A special prayer request; a reminder on the importance of being safety conscious; and "Mushroom" pictures~

Please pray.... My mother is struggling with health issues again and is feeling pretty poorly. She rested most of the day and said now that she's feeling a little better. If you'd keep her in your prayers, that would be much appreciated by all of us here!!! It would be so nice if she could just get completely well...

Also, if you'd pray for safety for everyone this weekend at the Apple Seed Shoot at our friends' place, that would be great too. Andrew had a little incident this afternoon that just drilled the importance of gun safety into our minds a little deeper... He was cleaning his '22 in the entryway while the rest of my family was talking out there and watching him. I had just gone in to strain the goats' milk and was running it through a cloth when I heard a loud bang; then heard mother gasp; and then silence. Of course, the worst possible scenario ran through my mind... I picked up my courage and went to the entry way door, opened it, and found everyone looking up at the ceiling--at a small hole that had not been there earlier this morning! Apparently, there had been a bullet lodged in the rifle somehow, but it was strange because Andrew had been very careful and had cocked and fired the "Empty" gun 5 or 6 times right before that and nothing had happened. We are all just SO grateful that he still had been careful and had the rifle pointed up when it went off...! After the initial shock was over, Andrew got the job of crawling up on the roof and repairing the small hole that was left by the bullet and then filled in the entryway ceiling hole with spackling. What a reminder to always keep safety as the number one priority when handling a dangerous weapon!!!

And now, I have a few pictures to share before crawling into bed...

I made 4 batches worth of Kombucha tea today, this time trying 3 different flavors (as some of our friends have said that they like the tea better when it has fruit flavored tea added to it.) I made Peach, Raspberry and Pomegranate tea and I'm very eager to find out how they will affect the taste of the Kombucha!

This picture is of the finished batch of tea, with the original "Mushroom" (it's not actually a mushroom, but is called that) on the bottom and the new baby mushroom floating on top.

Here are the mushrooms (or SCOBYs) again... These two had grown together a bit and were a little hard to separate. Don't they look funny?

And here is the finished product--sparkling Kombucha tea! In about 10 days, if all goes well, we'll have several more mushrooms than we'll need, so if you're interested in making your own Kombucha, just let us know and we'll be glad to share a mushroom with you. :)

That's all for now~