Odds and Ends

September is always such a busy month. Lots of little things that keep me running. Mainly these two little things.

I feel like a glorified chauffeur lately. Taking them to school, taking them to Cub Scouts and Girl Scouts, church and school events. It's been exhausting but they are having fun and learning lots so it's all good.

Sean has been wanting to fix up a milling machine that he purchased several years ago and has been sitting in pieces in the back of the shop. Well to fix it up he needed several parts. Then, about a month ago, he found someone selling their milling machine on eBay. It was a good price but it was in Chicago. So after quite the ordeal (I'll save you the details) it has been shipped to us. He was able to get a trailer and pick it up at the shipping dock. The nice part about getting it here is that we now have something to unload it with! The mill weighs 2000 pounds and normally it would be unloaded by hand and engine hoist. Which really sucks. But now we have a skid loader! Yay! Sean had it off the trailer in less than 2 minutes. Pretty cool. So now he has all the parts to make a really nice milling machine that he plans to CNC.

Poor Sean stays pretty busy with projects around the house....some of which I create for him. For instance when I mow around the koi pond and get a little too close to the limestone rocks around the pond, suck one up and shoot it out at the open garage hitting my car. Funny thing is I didn't even know I shot a rock out until I was walking by my car and saw the carnage. Thankfully no kids were outside.

Do you remember those adorable little fluffy chicks we got a few months ago? They are now free ranging with the older hens and are nearly full grown. Crazy how fast chickens grow. They are 16 weeks old and could logically be laying eggs in four weeks (unless the shorter days cause them to wait until Spring). They are still small enough to squeeze through the wrought iron fences (unlike the older hens) and I routinely find them scratching around the dog pen. I don't think they know the dangers of free ranging in the dog pen and I have to check the pen each and every time I let the dogs out to go potty. Crazy chickens don't realize the quick meal they would become.

A couple of years ago my Mom gave me one of her tropical house plants. She and my Dad travel a lot and she thought it might stay alive longer if she gave it to me to take care of. It's kind of a special plant because I remember helping her plant the three baby plants in that pot when I was just a little kid. It's probably close to 30 years old. The plant has been in the same pot as long as I can remember and it's a healthy thriving plant, especially when it's outside all summer under our big oak. This summer I decided to re-pot it since it's root bound and was able to find a pot even bigger than the old one (I wasn't sure I could find a bigger pot but I did). It looks so happy in it's new pot. It's going to come inside soon because of the cool weather coming and I'm a little worried about how I'm going to move it. Perhaps it needs wheels.