What sound does the choo choo make?

Optical illusion: two baby hands on two mother laps.

Today was a sunny Seattle stunner of a summer day. Say that five times fast! I joined Maggi, Elisa, and the boys at Remlinger Farms for some frolic. A petting barn with The World's Friendliest Goats? Check! Baby chickens? Check! Soulful-eyed sheep? Of course! Mediterranean Donkeys? Why not! We went there last year and they obviously were doing construction but it wasn't clear on what. Boy howdy have they fixed that place up. There's a little amusement park now, with a teacup ride. A tiny roller coaster. A water ride with wee canoes. We determined that it was great to have a summer birthday, because they have open-walled rooms set up for parties next to the petting barn.

The old fashioned steam train (dad, I am sure, will know the exact scale of the model) is still there and it putt putts through the woods and around exotic animal pens. The llamas were most entertaining as they loped across their pasture. Obviously they had been grazing next to the tracks and were none too entertained by the noisy visitor. The emus were unmoved, as were the donkeys. I pet a goat that had a big bushy beard and the most impressive set of goaty-manhood I've ever seen dangling.

And what is awesome? Awesome is a huge trampoline embedded in the floor of a shade-house, and then covered with about 8 inches of straw. If there had been no kids around I would have been *flying* on that thing.

not jumping, but keeping his balance just fine

On the way out I picked up a full flat (12 half-pints) of raspberries from their fields next door and made some raspberry-rum jelly. I am not a big fan of raspberry seeds but am usually too lazy to go through the extra step of slightly cooking the berries then smushing them through a fine sieve to painstakingly extract every drop of juice. You also have to use more fruit. For the same reason raspberry seeds are annoying (they are large) they also make up a lot of the volume of jam. Typically one recipe of jam takes 6 half-pints of raspberries. Tonight I reduced 9 half-pints down into four cups of juice. It ended up making 5 half-pints of jelly. But oh is it ever tasty. I used the fancy super dark rum that Charlie's friend brought back from Cayman.

new egg carton label, for eggs given to friends. I always like to know where my eggs are coming from!

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 2 (Ursula laid a huge one!)
Eggs found in the woods today: 0