Fall Projects

This time of the year stresses me out! I can never quite put my finger on it but it's a super busy time. I think it might be the impending winter and frigid temperatures that drives us to accomplish all the little tasks that didn't get done over the summer.

I've had "staining the deck" on my to do list the entire summer and now that it's cooling down I was able to finally mark it off this past weekend. Sean put stairs on the deck a few weeks ago and replaced a few deck boards that were warping. It needed a nice staining to make everything look uniform. It looks beautiful, if I do say so myself.

Here is the before:

Here is the after:

I had the best helpers to help me clean off the deck and pry acorns from between the boards.

Sean got the seals replaced on the hydraulics on the skid loader and located the battery drain so it's in tip top shape now. First order of business is scooping out the horse pen. It did great! We're so happy to have some way of actually picking up the manure rather than just pushing it out of the way.

Sean is still figuring out how to drive it and maneuver the bucket and had a little accident with the fence. Oops. Thankfully it was an easy fix.

Since we live out in the country we are forced to use the only semi-fast internet service provider around. We have a dish on our room which has a line of sight with a giant tower several miles away. The down side to this kind of internet is that trees grow and obscure the line of sight causing our internet to slow to a crawl. Our options were to put up a free standing tower in the yard or increase the height of the pole on our roof. We went with the cheaper option and increased the pole on the roof to a 10 foot pole. Ten foot required guy wires to keep it on the roof for when the wind picks up....and the wind picks up a lot around here. Sean went out last weekend and put it all up and I'm happy to say our internet is better. Not perfect but good enough to delay a tower in the yard.

Happy Halloween!

 Halloween is one of my kids top favorite holidays. They really love it. This year we got to go trunk or treating a couple of times, one of which is to our new church. Wesley is Harry Potter (he just got done reading the 4th book and loves it!) and Greta is a strawberry Shopkin (shocking!). I was buying the items needed to transform Wesley into Harry and didn't want to shell out $12 for a cheap wand. My friend Jessica suggested that I just sculpt one and so I did. Took about half an hour to sculpt, bake and fire it and I didn't have to buy a single thing to make it. He loves it.

Pastor John and Wesley

We love Gwen and her adorable dogs.

We don't get balmy 87 degree Halloweens very often. It's just lovely! The kids had a nice parade to show off their costumes at school. I'm going to miss our elementary school when Wesley goes to middle school.

His buddy Alex went as Steve from Minecraft in a very cool homemade costume.

I did not sign up to be room mom for Wesley or Greta this year but rather to just help out with the parties. It's so nice not adding that stress. I was in charge of fruit for Wesley's party and found this cute fruit kabob idea. Kids loved it!

Fall Festival

Every year for as long as I can remember we've been going to our towns Fall Festival. I wasn't going to bring the camera this year because we go every year what's new? Why put pictures up on the blog about something we do each year? Then I thought, why not. I've been posting this stuff for eight years now, why stop? So here are the pictures. The kids love the parade and all the candy and the craft fair has become a favorite with Greta and I.

Happy Fall y'all! 

Puppy Love

It's been three weeks with this face.

I'd like to say I've gotten a lot of work done in those three weeks.

But I haven't. I sit with this warm, sleepy puppy on my lap.

It's relaxing yet unproductive.

I'm ok with that. He'll be all grown up soon enough.

A Week with Winston

It's been three months since we said goodbye to Sophie and I've got to say it's been quiet. Too quiet. She was the instigator with the other two dogs. She ran in the backyard with Cody. She and Chance were best buds too, he thought she was his girlfriend (if you know what I mean). So for these past three months we've had two moping, depressed dogs. They just lay around and sleep all day.

So I started telling Sean we needed a puppy. The conversations started like this:

Me: "I think we might need a puppy around here."

Sean: "No way, no how. There will be no more dogs, two is plenty."

Me: "Come on Sean, it would be fun! The kids would love it, it would liven up the other dogs."

Sean: "It's so calm around here, I like calm."

Me: :(

So it went on like this for about a month. I'd keep inserting a puppy into conversations, wearing him down. It finally worked. It took a lot of convincing but finally I got a "if it would make you happy, then get a puppy." I have the best husband ever!

So I signed up for all the local puppy pages on facebook and looked up breeders in the area. Finally, two weeks ago a local lady posted a litter of Boston Terrier pups on facebook and I fell in love. I've always had a soft spot for Boston Terriers. Not sure where it comes from as I've never known anyone with that breed. But I've always loved their squished noses and compact little bodies. They are the perfect size, right around 20 pounds.

So last Sunday I took my Mom and picked out a puppy. Meet Winston, the eight week old terror.

He is a five pound ball of energy. He runs and runs around the house with a kids sock in his mouth and then crashes and sleeps upside down for 2 hours.

I love photographing him when he's sleeping. It's the only time he's still. Every picture I have of him awake is blurry, he's constantly in motion.

Potty training is easier than I thought it would be. He does pretty good about holding it in his kennel at night and when I have an errand to run. Problem is when I do take him outside he's so distracted by everything outdoors that he forgets to potty. There are cats to chase and leaves to eat. The wood chips around the trees are a constant source of enjoyment as are the chickens. He doesn't know what to make of the chickens yet.

I'd like to say that he's made friends with Chance and Cody but they can't stand him. He chews on Cody's tail and chases Chance around the house. They've given him plenty of warning barks and snaps but he's not getting the drift. I hope time will help their relationship.

Here is a video of the night they all met. Chance was pretty playful that night. Since then, not so much.

Birthdays!

It's that time of the year again. The cool, crisp mornings, the leaves beginning to change and a certain six year old daughter running around excited for her birthday. It usually starts a good month in advance.....her excitement that is. She'll start counting down the days and telling me all the toys she wants. This year was no different. Greta had a lovely seventh birthday.

She's getting so big! She is, by far, the tallest kid in her first grade class. Most people mistake her for a third or fourth grader. Her cousins came for her party this past weekend and she got to invite her best friend from school too. She's very much into Shopkins and had a Shopkin themed party.

My Dad also celebrated since they share a birthday. We had a nice dinner and cobbler that evening so as to not let his birthday get overshadowed by the Shopkin crazed seven year old. :) Happy Birthday Pops!

We try to do something a little special for the "unbirthday boy" (Wesley) and this year I bought him a set of two steering wheel controllers for the WiiU and rented Mario Kart 8 from the library. It was a hit! I'm pretty sure everyone tried their hand at that game, some we had to pry the steering wheel from their hands at the end of the day. Fun times!

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.

The Skid Steer

 If you remember, last weekend we brought in 15 big round bales to feed the critters, and I was complaining how difficult it was to move 1000 pounds with nothing but your hands. Well fast forward to today. We bought a skid steer to help out with all the heavy duty projects we do around here. We like the idea of a tractor but a good tractor with a front end loader is more than we want to spend right now, but skid steers....they can be quite affordable.

Sean found this one for sale and went and picked it up on Friday. It starts right up and runs like a champ. It's a diesel with a ton of hours on it that has been used at a stone retail shop but will be perfect for us to move round bales, put gravel on our driveway, clean out the horse pen and countless other projects we do. We're pretty excited about it.

Here is a video of Sean unloading it. He did great considering it was his first time driving it! The trailer we rented was an awesome hydraulic lift trailer. It raises and lowers with a switch, which was great for unloading stuff like this.