Singing

Tuesday was the 3rd grade concert at the elementary school. They sang 6 folk songs, one of which was the slower version of "Cotton Eye Joe".

Not the song I recognize but.....

We are gearing up for the end of the year. I'm madly working on teacher quilts - I stopped yesterday on my way home to get some flat sheets to back them in - much cheaper than fabric and should look just as nice. Hopefully I'll have some finished pictures to show shortly......

Have a great day!
Kris

Calves

The calves are getting big.

The brown and white spotted one was born crippled somehow. Her back legs seem to be double jointed at the hock and hip. At first we thought she would not make it, and were actually in the process of acquiring a dairy calf to orphan onto Mom.

But she pulled through, and now is the fastest calf out there. She's still double jointed, but growing, running and playing.

So we are leaving her alone for the time being. 3 different vets have said she is in no pain, and she just may compensate for being double jointed. It's a shame, because she is easily by far the nicest calf out there.

I'll try and take a video of her tonight to upload.

The cows are getting plump. We are still waiting on 2 of them to have their calves - which should be happening before the 1st of June with any luck.

And Tyler has informed me that I have "no picture on here of him and his calf" so here's a picture of Tyler and Mittens.

Have a great day!
Kris

Life

Happy Belated Mother's Day everyone!

We had another wonderful weekend. Which wasn't very stressful either - how did I luck out?

I did have to work for about an hour Saturday morning, rather last minute but....it got us up and moving before soccer games. Tyler's team won (5-3 and Tyler scored 3 goals). Jessie's team lost 4-5, but gave them a run for their money at least. Then in the afternoon I cleaned the house really well, and worked some in my flower beds.

Yesterday we spent most of the day outside. We are putting in another flower bed (which will make 11) and so Todd and the kids spent quite a bit of time hacking down the weeds that had grown up and leveling off the dirt. We had great plans 3 years ago to put a rock garden in that corner of our yard, but never got around to it. I think it's finally happening! Whooo Hooo! Although the rocks I want out of our woods - everyone's saying it should be the boulder garden hehe.

We also cleaned out Jessie's steer pen and both kids' pig pens and bedded everyone up with fresh straw, fresh water. And we weighed her pigs.

And we have all decided Jessie will be turning heads at the pig show at the fair in September. She has really been putting forth a lot of effort with her animals, and has her pigs to the point they follow her around (kind of like the Pied Piper). She is supposed to walk behind them driving them where she wants them to go in the ring - but they prefer to follow her. Her advisor says "I'm sure she is going to catch the judges eye at the fair if she takes them in this way".

Sorry for the blurry photo - but she has to walk really really fast so they don't catch up to her and trip her up, and she was trying to walk backwards to boot.

Tonight I am going to a flower and vegetable garden about 5 miles from our house - Todd told me to buy something for my mother and his mother for Mother's day, and while I'm there get a few things for your new flowerbed. So I'm sure I'll come up with a few things. Which I had better empty out the back of the Durango so I have plenty of room.

Have a terrific Monday everyone!

Kris

Still here....

Between working a little extra (which I am really not complaining about in this economy) and end-of-the-school-year busyness, well.....last night I met myself coming and going!

Jessie is so into this whole 4-H project thing. Doesn't help that she got her project books, and she can be a little OCD (read: anal) like her mother. And she will tell you this. At least she doesn't say she has a mouth like me, right?









I have been trying to organize my time a little better - and usually right when I come home from work (around 2:30-3:00) I've been spending time cleaning the house. Just for an hour. And baking something. The kids are revolting that I am not buying fruit snacks and double stuffed oreos anymore but....they have their choice, homemade cookies, frozen fruit or crackers for their snacks now.




Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I found the recipe on a blog yesterday. I'll look for it later today and post a link here. This is a recipe that will need tripled in our house. It made 38 big cookies. Which are mostly gone now. And I really need to get a cookie jar.

I had to hide some to put in Todd's lunch for today:

Then I have been trying to spend an hour (or more) in the evenings playing in my flower beds. Nothing as intensive as what my Mom is doing to her flower beds at the moment but.....the dandelions are not my friends this year. At least the chickens like them:)

Last night I thought Midnight had the right idea:

So I sat on my swing for 10 minutes and saw this:

While the kids were playing something on the trampoline. I don't know what EXACTLY they were playing, other than it involved a hose and lots of yelling "Pull him up NOW". Ok then.

And I was off and running to make sure chores were done, baths were taken and the kids were ready for bed at 8:00:). Which I then realized as I was starting to fill feed buckets that I had ALREADY fed the steers (or rather, I had helped Jessie feed them when she was done washing and drying Oreo). Duh.....

Have a great day!
Kris

Tuesday

I guess my tendencies to overfeed are transferring to the animals as well......hehe

We've had the pigs for a week now, and have gone through a little over 100 lbs. of feed. We should have gone through about 60. So I call a friend of ours, who has been a BIG help in working with the steers, getting things going for these pigs...... And they are WAY bigger than they should be. Which I never weighed the feed - and apparently what I should have been feeding to 2 of them, I've been feeding to one of them.

Ooops! So we spent an hour last night modifying their diet. And they are actually fuller and happier after eating. Although I've been instructed and warned NOT to feed them until he stops over to see how much they ate this morning - and we will adjust accordingly.

Even if they start telling me they are hungry. (which they shouldn't be as when I went out to feed them this morning they still had food left from last night).

On other news, my bleeding hearts are blooming up a storm. I really, really wish they would bloom all summer! I have (or should have) white ones somewhere.....in amongst the weeds in the 1 remaining flower bed I have to clean out!

The local produce market starts up this Friday - I think I'm going to see what I can find. Maybe some flowers, maybe some early veggies......we'll see what comes home with me.

Monday

What a great weekend. We went and looked at a calf Friday night, Saturday morning both kids had soccer games (it was FREEZING, but at least the sun was out) and during the afternoon I mowed the yard and started working on my water garden.

We had gotten it dug last year, the liners in and filled with water and fish. And then it sat. Todd was working Saturday afternoon, so I started hauling rocks. I have all the rocks around it and we are to the point of leveling the dirt around it, putting down mulch and planting flowers (ignore all the weeds - I can't get in there with the riding mower, so we had to spray them last night).

Our plan is to turn the old, small pond into the filtration system for the bigger pond, and have a stream connecting the two of them. And that still needs done, but that involves lots of shovel work .....and the shovel doesn't fit my hands, really.

When we went to PA in early April, Todd's uncle gave us 4 purple martin birdhouse gords. We got them up a couple weeks ago, and last night saw birds flying all around them.

We were so hopeful they were purple martins, but it turns out they were tree swallows.

So the gords came down, we put bluebird houses up last night, and hopefully the swallows will relocate!

And Tyler and Jessie were able to walk their heifers this weekend - this is Tyler and Mittens.

Have a great day!
Kris

The usual.

I've gotten some great fabric lately, on sale as well:



I think these fabrics will make a wonderful 9 patch quilt.....I found some cream at the local quilt shop, on sale.....so......I should be all set. Of course, Jessie saw them and wants a new quilt for her bed. Apparently the flip flop quilt and the lots of boxes quilt that are in progress are too bright for her now!

I realized yesterday morning that I did not put a label on the quilt for Tyler's teacher! So I quick did this one and hand sewed it to the back of the quilt before going to the party.


Which she loved the quilt! What a relief. I'm always worried that someone will not love a present I make as much as I do.


I don't think we have ANY plans for the weekend - other than soccer and the kids have a birthday party to go to on Sunday.

Jessie got accepted for the summer enrichment program sponsored by our local college. It's only for 2-3 weeks the end of July/beginning of August, I think, but we have to pick out her classes now (they can take 3). One of the classes is for math, but it's somehow connected to the Civil War Underground railroad and making the quilt blocks that people used as signals. She thought that one sounded cool, and there was one for science and birds. After I talked to her teacher (to see if anyone else from her class was going - thinking carpooling) she was the only one from her class to get accepted. Which she is apparently fine going off by herself for the time and meeting new people, but this is also going to put a crimp into the summer camps she wants to go to. I haven't mentioned the summer camp dilema to her yet - the enrichment program is WAY cheaper than summer camp:)

Other than that, it has just been the usual here. Waiting for the rain to dry up - if it would just come down at once we'd be fine - but no.....we get a little here, a little there.......ugh.

Have a great weekend!
Kris