Team Work

Well I'm pretty proud of myself today. You see yesterday Wesley attended a birthday party for a fellow 2nd grader at a skating rink. All the kids put on their skates and proceeded to stumble their way onto the rink where they promptly fell on their faces one after another. It didn't instill a lot of confidence in me, after all I haven't donned skates in nearly 25 years. But that didn't stop me! I went skating yesterday, and I liked it. Didn't even fall once. Even though Wesley tried to make me fall on several occasions. I'm thinking we are going to have family skating weekends this summer. We'll see how the other half of the family does on skates.

The kids and I were back at the garden this morning seeing what has drowned and what will make it. I noticed my big pile of manure/mulch was overgrown with Johnson grass and it was getting pretty tall. When it gets to a certain height it produces these massive seed heads that distribute the dreaded seeds all over my garden. Johnson grass in my garden nemesis. It makes these long tubers underground that send up shoots of  thick bladed grass. Best way to get rid of it is to dig up the tubers which is incredibly time consuming and work intensive. I told the kids all about this as we looked at the tall weeds on the mulch pile (that I can't mow). Wesley said he'll pull the weeds so I took them over and showed them how to grasp it at the base and pull the whole thing out. So for the next hour he and his sister pulled weeds together. They both grabbed the weed and pulled on the count of three. It was hilarious to watch. They did great! I told them I'd pay them a nickle for each weed bunch. They earned $2.50 each. Such helpers!

Coffe Filter Wreath

I'm pretty much forced inside these days with the constant downpour outside. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled we are getting rain. It has taken us out of drought conditions which we've been struggling with for a few years now. It has interrupted our many outdoor spring projects, which I'm bummed about. The thought of doing siding again during July and August isn't very appealing.

So I've been trying to stay busy indoors with projects I've been putting off. One of them is this wreath idea I found online that intrigued me. It's a wreath made out of coffee filters. It looked fun and inexpensive so I thought I'd give it a try.

First you have to buy a package of 200 cheap white coffee filters (less than $2). I didn't want a white wreath so I made up a couple bowls of tea. One I used some hibiscus tea which I already had on hand and the other just basic tea (any brown variety).  I put the coffee filters in the bowls and let them soak for varying times, the longest (deepest color) was 15 minutes. Wring them out and let them dry overnight.

Next step put together your wreath base, which in this instance is a cheap pool noodle ($1 buck) duct taped together.

Then start hot gluing those dried coffee filters onto the noodle. I scrunched them in there to create a tighter look. You could do it any way you'd like. Super easy project.

 

I think it's lovely for a spring wreath. I'm thinking a brown one in varying shades for the fall would be pretty too.

Lush

We are now at 11.3 inches of rain for the month of May. Second wettest May on file. It's officially a rainforest out there. I've always wanted to live in a rainforest so it's kinda cool. Mowing on the other hand, not so cool.

Look, There's Guinea Pigs!

School's Out

School is out. It is officially the first day of summer vacation. I'd be pumped if it resembled summer outside...even a little bit. We're almost to 8 inches of rain this month. Yikes! Wesley had his 2nd grade field trip to a local wildlife park the beginning of the week and we froze! All the kids are in t-shirts shaking from the cold wind. Then is started raining, so we had 45 cold and wet 2nd graders. Poor kids. It was a fun park though and the weather conditions will make it a memorable field trip for sure.

It's hard to believe this dude is heading to third grade. I swear he was born just the other day. I'm very proud of the big kid he's becoming.

About a year and a half ago I bought a nice big point and shoot Nikon Coolpix camera. It was highly rated and did it's job well. I turned it on last week and it stuck out its lens and promptly died. No LCD screen, no life. We tried fresh batteries but it was a gonner. I, for some reason, think electronics should last longer than a year and a half. Grrr. So we started researching cameras and found a good replacement that would take nice everyday pictures as well as pictures for my sculpture business. It's a Panasonic LUMIX and I'm impressed. It takes lovely pictures, so much better than the Nikon. The close up pictures of the sculptures are far superior as well. I'm almost grateful the Nikon died. The wildlife park gave me ample opportunity to try it out.

The highlight for me was the giant tortoise exhibit. This park was a hands on experience and the kids got to feed the animals and get up close and personal. They had three 15 year old Sulcata tortoises roaming around looking for food. Wesley got to feed one. I can't hardly wait until our Billy Bob is this size. How cool is that?!

Next Stop Kindergarten

My youngest child graduated from preschool last night. She wore a cute little hat and walked across the stage to get her certificate. Crazy how time flies by! There was a little program that went along with the graduation that included some songs and pictures. Her teacher wanted to put all the girls on the front row of the risers but had the delima of Greta being super tall and overshadowing the little boys behind her. So she did this:

She had my super tall girl stand off of the risers. Hehehe. She's a foot taller than the rest of the girls (and boys!). I suppose being the oldest in the bunch and being 93rd percentile for height (meaning out of 100 kids, she's taller than 93 of them) will do that.

She did great singing the songs and doing the actions with each song. Miss Cindy said she did testing on each child and Greta's results were off the charts. She can spell each kids name in her class, which surprised me. Go Greta! Next stop Kindergarten.

Floating away

So it's been raining here a whole lot. So much rain that I had to turn around at a flooded dirt road to find an alternate route.....the whole time that little voice in my head is telling me to "turn around, don't drown". We're talking over 4 inches of rain in the last week and a half. It's like a rainforest out there it's so green. I love it! The kids really love it. It means mud and lots of it. It's like mud pie central around here.

Building immunity one pile of mud at a time. That's my motto. Hey at least she's not making mud angels.

She helped me get my garden planted a week ago. It's coming up like crazy. I planted everything, I kid you not. It would be easier to tell you what seeds I didn't plant than the ones I did. I'm really looking forward to fresh organic produce this summer.

I've also been planting flowers around the property in every pot I can find.

In the spring I always find some new egg being laid. Whether it's the chickens or the cockatiels or even wild birds in the yard. What I wasn't prepared to find was a random egg lying in the tortoise pen. My leopard tortoise, Cecil, finally became old enough to lay her first egg. I found that really cool. I'm not going to incubate it but perhaps sometime down the road I put a few in an incubator and see what happens. It would be a neat project for the kids to see (yep it's all for the kids wink wink). I ran across a youtube video on how to convert a mini fridge into a reptile incubator....and low and behold we have an old unused mini fridge in the basement. See it's meant to be.

Sales

Part of the joys of spring are all the little garage sale signs on each corner. I, on occasion, will stop and see what treasures are to be found. Sometimes there are great things and sometimes it's a bust. Last weekend my friend and I went out during the garage sale weekend and I found some great things. One of which was an Easy Bake oven. Greta's at the age where she's toying with the idea of baking and this little thing is such a fun intro to that. Oddly enough, I've had more fun with the tiny oven than she has. It didn't come with any of the pre-made baking mixes (which is good, garage sale baking mixes aren't anything I'd use) so I got on Google and found all sorts of Easy Bake oven recipes. They're funny because they call for 4 teaspoons of flour, 2 teaspoons of sugar....and so on. Tiny little measurements that make tiny amounts of cake batter to go in tiny pans. After the kids went to bed last night I told Sean I wanted to make a tiny cake we can eat and not feel guilty about eating (because I could easily have made a big cake we would have eaten). The end result was a delicious tiny double decker chocolate cake and frosting.

One of the other things I found was an old dog house that's in need of a good staining. It's sturdy and well made and was just what I was looking for. The tortoises are outside during the day now if it's above 65 degrees. They needed a shelter in their enclosure but I just didn't want to build anything, so this works great. They've already thoroughly checked it out and gave it their stamp of approval.

On a (kind of) sad note, the hubby decided to sell his corvette and it was picked up by the new owner a couple of nights ago. Sean spent the whole winter tinkering around on it, replacing this and that, and he decided he was done. It was a fun car but I think he is ready for something newer that doesn't require the maintenance that a 20+ year old car requires. An older gentleman just south of us bought it so I'm sure we'll see it around.

Spring Activities

Spring has definitely sprung around here. We finally got a nice rain the other evening which has made everything green up nicely. The weeds are going nuts which is great for a five year old. Greta loves to venture into the yard and pluck as many yellow dandelion flowers as she can grab then she trots over to the horse pen and feeds them to the goats who are stretching their necks through the fence waiting for her.

We've started the daunting task of fencing in the walnut grove. Each weekend for about a month now we've gone out and pounded in t-posts. The east side of the property is finished with the posts and we'll start the corner posts and wire fencing soon. I can hardly wait to let the goats in there to keep it mowed (it takes at least 3 hours to mow it).

We have some crazy helpers most days.

The Birthday Horse

I was looking at some dates on the refrigerator and saw that one of our miniature horses was born on April 18, 2005 and he was turning 10 this year. I told the kids, half joking, that we should celebrate his birthday with party hats and a cake. Oh boy were they on board! Every day for more than two weeks Greta has asked me when Rocky's birthday was. Well it is today. So he got brushed out (he's still losing his winter coat) and got a lovely red party hat. Sean took pictures. Happy birthday Rocky!

Miniature horses routinely live into their 30's, so he's considered young.

Easter, Reenactments & Crazy Canines

Was Easter really a week and a half ago? Yikes, time flies when you're having fun! We did all the traditional Easter stuff: dyed eggs, hunted for them at the city park and at home. This year they put quarters in a lot of the plastic eggs and Greta made out with $5.50 worth of quarters. She was super excited. My folks came over for an Easter meal of snow crab and pork loin. It was a fun Easter weekend.

My parents are preparing for a reenactment of President Lincoln's funeral that is around the end of April. It's to commemorate the 150 year anniversary of his death. They've never been part of a reenactment before so for the past few months they've been doing extensive research on mid 1800 clothing. They wanted some pictures so I went over and took some while they posed in their period attire. I'd say they are having an interesting retirement.

I made her pose for this one. Definitely my favorite.

I had the fun experience of taking all three dogs to the vet for their shots. They were all due for them and I'd been putting it off since they are insane at the vet clinic. Oh who and I kidding, they are insane all the time. I had a slow day last week and decided to just get it done. So into the car Greta, Sophie, Chance, Cody and I piled. They are lunatics in the car and jump from front seat to back seat to cargo area and then back again. Sophie decided to start barking a few minutes after we left, so that was fun. Then Chance jumped up on the passenger seat armrest and pushed on the window control with his paw. He did this to two different windows. He'd lower them, I raise them back up. Greta thought all of this was hilarious. I was not laughing. Two hundred dollars later it is done and I don't have to think about it for quite some time. I often wonder what it's like to have well trained dogs.

Dogs don't pose when they're jumping around a car.

Kindergarten Round-Up

 Last week I signed my youngest up for kindergarten. I'm far more emotional during this process than I was when I signed up Wesley. I really had no clue how I'd feel when Wesley went to kindergarten. It was a completely new phase having a child in school. Now three years later I have a 2nd grader who is flourishing. I do miss him when he's at school but I have Greta so it isn't too bad. Now Greta's going to school soon and I'm kind of sad. It's going to be lonely around here for seven hours a day. It will be so strange working again. I haven't worked full time in eight years.

Now Greta on the other hand. She is very excited to go to kindergarten. I can't be happier for her. When she turned five she went through an anxiety phase that I was scared she'd never emerge from. She'd cling to me during preschool drop off, crying and pleading with me not to leave her. At bedtime she'd apprehensively ask if preschool was tomorrow and then start worrying if I said yes. This behavior overlapped into doctor and dentist visits. She'd freak out if I said we had to do to the doctors. She's not completely out of that phase yet but when it comes to school she's 110% better. She LOVES preschool again. She even will go inside on her own without me. The teacher and even other parents have commented on her 180 degree behavioral change. I couldn't be more happy for her.

I am not worried at all about her entry into kindergarten. She has her best friend from preschool going into the same school with her and I've been assured that they will be in the same class. Oh and she's excited that she'll get to see her big brother in the hallways.  This is a win win situation.

A Weekend Away

Well jury duty turned out to be a bust. I drove in, they put us all in a room and selected 31 out of the 45 people there. I was not one of the 31 so I got in my car and drove home. It wasn't a bad experience, it was actually quite interesting hearing the 31 people being questioned by the judge. I learned all sorts of things about those 31 people. I have to call back next week so perhaps I'll be one of those selected people soon enough.

I thought I'd share some pictures from last weekend. We traveled up to see my sister as it was my youngest nephews birthday. Little Bennett turned 4 years old.

He's such a cute little ham of a kid. He really worked at blowing out that last candle from three feet away. There was face painting involved and lots of cake and ice cream. What's not to like?

Children and adults alike enjoyed the hulk hands. Although I think my father might have appreciated them more.

There was plenty of playing and a nice walk to the park nearby. Walkie talkies were a big hit among young children and fathers alike. I find it hilarious that my daughter can strike a pose if I tell her I'm taking a picture.

I had my very first trip to Ikea (one of my parents favorite stores). It was a massive store full of great ideas. It made me want to come home and organize (which I've been doing all week!). It was great fun! We even ate lunch there which was very tasty. I'd definitely go back.

We stopped at a McDonalds for coffee on the way up there and found a very cool interactive table with lights that change colors with pressure from your hands. Wesley was quite intrigued. Good times! That was my fun weekend.