For those of you who may be new around here, a few months ago a fire broke out at my husband's workplace and burnt their family-owned feed mill to the ground.  You can read more about that here.

  This would have been a huge loss for Randy's father alone, but it was also the location housing two other businesses, Smucker Bros. Trucking (my husband and brother-in-law) and RS Feed, my husband's feed business.  It is still a little bit hard to believe it actually burned.

  Since then, they have all been hard at work frantically trying to rebuild everything in time for their busy season, which is usually right after harvest season around here.  They are making lots of progress, but they still have a long way to go.

  Of course, the Smucker men being the ever-optimists that they always are, don't seem to be too worried.  I certainly hope things keep going smoothly (aside from a few setbacks) and according to plan, and all of their highest hopes come true.




 The girls and I love popping over to visit Randy at work, partially because the girls miss him so much throughout the day but mostly because he just looks so cute in a hard hat.

   Jocelyn was very concerned when the mill burned and referred to it often saying, "Daddy's work fell?"  She now seems to have a new sense of purpose and pride in what he does, saying "You fixing your work, Daddy?"  And seems to grasp a little bit of what is all going on.





   I have no idea what is going on here with Jocelyn's expression.....fairly typical these days when she's being squirrely for the camera.



   Another reason I love stopping in with my girls is because I want them to understand and appreciate the fact that their daddy works so hard for our family, and to somehow start putting an image to the concept of "providing for a family" in their little minds.

   This morning at breakfast Jocelyn was doing her usual litany of demands...."I want milk in my puppy cup....no the orange cup.  And cereal from the red box."  And on and on it went.  She was disappointed with the spoon she got, and she didn't like this or like that until finally I said in an exasperated tone, "Jocelyn, STOP WHINING.  You need to be grateful! Some children wake up in the morning and say, 'Mama mama I'm so hungry!' and their mama says, 'I'm so sorry but we have no breakfast today.  We have no food'.  And so you need to be grateful that you have any breakfast at all."

   She sobered immediately and then began asking questions.  "Why do they have no breakfast?"

"Because they have no money."
"Well....where's their daddy?"
"Maybe they don't have a daddy, or their daddy doesn't have work."
Pauses......and then proudly....."OUR daddy has work!"

   I was just so impressed that without me prompting, she made the connection between what I said about not having money to her next question which was, "Where's their daddy?"  I am so glad that she is beginning to understand where Daddy is all day and what exactly he is doing....providing for our family so we can have food, clothes and a place to live.

Now we just need to work on the whining.