Today I’m guest posting about my story of renewal after being put through the fire, As Gold is Tried, over at A Steady Rain for Rachel’s moving series on Hidden Blessings. I hope you’ll stop by and read through all the posts. Really, they’ve all been amazing and have brought me to tears more than once. Truly healing.

But since it’s also Thankful on a Thursday, I couldn’t resist sharing our not so hidden blessings this week too.

Yesterday morning we woke up and checked outside to see if we had any new lambs, just like we’ve done for the last couple weeks. And guess what we found!

"In Dixieland where I was born, early on a frosty morn'..."

You thought it would be a lamb picture, didn’t you?

Seriously adorable, no?

We weren’t expecting this little one yet, either!

But he/she seems to be healthy as a horse (ok, just for the record, horses are not known for being particularly hardy anymore, so we’re going to have to come up with something better than that eventually) and frisking about fit as a fiddle.

Molly is an outstanding mother, by the way.

I came home yesterday afternoon for lunch at about 3:30 (yes, it’s been a rough week at work) and was sneaking around to get that close-up picture of him/her and guess what else I found!

Oh! Hello there!

Yep. Our first little lamb of the season was born later that day! A healthy little girl weighing in at 10 lbs and 13 oz. While we started out the season hoping for twins from all our mature ewes this year, with this pregnancy toxemia scare, we feel extra blessed by every single healthy baby we get now.

They now sport matching green #1's painted on their sides to help us keep track of who's who in the "nursery pen."

Her Momma had her cleaned off, dried off, and warmed up without any help from us at all. That’s a good ewe! So now we’re hoping the rest of them are coming any day now (since they’re breed in groups, it seems to have a sort of domino effect once the first one lambs) and we’ll keep you posted with lots of adorable baby pictures–’cause I just can’t seem to put my camera down. They’re so darn cute!