Sad day on the hill

We have had a tough lesson in life this morning at the farm. Fancy delivered her calf last night. The long wait is over and the outcome wasn't what we wanted. It was a heifer, but she was dead. Nature teaches us an awful lot, but sometimes the lessons are a lot harder to take. The good in the whole situation is that Fancy is okay, and will head up to the neighbors shortly to begin her life as a milk cow. The rest of us will try to have a good weekend.

Cute Kids

Forgot to post this back to school picture from last Thursday.....

What a cute crew.

Word Association

Let's play a game of word association. I am going to show you a picture and you say the first word that comes to you mind. Here we go......

My word is OUCH. Although the picture hardly does justice as to the true size of her udder, Fancy is less than comfy right now. She is due on September 2nd, and is proving that bovines aren't much different from humans when it comes to predicting their impending deliveries. Technically, we don't want her to have it YET. Anything born now falls at the end of the summer calf class, and would mean you have one of the smallest calves in the class come next spring. September 1st is the beginning of the fall calf class and that is where we would rather be. Only time will tell. In the meantime.....

Be glad you aren't Fancy.

I'll keep you posted.

Mom and dad are fighting.....

This was part of the conversation Kathryn had with my mom this weekend. Of course, my mom was instantly concerned.....not about me and hubby, but about what sort of permanent scars we might be inflicting on her precious grandchild. No worries, upon further quizzing Kathryn let her know that daddy was fighting a cold, and mommy was laying on the couch fighting the muscle pain in her calf muscle!!!!

We managed to pull it together and made it to church Sunday morning. We thought we were going to have to chase a heifer. Penny was out wandering around the front lawn before we headed out the door. She managed to put herself back into the pasture before we left, so we didn't have to deal with that. This was the third time she had been out in as many days. It seems the fencer isn't packing much punch these days, and she is shimming under the fence when she wants to. There was a knock at the door yesterday afternoon, to let us know that she was out again and this time down by the road. We headed out to get her back in and she decided it was time for some fun. She ran away from us every time we moved toward her. With all five of us working together and some strategically placed trucks and a hay wagon, she went into the barn and is back in solitary confinement. Fair week is only four weeks away, so she needed to be there anyway. Needless to say, we didn't make it for church last night.

Today I got a batch of tomato juice started. The garden is producing!!!

Feeling like a short order cook

On this first day of school, I offered to make whatever anyone wanted for breakfast. I received several different requests. Kathryn wanted pancakes, Suzanna and Thomas wanted French Toast and Daddy was in the mood for scrambled eggs. I swiftly moved into motion and juggled three different frying pans and in record time had all four breakfasts on plates and ready to be eaten. I see a job at a greasy spoon restaurant in my future.

I don't know if I will be so happy to fulfill each personal request in a few weeks, but for now, if they will eat a good breakfast, I am happy.

The dog even knew what was up this morning, and as everyone headed to the car with their backpacks, she stood beside the car, waiting for someone to open the passenger side door. She is so happy to be back on the road. She doesn't get many rides in the summer, so she was excited at the prospect of riding this morning.

We arrived at the school in plenty of time. Can't be late on the first day, don't ya know. After everyone was out of the car, Emma was whining and I was shedding a few tears. They are growing up so fast.

Mom and I are off to spend the day together. It has become a tradition that we do something together on the first day of school.

Clinging by my fingernails....

As the last two days of summer vacation quickly slip away. Too fast, I might add. The kids head back on Thursday, so they have been getting their last moments in with their dad. Thursday, Suzanna spent the day with him. Kathryn went yesterday and Suzanna slipped in another day today. Tomorrow will be Thomas' chance.

Yesterday I attended a committee meeting with neighbor Melissa. She is really good at asking me to help out with things when I am in a weakened condition and can't seem to muster up the ability to say no. We had a great time eating out and planning a couple 2009 Holstein shows. We also cruised through the training stable to see how my "kids" are doing. Storm, the three year old is right on schedule for Oklahoma and the Morgan Grand National Show. Annie is very nice and on target for the Morgan Breeders Futurity Sweepstakes in three weeks. Holly is flunking out and will head back home after a couple weeks of basic horse training. She isn't good enough to be competitive in the Sweepstakes class at this point and so we won't send her unless something changes real soon.

I have spent most of this day in the laundry room. I never really got caught up after vacation, since I was up to my armpits in peaches and sweet corn. I now have all the kids school clothes, washed, pressed and hanging in their closets. Well, the clothes I have. Suzanna is minus 5 skirts, but the back order date promises they will arrive by 9/8/08. Of course, we will be three weeks into school by then, but supposedly she can wear her denim skirts until they arrive.

Tonight is Parent/Student orientation, and we will officially be the parents of a 7th grader and two 4th graders!!!! This bus is going way too fast, I want off!!

Dedication

I sit here blogging this morning with toothpicks holding my eyes open. That is because I got sucked into watching the Olympics until very early this morning. I watched an 18 year old girl win a gold medal. According to the announcers, she had started dreaming of that moment since she was 4 years old. Really! I couldn't help wondering who was dreaming that, her parents? (side bar thought: Dad is a former Olympic medal winner) or her?? I have a hard time believing that was all her idea at that age.

Despite my skepticism, I am impressed with the level of dedication it took for her to achieve the goal. With that dedication, the normal average things that my kids do for fun were probably missing in her childhood in order to reach the ultimate prize. Everything she did had to be weighed against how it would affect her Olympic dream.

So what about us in our Christian walk? I know of one thing in life I should be totally, one hundred percent dedicated to, and that is my Lord. How do I stack up? Do I give up self for Him? Do I weigh every decision I make against my ultimate responsibility to achieve the goal of being more like Him? I know where I am in this challenge, and I have a long way to go.

Get a move on...

We had a great time away from home. Since coming home though, it has been full speed ahead.

We picked peaches while on the west side of the state and came home with 7 bushels. NOT all for us. I am only taking care of about a bushel and a half. The rest were delivered to family and friends the night we got home. They aren't quite ripe, so I haven't had to take care of too many so far. Just enough for a crisp last night, and the rest should hold off until tomorrow.

I did have to take care of sweet corn the evening we got home. I was up until about 2am with that project. This was the first year I grew sweet corn in the garden and I had enough to freeze. That was exciting!!

Today I get to do my LEAST favorite thing. Haul a horse. This time it is Holly, the weanling. She won't be very happy with me and I will feel much better when she is safely in Mason to begin her halter training. Futurity is a little more than a month away. Time to get training.

Tomorrow will be back to school shopping. Yes, for us school starts ONE week from today. Yikes!!!!

Making memories.....

Camping is a favorite for our kids. But when you add a favorite aunt and uncle to the mix and you have near perfection in their minds.

We have had a great time the last two days with my brother and his wife. We went to a pizza place Friday night. Can you imagine waiting for an hour for a table?? Well, we did, based on the recommendation of a friend of my brothers. The food was definitely worth the wait. The restaurant is in the old St. Joseph depot and the kids had an added bonus. While we waited, we could hear the faint whistle of a train. Uncle Terry wanted to smash pennies on the train tracks, but did any of us have any change??? I dug through my purse and managed to locate one penny. They were so excited to wait for that train. It was a freight train and it smashed it flat.

We finally got our table and waited for our pizza. We figured out that the Amtrak was on its way, so Aunt Cindy ran to the truck for more change. This time there were 4 pennies, a dime and a quarter. The kids found all the change but the dime. It was lost forever.

Yesterday we went to the beach. It was cooler then we hoped for, but the kids still had a great time. We even took Emma, and she had fun trying to catch the waves.

Last evening we had hamburgers and sweet corn. Then the "grown-up" boys built a campfire and we had the traditional S'mores by the fire.

What a great time we have had, and despite the fact that Uncle Terry and Aunt Cindy have to leave today, we still have two more days of making memories.

Really can't call it roughing it.....

I am blogging this afternoon from a pleasant campsite in the southwest corner of Michigan. We are on vacation, and this campground has of all things, WIFI. Not exactly a tough, rough life, huh??

Hubby and I started out many years ago and before children, camping in a tent. Eventually we improved our lot in life and acquired a pop-up camper. Off we went with three children, all in diapers. As a matter of fact, two of them were three months old!! Was I ever that crazy???? Guess so. And we were younger then!!!! But camping continues to be a favorite thing for our family. We now have a full-fledged camper, with A/C, microwave and all the comforts for a home away from home.

The kids have spent two hours in the pool already and I am sure will be back there for more later. Now they are playing cards with their daddy. The best part of vacation for them is undivided (well almost) time with dad. They take full advantage.

They are also anxiously awaiting a certain truck and camper which should be arriving anytime. That would be my brother and his wife. They are headed this way to spend a couple nights here as well.

I will try to update our adventures as they happen this week. Needless to say, we are sooooo overdue on some family time away.

He lifts me up.....

I am talking about my hubby. Yes, he lifts me up when I am in the dumps, but today I am talking about a different type of lifting.

I have taken on a major project. We store our hay making equipment in an old chicken house on the farm I grew up on. This is a good sized barn, as it held 7,000 laying hens back when I was a girl. It has been in need of a coat of paint for sometime and I decided that I could get it done. The first step was scraping all the old, peeling paint off it in order to get a coat (or more) of paint on it. Rather than doing all that by hand, I have learned how to run a power washer and took care of the long side and the front as far up as I could get standing on the ground. I finished up the side by standing on a hay wagon. In order to finish the front side though, I needed to be up higher. Ladders don't thrill me, and my hubby suggested that Thomas could lift me up in the bucket of the loader tractor and I could wash it from there. I quickly let him know that I didn't have enough life insurance for myself for that to be wise. So yesterday afternoon, while waiting for the hay to get dry enough to bale, hubby lifted me up in the bucket and I sprayed off the paint on the front of the building. Then he took over for the very peak of the building and completed the project.

Now I just have to spray off the trim on the other side. Hopefully, I can finished that part off before we head off for a vacation. When we get back, I will learn how to run a paint sprayer. That should be amusing.