First Graze

The goats are thrilled to have nice green grass to eat so early in the season. Thank goodness for an early spring.

Hello Spring

It rained the entire last week. Nonstop. Then I looked out the window and, seemingly over night, it erupted into Spring. Glorious, wonderful Spring. Spend five days cooped up inside with two little megalomaniacs (during Spring Break I might add) and you too will bust open the door just as soon as that rain stops and lay in the sun for hours. And that is just what I did. I laid down on the drive way while my children drew chalk outlines around my comatose body. It looked like a murder scene when we were done that day. It made me think about why I like Spring, of course there are the easy ones: sun, flowers, baby animals and dancing happy kids. Here are a few more.

Coveralls and muck boots. Feeding the animals gets a bit messy but we all know April showers bring May flowers....and some really muddy horses. 

 

Weeds up to my knees (quite literally). I look forward to mowing. Not many things in this world bring the instant gratification as a nicely mowed and trimmed lawn. Bring on the mowing!

Running on the dirt. Spring means more running outside in nature, not inside with curious kids and the treadmill (seriously, have you ever tried to run on a treadmill while a two year old wants to investigate how it works?).

Outside time with the kids. Time to blow off all that winter energy! Did I mention I build a pretty mean sand castle?

Painting toe nails and getting out the cute sandals. I love girling it up with my mini me. You can hardly tell but she's got herself on a pair of Jelly shoes...blast from my past.

March 22nd

This is a date that I have etched into my subconscious.  If you are around my four year old son then this date is also etched in your mind. The kid is crazy obsessed with Angry Birds. I have mentioned this here before. Well the insanity continues because on March 22nd the newest Angry Birds game, Angry Birds Space, comes out. Since he's finished all the other games, including the facebook and Chrome versions, he now is just waiting on the new one. In the mean time he tells everyone he comes into contact with about the new one coming out. I mean everyone. Post office ladies, grocery store clerk and librarian. He even told the little old lady that was behind us in line at the post office about it. And poor Miss Cindy, his preschool teacher. She told me that he talks about it non stop at preschool. The kid is "ob", wait for it, "sessed".

So every day we take down the calendar from the refrigerator and put an "X" through the current day so that he can see how many more days until his precious Angry Birds Space comes out. The other day he dragged a chair over to the wall and just sat there starring at the calendar and the big black circle around March 22nd. I'd like to say I have no idea where his obsessiveness comes from but I know where it comes from. Both his parents are obsessive people. Once we get some idea in our minds we tend to dwell. Poor kid never had a chance.

I decided to make this obsession work in my favor and made a deal with the kid. Every night he cleans up all the toys before he goes to bed and he gets .50 cents towards buying the new game. It's marvelous! I get a clean house and he works towards a goal. March 22nd will be a bittersweet day, great because I never have to hear that date again and sad because I'll have to start cleaning the house again each evening.

The calendar watcher.

Children's Museum

My sister and her family is in town for the weekend so we decided to take the kids to the local children's museum. We went there when Wesley was just a little dude, not even walking yet, and couldn't really enjoy many of the exhibits. Boy how a few years make all the difference! He really enjoyed himself and Greta was even old enough for a lot of it. Fun times!

He's a happy dude.

Making a stained glass window....had to drag her away from here.

Catching some fish.

Flight simulator.

Medieval time out....wish I had one of these at home.

Family shot.

Emery waiting on chow.

Grandma with hungry youngins.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Picking wildflowers for Mom

The Wednesday Write-Up

-Wesley had Kindergarten round up last night. He's officially enrolled for kindergarten in the fall. He got to sit down with a teacher and write his name, draw a picture of himself and count blocks. He did great and I'm proud of him. One observation from the evening: I've never seen so many five year olds in cowboy boots, can't tell we are in a farming community. I got kind of sad last night thinking about him being gone all day at school. I've had my little dude home with me for so long it will be very strange with it just being Greta and I. She won't start kindergarten until 2015 so at least I'll have a little sidekick for a few more years.

-Greta disappeared for a few minutes the other day and I went looking for her only to find her dipping her head repeatedly into the toilet. Yep, life with a 2.5 year old is always exciting!

-I just baked a nice hot batch of chocolate chip cookies for the kids. Not for me since I have will power and I gave up sweets for lent. See? If I just keep telling myself that I have willpower I can do this. Who am I kidding, this is so darn difficult. Four and a half weeks left. The count down is on until Sugar Day.

-I just finished up another book last night. I've been devouring books this year and seem to have finally found the time to take up reading again. Last month I read the Hunger Games (all 3 books) because of everyone talking about them. In all honesty they were just ok. Nothing I'm going to rave about. The writing wasn't all that great and the story was weak at best. I always felt like the author had no plan when she started writing those books. I'd give them a B-. Looking forward to seeing the movie though. Then I picked up a book in the new book section of the library, titled "The Call". I'm drawn to stories about veterinarians so this book was right up my alley. It was about the different calls that came in for a country vet but then it took off on a strange path involving a space ship. Strange but fun. B+. Then this morning I finished up a book called "Wednesday Letters". Grown children clean out their parents house after both died to find all the letters their Dad had written their Mom every Wednesday. Geez I cried a lot. Good book A-. This afternoon I went to pick up a book the library was holding for me. It was highly recommended and is called "The Night Circus". It's a good sign when the librarian nudges her fellow librarian and says "Hey, she's getting ready to read The Night Circus" and the other lady goes "OHHHH, you are going to LOVE it!!" Can't wait to dive into it.

My very first handgun

I experienced a "first" this weekend. I attended my very first gun show. I've been married to what I like to call a "gun man" for over ten years now but have never went with him to a gun show. It was.....er....interesting. It was held in a building that I had been to for two other occasions. The first being a miniature horse show and the second a dog show. So to enter the building after seeing it full of cute tiny horses and fluffy show dogs was sure a change of scenery. Guns piled high on table after table and more black leather than I've ever seen in my life. I must admit that the people watching opportunities were worth the price of admission all on their own (the winner by far being the large hairy gentleman in the kilt).

It was actually pretty fun (can't believe I'd ever see myself write that). I've come along way with my attitude toward guns. I used to be very anti-gun when I was younger but things change. I don't know if it's living in the country or the need to protect my family and animals but I fully embrace guns now. Perhaps I've just become more of a redneck. I think it's a good thing to know how to shoot a gun, even though I hope I never have to find myself in a situation where I need to shoot a gun. Recently I saw a billboard for a conceal carry class and I though to myself "now that is something I'd like to do". So the first step is buying a handgun. We aren't new to owning guns, we have a couple of shot guns and used to have a rifle but this is my very first handgun. It's not just mine but it has to be something that I feel comfortable using, so it was pretty much my choice. I contacted our friend and fellow gun enthusiast about which gun he would recommend for me. He immediately suggested a compact revolver. His wife has a hard time racking a semi-automatic pistol so a good alternative is a compact revolver. His recommendation was a Ruger LCR. I don't have great hand strength and need to keep my hands protected because of all the sculpting I do so this sounded like a good alternative to the basic semi-automatic pistol. 

So that's what we had our eye out for when we went to the gun show yesterday. We'd done our research online and knew what we were looking for and what to expect price wise. Hubby said it was much nicer going in with an idea of what you were looking for, rather than just drifting around looking at everything. There were so many guns it was over whelming but we only found five Ruger LCR's. I tried out several different compact revolvers but did end up liking the Ruger the best. It was light and the grip was really nice.  So I am the proud owner of my very first handgun. Isn't she purdy? 

Don't worry we are going to buy a gun safe within the next couple of weeks and in the mean time we own no ammo for this gun (and it has a lock on it). I believe guns should be locked up tight with kids around. I am looking forward to shooting it. In true redneck fashion we will be moving a large pile of horse manure over to the back corner of the property and making a berm to shoot into (no neighbors back there). So now you know the story of how I acquired my very first handgun.