Happy Easter!

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter! We enjoyed some beautiful weather and had the traditional egg hunt in the back and front yard. Greta participated in her last city egg hunt (9 is the oldest you can be). The end of an era.

 Here is her first city egg hunt. She was so tiny! 

The church asked me to do a large painting for part of their Easter decorations. They wanted bright and colorful (after a very bleak winter). I found the largest canvas that could fit in my SUV which ended up being 3X4 foot and used acrylic paint. It was a hit.

My Sunday School class.

Winter 2019

I'm pretty sure I'm one of the millions of people affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder. You know, the winter blues? It's March, can winter be over already? I need green in my life. I need the sun in my life. We don't live in a very snowy area so I can't complain too much but enough is enough. We got a couple more inches last weekend and the temperatures have been bitter (it was 5 degrees last night). I feel bad for all the critters outside in these temperatures. The baby goats have done well for their first winter. I keep deep bedding in their house and they all snuggle together (I'm thankful I got two friend for Tag instead of just one).

They know I carry animal crackers in my pockets and try to climb through the fence.

The horses are doing ok. Rocky is ornery as ever. Desi is very sore on his front hooves still. He can hardly get around. He's on cushings medication but still sore. I'm not sure what the future holds for him. The horses don't seem to understand that if they stand too close to the goat pen the goats will eat their tails. So each horse has a tail that looks like a toddler got a hold of a pair of scissors. Why would goats eat horse tails?

We can't forget about sweet old Cody. He eagerly comes out with me each time I feed and does a perimeter fence check and eats a little horse poop. He's a good dog.

Go Kart

Craigslist and Sean are a dangerous combination. He found a go kart a couple of months ago. It was a $250 go cart. It looked like a $250 go cart. I believe Sean saw a diamond in the rough.

I've learned to just smile and say "whatever makes you happy". I do this because he does the same thing when I say "look at that poor animal, it needs a home".

He spent many weekends disassembling it, painting parts, fixing the engine and overall making it pretty and functioning.

The rooster likes to keep him company, crowing loudly into the shop.

He put some new wheels and fenders on it. He also rebuilt the seats that had rotten wood on the bottom. It was time for it's maiden voyage. The kids were excited, I (kinda) was excited. He took us all for trips around the muddy yard. Yes, helmets will be ordered soon.

Fenders might need a little work but I think that smile says it all. Good job Sean!

Dixie

One of the girls in our 4H club had raised three hens last fall. They were her babies and super tame. Well, a few weeks ago two coyotes ran up in broad daylight and took two of the three leaving her with one lone chicken. Poor Dixie the chicken was lonely so she was given to me to bring into my flock. I was under the inpression that I could just toss the chicken into my hen house one night and *poof* she'd be part of the flock. Turns out this is not how it works.

I set up a cage in the hen house and put Dixie inside. Let all of my chickens back in the hen house where upon the rooster decided to try to murder Dixie through the cage. She fought back pretty good and they managed to draw blood on each other's combs, this is through a cage mind you. So for several days I kept her caged and only let her out once the other chickens were locked out of the hen house for the day. Slowly they all got used to each other and now after nearly 2 weeks they can be left alone together. Poor Dixie is still not accepted and won't leave the hen house but at least they aren't trying to murder her anymore. Strange animals.

Odds & Ends

I was going through my picture gallery and found a few pictures that I wanted to share. Over Christmas the kids got to go over to my parents house to make pasta. They made the dough and once it was ready they put it through the pasta machine. They brought it home and I boiled it up. It was good! I think they enjoyed it, perhaps a pasta machine is in our future.

It's been cold here. Who am I kidding, it's cold everywhere in the country right now. This past weekend the wind chills had it down to -11 degrees. Our little Boston Terriers with their lack of fur don't think too much of this weather and sit and shake inside the 70 degree house. Whenever there is a warm body on the couch Beanie will be on it. She's a sweet little snuggle dog.

I have been busy sculpting. I had a request for a guinea pig and decided to try my hand at one. Betsy's sister-in-law had a beloved guinea pig in her classroom named George. He passed away so I made her a replica of George to sit on her desk. Her 5th graders enjoyed it, which made my day.

When it's too cold to do pretty much anything outside you go inside to eat. The kids had a day off so we went to our favorite deli to eat (they have the very best giant salad bar in town). Oh and free ice cream!

Our 4H club cleans up the local recycling center once a month and it was our month recently. You wouldn't believe how much junk gets blown around that place! It takes about half an hour but it sure looked nice when we left.

A few weeks ago it got into the mid 60's and we decided to go to the park to soak up some vitamin D while we had the opportunity. The kids slid rocks onto the partially iced over pond. Anyone else dreaming of spring?

ESports Convention

A few weeks ago Sean heard there was going to be an esports gaming event close to us. Now you might be asking yourself "What exactly are esports?". Yeah, I was asking myself the same thing when I heard it. Even after going to this event I'm still not sure exactly what it is. There were many people all huddled around their computers playing different competitive games. Lots of Fortnite and other such games. That, to me, wasn't the interesting part of this event (I mean I get to see that every day in the comfort of my own home).

What was neat to see was all the different virtual reality games that they had set up for people to try. They had a game set up that was similar to Guitar Hero but in VR. So you got to use these hand held devices that in the virtual reality game were light sabers. Then as the music played these boxes came flying toward you at the beat of the music and you used your light saber to slice them. It was very fun and addicting.

The event was being run in one of the local colleges engineering building. The building itself was very cool to walk through. The rooms weren't open to the public but they had all of their projects set up for display in the windows and we had a blast looking at all the awesome stuff these kids were making. One of the hits was the 3-D printing lab. So many neat things being made. Sean and I decided we wished we were going to college now rather than 20 years ago. Oh the technology advancements!

They had some other interactive VR displays up for people to try. Lots of kids lined up to try this one.

It's the little things that make the kids so excited. We found these odd chairs and had to try them out. I'm pretty sure we could have spent two hours just playing in these chairs.

I Love.....

I used to do one of these love posts every year on Valentine's Day and I haven't in quite some time. So here it goes:

I love......big hugs from big kids as they leave for school each morning......loud snores from sleeping boston terriers.......my sweet, good looking husband....chai tea lattes......comfy warm leggings.....snow days home with the kids (there have been many this winter!).....picking fresh lettuce for a salad off of the Tower Garden....Friday lunches out with my husband......watching Jeopardy every afternoon.....kisses on the cheek from Greta each night....Friday Family Fun Nights....collecting warm chicken eggs.....how much fun slime making is for Greta.....baby goat kisses.....our new high speed internet....Sean taking the kids to school each morning.....the kids yelling out "Best Mom and Dad ever!" as they go to bed.....getting sushi out with my girl....catching up on Game of Thrones with my hubby......seeing Wesley grow into such a responsible kid.....playing Skip Bo as a family.....finding awesome deals at Goodwill.....planning a garden.....singing in the church choir.....being a Mom to these two wonderful (not so) little people.

LR3

A few months ago I was looking through a new classified ad website that I'd never seen before and came across a Land Rover LR3 for sale for super cheap ($3K). I knew Sean was a sucker for these cars and he'd been expressing lately how uncomfortable his current car had become (his back has not been doing great). So off he went in the truck and trailer for a 10 hour drive to retrieve this non-functioning SUV. It had some suspension issues where air bladders that normally keep it up off the tires were not working correctly. So it was an unintentional "low rider" until Sean could figure out what was wrong.

He was excited for a project though, and it turned out to be one! It was well kept in its first home and then sold to a guy that used it as a construction/work vehicle, I believe to haul guys to and from work sites. It was really dirty on the inside with a large paint spill in the back seat. It took hours and hours (and hours) of scrubbing, vacuuming and detailing to make it nice again. Luckily leather cleans pretty well.

He fixed the suspension and got it running well and now has a great commuter vehicle. It's very comfortable! I'm happy he's happy. I'm also happy he's been taking the kids to school each morning, it's so nice!

40th!

My sweet husband turned 40 years old! Wow, where has the time gone? We had a lovely dinner out with my folks and came home to eat carrot cake and open presents. I got him a nice fire proof gun safe but keeping it a secret was quite the task! The store was running a black Friday deal with $200 off this safe but I had to keep it a secret for 2 weeks. So it sat in the back of the truck in the shop with a tarp over it. I'm sure he must have figured it out. Good times! Happy birthday Sean!