned about Pascal's Triangle (go look it up if you do not know, there is no time to write about it here!). Also, among other things, Blaise Pascal is known for creating one of the earliest calculating machines in 1645 (actually Wikipedia states that he invented the 2nd).

So, Pascal (the cat) is very nice and very timid in the presence of fast movement. We call him the "calculating cat" for two reasons: (1) his name, Pascal lends itself to such; and (2) because even when he is calm, he always seems to be "calculating" his next hiding place and how to get there if there were any swift movements.
Pascal has only hid from us once, but it took us about an hour to find him. Also, when I went to pick him up from my professor's office (which is only a 10'x10' room), my professor and I spent several minutes trying to find him.

(picture coming soon...)

Glory's 2nd Date

Glory has been a wonderful helper over the last few months. So much so that she has filled up her 2nd Sticker Chart for helping. Therefore, she earned another date with Papa! This time we went to Fazoli's, which is a type of fast Italian food place. We like it because of the big red tomato as the logo and the free garlic bread sticks...yummm. During our date, Glory learned how to trap liquid in a straw with her finger, pick up the straw from the drink, and get the liquid to your mouth without spilling (if you do not get it then read this: Straw in Water experiment). It was quite a fun experience. We also ate pizza and pasta noodles.

Thank you Lord for the beautiful servant that we have in Glory Lynn!

In the flowers

Due to all of the rain this year, the pasture has grown some wonderfully beautiful flowers (with some help from Alesha and Glory seeding it last fall). I wanted to get a picture of us with the flowers.

...thanks for the seeds Granny B!

Our Garden

We tried to keep our garden small this year since we have so many other projects going on, but when we learned that Taylor was not going to be gone this summer for schooling, well, then we expanded. And now with God's help from all of the rain, our garden is growing wonderfully! Since our living situation encourages outside projects, and since the garden is one of the first things you see when you pull into our drive, we have tried to be more diligent about weed-pulling, though sometimes we are more successful than others at getting the best of them. Glory helped harvest the onions this week. She really likes the corn plants, and is getting to be quite the gardener. I'm glad that she is learning how fun it is to watch God make things grow! :)

The Barn

by Taylor

Well, its probably not the type of barn you are thinking of, but we call it a barn because we plan to use it for any random livestock that we happen to acquire in the future. Currently, the barn is what we call our home. We have a travel trailer parked under it, and along with the cargo container (otherwise known as "the box"), it is where we live. The size of the barn is 45' by 44' which gives us just under 2000 sq. ft. to work and play in.

On the south side of the barn we have enough space to shelter two vehicles and use the rest for other random storage. On the north side is a porch of sorts; there is a workshop area, summer kitchen, and the travel trailer. This is where we spend most of our time.

I am currently in the process of installing electrical outlets and lighting throughout the barn, but with the summer days lasting so long, we rarely need much extra lighting. So this tends to get pushed down the list and replaced by other things like the garden (partly shown above)...but I will let Alesha tell you about that since she has done most of the work for it.