Our life for most of the last two weeks has been centered around our annual winter retreat. This is the time of year when we take stock of what we have accomplished and look forward to the coming busy season. We had a series of meetings that took place February 11 to February 19, facilitated by our friends Alyson, Cecil and Tony from Dancing Rabbit.The meetings focused on our planning process and topics of importance to our community and us as individual members of that community. We talked about our personal relationships to the group, our community meeting process, parenting in community and our work responsibilities for this year among other things. Some of us tried in these meetings to experiment with using the skills that we had learned and practiced during our Non-Violent Communication workshop just prior to the retreat.

However, we did not spend all of our time in meetings. We scheduled group work projects such as deep cleans of our commercial food processing kitchen and our community kitchen and organizing the wood shop. Dancing Rabbit had us over for supper twice during the retreat, which we appreciated and enjoyed. We made sure that we had fun, too. We went to Leisure World in Kirksville for an afternoon of bowling on the 13th and then had dinner at Washington Street Java Company on the square. The owner,Julia, is former member of Sandhill and catered an excellent meal for us. Some of us stayed in town to see the movie "Chicago".

We were joined at the bowling center and restaurant by my daughter Melina and her family who

drove up from Pomona in southern Missouri that day and met us in Kirksville. It was great for Michael and I to have Melina, Matt and their daughter Chloe here, even though the weather was a bit intense that following weekend. It was especially nice to see our five month old granddaughter again. Miss Chloe is a real charmer with a ready smile. The three of them were here until the 17th.

Michael's birthday was on February 15 and Melina baked an extra special devil's food cake for him and we had a get together after supper. Stan's birthday was on February 20. There was an afternoon party and some of the Rabbits joined us for the celebration. Gigi and Cory made another yummy cake and Stan brought out some of his old pictures to show folks.

Laird left for a trip to the East Coast on the 20th. He is working with several communities and groups there during the month he will be gone and he'll also visit Ceilee in Massachusetts and Ann in Virginia.

Now that we are through with the retreat, we are getting back into our regular work rhythms. There is lots of firewood to cut for our wood stoves and for use during sorghum processing. Our cow and her new calf need to be cared for. The first flats of early seedlings have been started. Our businesses have to be attended to. And there are always the daily routines and being with the children and each other that gives us a framework for our lives together.