You can set it up for morning coffee the night before if you have a techno-person available who remembers how to program the silly thing. The carafe on this model is awesome; it keeps coffee hot for an eon. We wish it held more, but you can't have everything. We love the quality of the coffee this maker produces, though. Coffee flavor is a very personal thing, I know, but, one thing we've discovered ~ you can't beat freshly ground beans!
We've also been very pleased with our front-loading Maytag washing machine. It really has saved on water, and also has a "max extract" setting that wrings things amazingly dry, thus saving on drying time, as well. Ours is very large capacity, too, so works well for comforters or 20 pairs of dirty jeans during camping season. Ideal for large families all the way around. Economical, efficient.
After about a year of trying to cook on an apartment size stove when we first moved into this house (I'm talking itty-bitty stove!) , this range with the wonderful griddle in the middle (Though this pic doesn't actually show one), was like a gift from Heaven. I like having the broiler in the bottom, separate from the stove, so I can brown garlic bread, while I bake lasagna, for instance. Or broil fish, while I bake bread. We use the griddle practically every day. It cleans up easily and comes in handy for tons of stuff. And the large oval burner underneath the griddle is ideal for large canning pots, or vats of mashed potatoes.
It's getting so a deer can't get up early enough in the morning to avoid the Paparazzi. (This is a "bright-eyed-deer.") 
Looking both ways before crossing the street...
Theresa and Anna visit with one of the farm's friendly draft horses.
This hay pyramid was a big hit with everyone!
Getting ready for the hayride. We got a good tour of the
So many pumpkins to choose from!
Happy Fall from the bunch of us! 
(This little pumpkin sitting on a gate The first one said, "My, it's getting late."
The second one said, "I hear a noise."
The third one said, "It's just some boys."
The fourth one said, "Let's have some fun!"
The fifth one said, "We'd better run!"
Then Woooooooo went the wind....
And OUT went the lights.
And five little pumpkins rolled out of sight.
1) Never put concentrated liquid dish detergent in the dishwasher. (Seriously. Don't do it.)
This is the little autumn village we display every year. This year it's on the shelf in the kitchen under the bulletin board, high up enough that Yuyum (William) can't get ahold of it. Well, at least he hasn't so far... Note the five little pumpkins on the fence. Do you know that poem? I'll copy that one out here somewhere, as it's a family favorite.
O suns and skies and clouds of June, 
"He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure. There undeniably is the historical fact; and there attached to it is another moral fact almost as undeniable. It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hairshirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in hs death agony to lie bare uon the bare ground to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles round the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man." 
We spent the afternoon making cornhusk angels. Click here for a play-by-play of how we did it: http://arewethereyet-davisfarmmom.blogspot.com/2007/08/corn-husk-angels.htmlhis is how we did it.
The better road to the site which we found after coming in the harder back way. Gabe says,"Wait up, kids!"
This house looks like it has a face ~ and is saying "Boo!"
This white house was, by the far, the nicest and most well preserved. We expect that it may have been one of the last still inhabited into the 1960s. At first we thought it might have been a church, but looking at the interior, it had to have been a house.
No indoor plumbing in the heyday of Ironton. The remnants of this old outhouse probably hide a very scary hole underneath. Kept the kiddos a good distance from here.
We wondered what they stored on these shelves in the main room of one house.
This seemed to be a food preparation area in what we thought was a kitchen of the same house.
Just a square of old wallpaper over an interior door was left in this one.
A bit of very old linoleum... Looked like it was originally grey and blue.
The built in cupboard in what appeared to be the dining room of the nice, white house.
Look at this peeling wallpaper, in an interesting Craftsman style pattern of leaves on a brown background.
THE ROCKIES ARE IN THE PLAYOFFS!! 
Above: The peaks above Silverton, Colorado, in the heart of the San Juans, near the Shrine of Christ of the Mines
Our youngest six below the Christ of the Mines Shrine. (William just wanted to get down and run and had no interest in posing with Jesus.)
Michelle working in her Nature Notebook, drawing the opposite peaks.
Above: The quaint victorian town of Silverton lies in the valley below the shrine.
A shot of the farmland on the way to Ouray, Colorado, a good deal lower altitude than Silverton.
Some of the color in the valley.
And some more color
And a little more...
