Almost ready

Posted on April 3, 2014 by farm2011

I’m really close to being ready for Saturday’s baby shower  and it’s a good feeling. I still have a couple of things to do, but they aren’t going to be too bad so that’s good.

What have I done so far? Well the first thing that I worked on was to ask both Kyle and William to let me know what is their favorite picture and then I made an enlargement and mod podged it to a large matting. Well of course when I picked up the matting it was the wrong size, so a mad dash to Waterloo and I finally had the correct one. But I don’t know if it’s the less expensive matting or what, but I’m having trouble with getting the photo’s to lay down flat. So after redoing both of William’s pictures twice, I am going to have to figure out a different way to keep the photo’s flat before they get hung. The next thing was to clean up some of the flower beds and put some mulch down.

Before picture of the old milk house flower bed

Before picture of the old milk house flower bed

After picture. It would look so much better with the building repainted and flowers - but it's the best I can do for now

After picture. It would look so much better with the building repainted and flowers – but it’s the best I can do for now

Now the area by the old milk house doesn’t get too scattered by the chickens, but man they go to town by the Roadhouse. But I got it cleaned up and that was another good job done! I ended up having to literally sweep the grass to try to get all the mulch in one area. I guess I could have used a rake , but if you want the truth.. I was too lazy to try to find one. This winter has taken a toll on William’s greenhouse so I quick put some of the panels back on it. I have to get that back into shape because soon I want to use it to start the garden seeds. Well, I hope anyway!  After I drug out some of the lawn chairs to let the rain clean off some of the winter dirt, I went inside to work on making sure that there is enough seating. Another table and a few more chairs and I think I’m good. I decided to put down brown craft paper on the tables and then stamped them with baby stamps instead of the usual table clothes. I’m trying to stay with the brown and blue theme you see. A couple of baby things hung on the wall and a Congratulations poster is also up now. I’ve got the serving tables all set and the gift table looks also really nice. The last thing on my list for the Roadhouse tonight was to reupholster this one rocking chair that I got at a garage sale about a month ago. I think I paid only $15 for it and it doesn’t need that much work to get it back into shape again.

The before picture

The before picture

I had some extra upholstery material left over so it wasn’t a bad job and better yet it didn’t take too long either! But I was trying to figure out where all the straw was coming from around the chair when I first started to take it apart. Then I saw that the chair must really be old! The cushion is stuffed with straw.DSCN8215 I was trying to find out when they actually used straw and the article that I saw on the web was in the 1920’s.  All I know is that it’s leaking straw for now but it looks good. DSCN8216 So all we have left is to make sure that the house is in good shape and vacuum the Roadhouse. And how does the new puppy spend his nights? Well, he’s learning from the experts.DSCN8212

The photo of the day is a picture of the eggs that Daryl picked tonight. Our chickens have started to lay again and it’s so nice to have fresh eggs! DSCN8219

Posted in Picture of the day, Roadhouse | 2 Comments

Working on crafts tonight

Posted on April 2, 2014 by farm2011

I’m still working on getting ready for the baby shower on Saturday and in my world that means trying to get everything done that I’ve probably put off for awhile. But my goal tonight was to get some of the decorations done and I was pretty successful with that. Now granted I didn’t get everything done that I wanted, but I did get most of it. My goal is to have everything ready for Saturday by tomorrow night because we are planning on heading out on Friday night for the next fish fry! You know, you just got to do what you just got to do right?

And an update on Little Kitty. I’m thinking of taking him to the vet to see if he is just depressed or if there is really something wrong with him. It’s got me worried so I might as well just do it and get it done! The only thing is that it really wasn’t on my overbooked schedule – but I’d feel much worse if he needed a shot or something.

As for the photo of the day? Well, I just hadn’t had time to get one done today again. Maybe tomorrow?

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Working on crafts tonight

Good People and Bad People

Posted on March 31, 2014 by farm2011

We all know that there are good people in the world. We see and get to be by them every day. We also know that there are bad people in the world and we all work very hard to try to stay away from them. We would like to think they don’t even exist – but we know that they do.

Why am I writing about this? Well because Kyle had met up with some people that were not very nice. What happened is that he was out for supper the other night and while they were in the restaurant he got his wallet pick pocketed. Yea, talk about not cool. Now we’ve tackled a lot of different situations before but never this one. I guess it was probably just a matter of time that this could have come up. Both boys travel a lot and it just shows that no one is ever safe. And what I told Kyle is that good thing that he didn’t have his Passport with him because that’s even more scary to have lost. When Kyle called I took a deep breath and thought to myself, don’t panic, don’t panic. But deep down I have to admit, there was some panicking going on!   So now the phone calls begin. I was able to put Fraud Alerts on his credit and debit card along with blocking and canceling them. I was also able to put a fraud alert on his drivers license. And then I put a fraud alert, blocked, and then froze his credit rating. I also registered to have any activity sent to my email so I can see if someone is trying anything with his accounts.  I had made copies of all his paperwork before he left and it really paid off for this. But as Daryl and I were talking about it, I don’t think that you should only be ready when you travel abroad. Now granted it’s still not cool when you’re out of the country if you get your stuff stolen, but you could have your wallet either misplaced or stolen right here in the good ole USA. So this weekend, I’m going to get our stuff scanned and saved. The good thing about Kyle is that we should have caught it in time so that he shouldn’t have any extra charges. And the person who stole it was just trying to make it work anyplace in Seoul. About every 5 to 7 minutes they were trying both his debit and credit cards in stores and were getting denied. The next thing that we had to figure out was to try to get him some money. With only being in South Korea a week he didn’t have any account set up in a bank, If he did, I could have money transferred over to him. So I bought him a wallet and two shirts and put some money in the wallet and then into the shirt pocket it went. I sent it express and he should get it by Thursday. Not that I want to know what to do in a situation like this, but I guess we did make it through it and more lessons learned. Like I said, there are worse things than this and as long as everyone is safe it’s not that bad. It’s just bad people.

Posted in Family | 1 Comment

Christmas lights and naps

Posted on March 30, 2014 by farm2011

It’s true. I finally got the lights off the fence and most of our trees that were decorated for Christmas. Now to my defense, the snow around the fence line finally melted this last week so I could even get to the lights. I did have trouble with William’s tree, and I’ll have to come back later with a ladder to get it untangled. But what a good job that was to have done! After the lights were packaged up and put away, the next thing was to get the Christmas tree down in the Roadhouse. We’re hosting my niece’s baby shower on Saturday and I’m thinking that the tree just wouldn’t fit the theme of the party. I had some time to also work out in the Roadhouse getting it re-organized and cleaned up. I really like how it’s set up now for Saturday and it should work pretty well. I’ve got some decorations to make yet and a few other things and then we’ll be ready! One of the things that I needed inside the Roadhouse today was water. Daryl had shut it off for the winter and it was time to get it back running again. He had to replace one of the valves so that meant he had to shut the water off to do it. DSCN8192It’s kind of weird because he’s climbed into the pit a lot since we’re married to work on something down there, but today I realized just how scary it is to have him in there in case something happened. But he just laughs and crawls down in.

Daryl coming out of the well after he fixed the water in the Roadhouse

Daryl coming out of the well after he fixed the water in the Roadhouse

And just how is Kaiser doing? Well my niece and nephew came over this afternoon to play with him and after quite a bit of playing tag and chasing a ball, the puppy was pretty tired. We turned the nipco on because it was getting kind of cold inside the building tonight and it didn’t take long when the kids were gone that the puppy just couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. He needed a nap after playing that hard. DSCN8202We let him sleep for awhile and then we got him up and brought him into the house to eat before he went to bed.  Now we noticed that Little Kitty was acting really strange all day today and didn’t want to eat anything and literally just moped around the house. If you picked him up he would just kind of bend in your arms and didn’t care about anything. So we finally came up with the idea that he must be jealous of the new dog. I mean, there really wasn’t anything wrong with the cat.

He wouldn't even LOOK at anyone today. Big baby!!

He wouldn’t even LOOK at anyone today. Big baby!!

And at the end of the day, Little Kitty was acting more like himself. I took a picture of him keeping an eye on the puppy when he’s in the house. Too funny!

Kaiser eating a snack before bedtime and Little Kitty not excited about this whole thing at all!

Check out Little Kitty watching from under the table

And I got done in the Roadhouse with what I wanted to do today, I froze the celery that was the fridge that I made the other day. Man oh man I think we’re really set for any soup or dish that is calling for celery to be added!

Maybe just a little bit too much celery

Maybe just a little bit too much celery

The picture of the day is one that Kyle took of some of the kids in his classroom in South Korea. The taller girl is the co-teacher for the room. The kids in his class are 4 to 5 years old.961020_683424016414_218968192_n

Posted in Family, Our dogs, Picture of the day | 1 Comment

Our Newest addition to our family!

Posted on March 29, 2014 by farm2011

OK, let me show you the really cute picture of our new puppy first and it just happens to be the picture of the day.

Adorable!!!

Adorable!!!

How sweet is that right? Well, we all just love him and he’s so spoiled already.

We were originally had to go all the way to south western Minnesota to get our new puppy, but the family that raised him was going to a volleyball tournament closer to us so score! It saved us 3 hours of driving and that’s never a bad deal right? So we were able to leave a little later than we originally thought and before we left William was in the laundry mode. He was trying to get as much laundry washed and dried as he could before he headed back to college tonight. After throwing some laundry in the washer and handing the last load to dry on the clothes line, we were off. A quick to pick up something to eat and on the road we went. We didn’t have any trouble finding the family and soon we were holding our new little puppy! The puppy is a boy and he seems pretty shy yet. You know you kind of forget that ‘new’ puppy smell. And to be honest it was also kind of strange being on the other side of this puppy business. We’re more used to be selling to the families not being one of the families that are buying. Now I really know and understand how anxious you can really be when you finally see your puppy. But we didn’t waste too much time and we headed back home again. We were racking our brains trying to think of a name and we all agreed on one. Our new puppies name is Kaiser. Now if you’re wondering why Kaiser it’s because Kaiser in German means Emperor. Cool huh. The ride home was uneventful and the kids took wayyyy too good of care of him. DSCN8158William and Jude took turns holding him and then they all crawled in back of the car and hung out. IMG_1430We knew that the 3 hours of driving might be a long time for a puppy not to go to the bathroom so we stopped at a rest stop/gas station so everyone could get out. The kids took Kaiser out to play and Daryl and I checked out the station. IMG_1428Now I have no idea why these huge statues were inside – but it looked like a photo op to me. IMG_1427I also laughed when I saw this one food display. Now normally no one thinks too much of this display in a gas station around us. But the other day I was watching a cooking show about cheese curds and she was making such a big deal that you can buy cheese curds in about any gas station in the midwest. So when I was watching it I thought, well yea. And then today I took a good look at not only this display, but there was also two other cheese curd and beef stick displays in this same gas station. I would love to hear what she would have said about that! IMG_1425Soon it was time to get back on the road and I really wanted to see if I could catch a picture of this really cool house that I saw this morning. You know how you think it was in a certain spot but reality was that it was about an 1 1/2 hours later? Yea, that’s what happened to me today. I was just sitting there with my camera just ready to snap the picture. I was also secretly worried that my battery was going to go dead in the mean time. But no big deal and when I finally saw it, Daryl pulled over so I could catch a shot.DSCN8170 He’s getting so good at letting me do this all the time! All of a sudden Daryl and I noticed how quiet it was in the car and when I looked back I saw this. DSCN8171Yup, everyone was sleeping. But when we pulled into our yard, well that was another story. Reno came to great us and I don’t think she knew exactly what to do. DSCN8173Kaiser was pretty shy at first, but later he would kind of dance around her and nip a little bit at her legs and nose. I was thinking at first .. poor Kaiser, but now I changed my mind and I’m thinking poor Reno! And with a new little puppy in our family – what an adventure this is going to be!

Posted in Our dogs, Picture of the day | Comments Off on Our Newest addition to our family!

The Wizard of Oz – Turkey Valley Community School

Posted on March 28, 2014 by farm2011

Our high school was putting on the musical ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and I was excited. I’ve never seen it done before as a school musical so I knew from the beginning that it was going to be good. I mean – who doesn’t like the Wizard of Oz right? And just by looking at the crowd tonight – I think everything was thinking the same. We went on Friday,  but we heard that Thursday night was almost a sell out crowd and tonight was definitely a full house! Yea for those kids!! If you have kids (or you) are in any type of musical or play that is being put on, well you know just how hard it is. The early and late practices… trying to get your homework done in between… and then actually getting some sleep to start the next day all over again. But the kids did a fantastic job and I just can’t help but be so proud of every kid up on that stage tonight. Great Job!

Posted in Community, Places to visit | Comments Off on The Wizard of Oz – Turkey Valley Community School

Exciting news!

Posted on March 27, 2014 by farm2011

We have exciting news! We are going to get a new puppy!! Yea!! We’ve been looking for a puppy for over a year now and we finally found a family in Minnesota that raises rough haired collies. You would think that these type of dogs wouldn’t be that hard to find, but trust me they are. Seriously who doesn’t love a dog that looks like Lassie?  So it was kind of fate how we finally got him. Kyle asked the day before he left if we were ever going to get someone for Reno to play with? And out of the blue Daryl said that he got a call from someone that we called over a year ago that just had a litter. So I quick called the number and it turned out that their female had 10 puppies and in less than 3 days 8 of them were spoken for. We are planning on picking our new puppy up on Saturday and I can’t wait!  I’ll try to post at least a couple of pictures of him this weekend 🙂

With Daryl still gone for work, I’m still doing chores and I just couldn’t stand wearing Daryl’s boots out for chores anymore. I know that I was walking like this Katkey guy, but man was it giving me shin splints. My legs were just killing me. I wanted to order this one type of boots  for chores, but just never did get that done. And of course I just had to have them tonight. So I went back to the farm store and found some that I’m pretty sure will work. I’m just hoping that Daryl doesn’t mistake mine for his and grab the wrong ones! These are his..

Daryl's boots

Daryl’s boots

And these are mine!

Sassy!

Sassy!

When I got home from town tonight was my chance to try them out. It was raining all afternoon and the cow yard was not cool. Let’s just say it looked like a make or break time for some good old chore boots! I needed to bring the corn inside the cattle shed so it wouldn’t get wet and I also didn’t want the cows to slip on the ice that was still in the yard, so into the slush and manure I went. To be honest it was kind of weird. I’ve never had a pair of tall farm boots before so I was giving it all that I had trying to find the worse places to walk.. and it wasn’t very hard to find the bad places. After opening up a round bale of hay and bringing some of that into the shed also, I decided that I’m going to like my fancy boots. My feet stayed nice and dry and the boots washed up really well under the water hydrant.

And to finish off my night was to work on some celery that I had in the refrigerator. Some of it was leftover from our stew supper on Saturday and some I had already.DSCN8147My plan was to get it started on the stove and then freeze it for later. I mean, what was I out if it didn’t turn out? Pretty much nothing.  But after cutting it up and getting it all in a kettle I’m thinking that we’ll have enough celery to last us about a year!DSCN8149

I’ve also become addicted to Pinterest and I found this really cool way to store extension cords. For some reason we seem to have a lot of toilet paper rolls in our house (??) and for this project you can use paper towel rolls too. It works slick. You just wrap your cord fairly tight and shove it inside the cardboard. I have usually used zip ties in the past,  but was tired of only using them only once and throwing that money away. This works so much better and it’s Free!DSCN8148

The picture of the day is a special one. I went over to Ma’s tonight to help return her wound vac that she’s finally done with. She found out today that it’s healing so well that she didn’t need it anymore. Hooray!!  Her original surgery was a little over 3 months ago and it’s such a good thing that she’s feeling so much better now. So to commemorate the occasion – the picture of the day is Ma!

Ma

Lookin’ Good!

Posted in Family, Our dogs, Picture of the day | 2 Comments

Life is a Project

Posted on March 26, 2014 by farm2011

I was thinking tonight about projects in general and how I plan around them. OK this sounds pretty deep I agree, but like I said I was thinking that when I just get done with this next project that I’m working on then I can relax and do nothing for awhile. But you know what? I don’t think there really is a ‘do nothing’ time. There’s always stuff going on isn’t there? I mean now that winter is hopefully over and this crazy wind will quit that’s blowing outside, Spring is going to come. And with Spring comes getting the yard ready and starting seeds for the garden. It also means washing windows and getting our bikes out. You also have to get the lawn furniture out and plant flowers in the yard.  There’s always something to do and I guess that’s just what it is. About a billion years ago I was in a grocery store in our hometown and someone asked me how it was going. I told him that it was so busy! At the time we had little kids and both of us working and milking cows …. so it really was pretty busy! And he looked me square in the eye and said that “Once you slow down and stop, there’s nothing to do but die”. OK, this is pretty radical but it must have made an impression with me. I mean this was a long time ago and I can still remember it like it was yesterday. So my long story is this – I have to remember that sometimes life is really just one big project and that there will always be something  just waiting around the corner to be started.

Chores have been going well with Daryl still gone. The house has been pretty quiet but Reno and Little Kitty have been keeping me company. I grabbed my camera tonight when I was doing chores and snapped a picture of the cows after they get corn. When you give them corn you have to make individual piles otherwise some of them get pretty bossy and won’t let the others eat until they’re done. It’s no big deal and so small piles of corn it is. I noticed No Ears coat tonight. I don’t know if it’s changing because it’s been getting a little warmer outside or what, but it’s kind of got a crazy wave thing going on.

Supper time!

Supper time! Ed, Tango, & No Ears. Sassy is hiding behind Ed

And my picture of the day is one that I took inside the barn tonight. To me it says, ‘It’s been a long winter’DSCN8124

Posted in Farm animals, Picture of the day | Comments Off on Life is a Project

Crazy Weather

Posted on March 24, 2014 by farm2011

Someone usually says this time of the year that if you live in Iowa and don’t like the weather just wait ten minutes and see what it’s like then. Well that statement couldn’t have been a more accurate today! I had heard that west of us was getting some snow and it was coming east. So it wasn’t a shock that it started to snow, but Holy Cow did it snow!

And this is when it was when the snow was stopping!

And this is when the snow was stopping!

And with Daryl gone for a couple of days I’m on chore duty. Of course I didn’t have them done so I thought I’d better get out there and get it done before it got worse. Now the smart thing to do would have been to check the radar, but I didn’t quite think of that at the time. I quick went down into the cellar and mixed up Scarlet’s milk and grabbed Daryl’s boots and made my way to the barn. Even though I couldn’t find any good farm boots this weekend, Daryl’s boots were working pretty good. He said that I reminded him of Catski someone when I wore them last night … (I’m thinking it wasn’t a compliment) they still got the job done! Now everyone was confused when I showed up in the barn. Reno was all excited and Scarlet just looked at me. With Kyle home these past months, he’s been taking on the chore duty, but now that he’s gone, William is back at college, and Daryl is gone for a week for work – I guess they’ll have to just be satisfied with me. Come to think of it, I think No Ears looked like she was having an apple craving . It’s a good thing that I planned on hitting the grocery store tomorrow! So the crazy snow last about 10 minutes, but in that 10 minutes you could hardly see walking through the yard. I grabbed my camera but I don’t think it does it justice how much it was snowing and blowing. And once it was over the sun was shining – Crazy! I also took a picture of our road where it’s been washing out. Our gravel roads for some reason are lower than the ditches so when the snow melts it causes all kind of trouble. This is the spot where you really have to slow down or man you’ll be in trouble!IMG_1406

So what’s on my agenda tonight with such a quiet house? Well I do have Little Kitty in the house and I’m guessing he’s happy he’s not outside. I never knew that cats could smile before we had Little Kitty. IMG_1416 Even Reno got inside tonight, don’t tell Daryl! Sometimes Daryl thinks I can’t get Reno’s  feet clean enough to stay inside but I wiped them down and he’s been sleeping on his blanket ever since. He even knows that if he got off his blanket the whole gig is over.

The picture of the day is one that I snapped when I was trying to catch how much it was snowing tonight. This is a picture of our old grove behind our house.IMG_1422

Posted in Farm animals, Picture of the day | Comments Off on Crazy Weather

Sunday Road Trip – World’s Smallest Church

Posted on March 23, 2014 by farm2011

To say that I was lazy today would be an understatement. I mean I even had my jammies still on at 11:00!! But I was tired. I know that I didn’t work that hard getting ready for the stew supper that we had at our church, but between that and getting Kyle off to Korea, really took it out of me. So like I said, I didn’t have much planned for today and was really OK with that.

So first things first. I literally watched two full movies today and it was GREAT! The first one I’ve never seen before and it was an old movie and the second one that I watched in the late afternoon was one that I’ve seen but it’s a scary one so I just had to watch it again. I did want to get a couple of things accomplished so it wasn’t a total loss of a day. I was able to get all our laundry done from what we used in the kitchen last night at the supper. I’m not sure why we used so many towels and rags, but they’re smelling pretty fresh right now and I’ll have to drop them off tomorrow night. I also got the kitchen cleaned up and a pan of bars made up. Then recycling was getting out of control and that’s when I decided to go on a drive. It needed to get done and it was a great excuse to check out this one river that I heard was overflowing with ice. With the car packed and cameras in the car, off I went. Daryl ran into work for awhile and I just wanted to make sure that I was home when William was coming through from his vacation. A bunch of kids went to Myrtle Beach and it sounded like they had a great time. I knew that it shouldn’t be an issue to be home in time so off I went. It’s always so good to get the junk out of the house that needs to get recycled isn’t it? I’m not that ‘green’ and it bothers me to have all that stuff in your house. But it’s a good thing to do, so we do it right? Then to see this river. And as I was driving on the back-roads to get there I realized that I was going to run out of gas pretty soon. Now wouldn’t that be about the most embarrassing thing? And it wasn’t something that I was going to be doing this Sunday, so I turned around on the road and headed back to find some gas. Of course the gas pump didn’t work at first and I knew that I had only a couple of miles until I was empty so it just HAD to work, but finally they got the pump going and I was back in business. I started back to see the river and I knew that I was close to the World’s Smallest Church. So of course I had to go right? I haven’t been there for many years and it was a good reason to go today. The church is nestled in right beside the river and it’s just a really cool place to go. I took a couple of pictures along the way though. The first one is this old abandoned house. I felt sad at first for it and then I thought it would be a great place to take some photo’s. There was a sign posted for no trespassing so I hurried up and snapped this one. DSC_0141The next one that I took was this old bridge that you drive over. If it looks old in this picture, it looks even older in person! DSC_0142Then finally I made it to the Smallest Church and I snapped a couple of pictures while I was there, so take a look. There is also a cabin behind the church so there’s a photo explaining how the cabin got there.

World's Smallest Church, Festina Iowa

World’s Smallest Church, Festina Iowa

World's Smallest Church - Festina, Iowa

World’s Smallest Church – Festina, Iowa

Inside the church

Inside the church

DSC_0144DSC_0150DSC_0149And then I finally found the river that our friend was talking about. This river goes past their farm and their road has been closed for quite some time now. The river in the picture below is what is covered in ice and trees. I think it looks pretty cool but I guess it wouldn’t look that great if your farm lane has been under water.

Check out the ice in the river! Doesn't Mother Nature know that it's officially Spring?

Check out the ice in the river! Doesn’t Mother Nature know that it’s officially Spring?

After I saw the river, I ran to the farm store to see if I could find myself some new farm boots. I didn’t have any luck but couldn’t believe how many people were shopping in there today! I did have a good laugh when I saw this truck in front of me driving around with three dogs in the back just running back and forth and barking at every house they saw. Now even though New Hampton isn’t a big town, there’s quite a few houses to bark at! I had to snap the picture fast (I was trying to drive and look for trains all at the same time!) and I only caught two of them. But it’s still a funny picture! DSC_0155

And I even got all my running down before William stopped by on his way back to college. It was a great weekend!

Posted in Family, Picture of the day, Places to visit | Comments Off on Sunday Road Trip – World’s Smallest Church