Birthday Girl

 Our sweet girl turned eleven years old the other day. She's growing into a very caring and responsible young lady and we are very proud of her. I feel like she's growing faster than usual and seems to be changing by the day. Every time she stands next to the wall with little marks for her height, there is more height to mark. She's taller than her brother now (by a few inches) and likes to point it out at every available moment. I figure at this point she'll be taller than me when she's grown (and I'm 5'9"). She really likes being the tallest person in her grade.

She's very much into art (painting is her thing). She paints on pretty much anything she can find. For her birthday she wanted fabric paints and a jean jacket so she could paint on it. She loves collecting Hydroflasks and will spend an hour putting just the right stickers on them. 

 She's very much into her hair right now. It's a recent thing actually. During the state lock down she started watching YouTube videos on curly hair and learned how to brush it and put product in it. Then she wanted to cut it and shave the side of her head so when everything opened back up we went and had her hair cut/shaved. The cut allowed her curls to bounce up and created volume. Then came the requests for dying her hair. I said maybe temporary dyes. So she bought some vegan temporary dye that was highly rated on Amazon and dyed a chunk of her hair (that's all I will allow while school is in session). It's been pretty much all hair non stop for the past several months. 

Happy Birthday Greta! 

 

She has wanted a weighted blanket for about a year now, she finally got one.

She loves String Worms and wanted them on her cupcakes.

She loves lights so she got quite a few to decorate her room.

 

 

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Her room looks like a theater now.

A Vet Visit for Cooper

Remember back in February before all this coronavirus stuff happened we got a cute little puppy named Cooper? Well he's now a full on shaggy teenager who's full of energy and still wakes me up at 6:20 each morning. We weren't sure what a shih tzu/border collie mix would look like as an adult but he got his short little dad's legs and long hair and his mom's deep bark and size. He's 100% cute and has fit into our household quite well. He and Winston are pals and play all day long. 

 

Getting a puppy right before a pandemic has been quite the experience. Our vet clinic has grown to the point that it was time consuming to get in there....pre pandemic. we're talking at least a 45 minute wait in a stuffed waiting room. Now it's just plain crazy since everyone and their mother got a puppy during lockdown. Nobody is allowed to sit in the waiting room so we check in and then sit in our cars for an hour or more. When it's your time you hand off your animal to a vet tech and they take them to an exam room behind a big sheet of plastic. You get to watch from the hallway. I'm just glad he's done with his puppy shots now. 

Cooper went in two weeks ago to get neutered and all went well. My folks gave us a cone that they had from their miniature schnauzer so that Cooper wouldn't lick his incision area. This worked for a couple of days before he figured out it was too small and he could still lick. I took it off and put the cone of shame on the counter and it seemed to disappear. I later found it in Greta's room on one of the Build-A-Bears. 

 

Summer Odds and Ends

With the kids back at school I'm able to get back to sculpting full time.....something I haven't done since March. A quiet house is magical and I feel so ready to get back to it. Sean is still working from home and will be until next summer. He's got a work place in the basement which we need to actually turn into an office one of these days. Once a week we go out for a lunch date and I sure look forward to that each week. We tend to pick up food that we ordered online and either eat on the patio of the restaurant or go to the park to eat. It's been a fun tradition. 

 

 

We officially put the chicken brooder back in the garage. It's been in my living room since April. I put three rounds of baby birds through it this year, the most I've ever done. Usually I have one batch of chicks every other year to replenish the flock but this year I got bit by the hatching bug. That was sure a fun experience. Tuna and his gang needed a bigger place to hang out so I built a chicken tractor. It's really just a movable pen that goes on the lawn and allows the chickens to eat grass and flap around. It's called a chicken tractor because it's like a tractor in the sense that if you leave chickens in it long enough they will eat all the grass and till up the ground like a tractor. I was able to make the whole thing out of scrap lumber, the only thing purchased was the wire mesh and hinges. We still have a small pile of lumber left over from the massive deck that used to be around the inground pool.....that was taken out 12 years ago. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

 

 

We were able to get our yearly load of hay bales recently. We've used the same farmer for three years now and it's working out nicely. This was the first year with the new (to us) truck. We sold the old Ford F250 and replaced it with the Toyota Tundra and the difference is night and day. Let's just say the Ford had a lot of problems. I am very thankful we had that truck but sometimes it just nice to get something without issues that just works like it's supposed to. We got our normal 12 round bales and that seems to last exactly a year for us.The skid steer makes short work of lining them up end to end (I remember we did this by hand one year!).