Nasty Weather and Chicken Soup

Over the weekend the temperature rose to almost 40 degrees! That may sound wonderful, however instead of snowing it began to rain, melting all the fallen snow into slush and causing our driveway to turn into a sheet of ice with a layer of water over it. The night before the rainfall, Marco put the animals in the barn. It's very important to keep goats out of rainy/snowy weather - they can easily catch pneumonia which is pretty much fatal. I went to do the morning barn chores and the animals seemed very bored, stuck in their pens all day. However, it was for their own good and I knew they would not have wanted to be outside in the slush rain anyway.
Since we couldn't be outside, Marco and I took the opportunity to continue the re-arranging of the house by tackling the two bedrooms on the main floor. After that we decided to make a big pot of chicken soup. Our tactic for making soup is put as many vegetables in it as possible. We had carrots, celery, potatoes, split peas, corn, beans, peas and some brown rice. Marco also threw in some of our dried chilies, onions and garlic. He is quite the cook. It's a perfect combination - Marco is the cook and I am the baker. Since he did such a great job on preparing the soup, I made a batch of oatmeal raspberry bars. They turned out delicious.
So Marco and I ended our evening before the wood stove, enjoying our soup and watching boxing on TV.