Was it a Sign? 5k Race & Corporate Sponsors

Posted on June 16, 2017 by farm2011

I believe in signs and fate so when I had a couple of things happen to me on Friday, well I took it as a Sign. 

See I planned on getting to bed early tonight because we have a very busy weekend coming up and I just had it in my head that this is what I needed to do. Now I mean that I wanted to go to bed early, I’m talking like 9:30 or 10:00. But there was a couple of things that I really wanted to get done and so guess what time I got to bed? If you guessed around 2:00 then you are a winner. 2:00 is a far cry from 10:00 don’t you think! 

I even amazed myself because I really wasn’t too tired as the day went on and then came the second sign. I was shaving my legs for the big run tonight, you know so less wind resistance 🙂 and then I dropped my shaver in the shower. Now no big deal and because I was in a hurry it didn’t surprise me that it ended up on the floor. But then what happened next was a bad thing. See as I moved my feet to see where the shaver went, I stepped on it. Have you ever stepped on the blade of a shaver before? If you have I really feel sorry for you because when it cuts the bottom of your toes that REALLY hurts! So now I’ve got blood all over and once I got the bandaid on it I thought I was OK. Yea, not so lucky! It bled through the bandaids and now what was I going to do? Well I ended up finding a pile of old bandaids tucked away in one of the containers in the bathroom and was back in business again. After putting around 5 or 6 of them on my toe to give it more of a wrapped brace it seemed to work much better. AND I was able to walk again. 

The next sign for the race was when I was registering. I went to the table and said Hi to everyone and was going to pick up my shirt. After I looked around for a little bit and didn’t see one I found out that they didn’t have one for me. They said that one of our kids had picked it up for me along with my racing bib number. Not good. This wasn’t good because now it was at our house and I won’t have time to get there. They did get me another one and now I was in business. 

So with around 3 1/2 hours of sleep, a cut foot that won’t stop bleeding, no shirt, and no racing number … I was Ready! I thought is that all? Come on I could take even more if I was given it! And luckily nothing more did happen and after Daryl and Kyle sang  the National Anthem we were off and running. 

I was really nervous about this run because I’ve only ran maybe two times before the race and in those 2 times there was no way I would make 3 miles without walking. But with all the signs that tonight was going to be different was there and I just knew that I was going to be under 30 minutes. 

And guess how I did? Did I beat my goal of 30 minutes? Nope. I guess so much for signs huh? 

But check out the shirt sponsors, especially the 12th one! 

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Upcoming Soap Show

Posted on June 15, 2017 by farm2011

I’m in another show this weekend and I really like going to this location. See it’s a barn on a farm. Yup, just right up my alley right? 

Because of the Irish Fest happening in our town this weekend, I’m not able to stay all day a the show so I have set up my display and then the owner of the barn takes a percentage of the sales. It works good for her and also for me. 

And when I bring my handy dandy shelving unit, the setup is fast and easy! 20170615_193912_resized

Once I was ready to go, I stopped over at one of the two cabins that they rent out and I had to try really hard not to find a spot on one of the rockers for the night! I can see why these cabins are rented out almost every week and weekend!

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So when I’m driving home I noticed the really cool clouds that were forming in the sky and just couldn’t help but to take a couple of pictures on how I could see them change as I was driving tonight. I apologize in advance if your’e sick of looking at cloud pictures that people have been sharing  – but here are some more. And I’m thinking these are probably so much cooler than other ones that you’ve been looking at anyway 🙂

The night ended with a lightening display that you can see in the last two pictures. There was quite a few storms in our area tonight with high winds and hail and luckily we only had a lightening display. 

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And I have come to the conclusion these past couple of days that things just look different when you’re riding in a farm truck. You know,  just in case you were wondering about that.

 

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Setting up the museum

Posted on June 14, 2017 by farm2011

This was the second night that we’ve spent in the local Hardware store setting up a pictorial museum for our town. See it’s getting close to the Irish Fest which will be starting on Friday and every year we have to set up the display with pictures of not only some really cool history but we try to include some current things going on in our town too. 

But this year we’ve got some awesome help! Check these guys out! 20170610_152122_resized

The setup has gone so much better than it ever has and I couldn’t be more grateful for all the help that we’ve been given to get ready. 

We even had some volunteers come and wash the huge windows that are in front of the building. Now how can you say that small town America is gone when you have these kind of volunteers? 

I had to snap a couple of pictures also of our local volunteer fireman who spent the last couple of nights washing the streets. I don’t know what it is about this, but I just think it is so cool. 20170614_192641_resized

So at the end of the night we were able to get the whole display set up and now the next thing to do? Well was to have a great time this weekend!  

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Rock Stars

Posted on June 13, 2017 by farm2011

We are Rock Stars. Now I’m not bragging or anything like that, but strictly stating the facts. Rock Stars.

See my friend and I have been golfing for quite some time now – we’re guessing around 14 years. And in those 14 years we’ve come a long way. For many years, maybe around 9 or 10, we never could seem to get all 9 holes done. We had gotten really good at the ole wave them by gesture and it usually started around the 4th hole 🙂  

So after we had tackled actually golfing 9 holes (all in one night!) just a couple of years ago  we thought that we might be able to go to a tournament sometime in 2018. So our next challenge was to try to golf without cheating so much. And this challenge had gave us a run for our money. We would almost get to finishing up the 9th hole and then we’d cave and cheat.  

Well that was until tonight. So we played all 9 holes and we didn’t even cheat ONCE!! Now was our scores something to be proud of? I can honestly say …. no.  But we didn’t cheat and that was something to be proud of. 

Now I’m sure you are asking yourself what was our next challenge? Well our next challenge was to pay all 9 holes, hitting our own balls ( not playing best ball), AND not cheating. Whew! I sure hope we are able to do a lot of golfing this year because we’re going to need the practice!  

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It’s raining!

Posted on June 12, 2017 by farm2011

Yesterday was another one of those crazy windy days so we were glad that we were able to haul our new mattress home for the 60 miles from the store and not have it blown off. We had it strapped down pretty good and it stayed put until we were about a half of a mile from our farm and then started to lift up a bit.

And guess what? We bought the mattress in good time because today there was some storms that ended up blowing through and dumping about an inch of rain on the area. And to make it even better we didn’t even get a storm with it! Yup, it was a good day.

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I brought the dogs in early before it started to rain and do you think Kaiser is making himself comfortable? I don’t remember giving him one of our good couch pillows so he must have thought he needed one.

20170612_185848_resized While Reno just lays quietly and doesn’t cause any trouble. I think she just wants us to  forget that she’s there and will be able to stay in the house longer.

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Todays the day!

Posted on June 11, 2017 by farm2011

Today is a big day in our house and I mean a BIG day!  Now I’m sure you are wondering just what makes today so special? 

Well today we are getting a new mattress set!  S C O R E !!! 

See we have been talking about getting a new mattress for about 23 years. Yup, you read this right – 23 years. And do you know why we never can buy one? Well it’s because we couldn’t agree on what we should get. 

Should we get a mattress that is a Sleep Number kind? Or should we get one that has a pillow top? The ones I liked he didn’t and the ones that he liked I didn’t. 

So to help with our decision I’ve been talking to my chiropractor and he recommended buying a Beautyrest Mattresses. OK. It’s a done deal. Today we are going to town to get a Beautyrest Mattress. 

With Daryl not so much of a shopper, he said he only wanted to go to 2 stores to ‘shop around’ it wasn’t much of a choice where we should look. We tried to find stores where they sold Beautyrest mattresses right? 

After we checked out the first store – off we went to the second store. This mattress store had big signs in their window – Beautyrest Mattresses sold here. OK, here we go. 

Well we both knew that we were not leaving without a mattress and when we were walking up to the front door of the store Daryl turned to me and said let’s make some salesperson’s day. I knew that it was go time! 

After laying on a couple of mattresses in the store and at this point remembering that we are supposed to look at Beautyrest mattresses – well we found one that we both can live with and we bought it. And guess what? It’s not a Beautyrest. I don’t remember what it is but it’s got cooling gel in it and each spring is double wrapped or something, along with a list of why it is going to be so awesome! 

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Now the big challenge. Can we get it upstairs? See this is also another reason why we haven’t bought a new bed for so many years. The last time we did,  we had to take off all the woodwork going upstairs and even do a little ‘remodeling’ as we went inching our way up the steps of our old farmhouse with the bed set. It was terrible!

But we were determined to get this taken care of today and with luck on our side we didn’t have any trouble. But I’m thinking the split box spring helped us quite a bit this time. It was $50 extra which in our case was a no brainer! 

Next on our list? What to do with the old box spring. We both knew that it wasn’t going to go back downstairs, so just like that Daryl had an idea. And soon I could hear the chain saw just a humming in the upstairs hallway and he had kind of a funny look in his eyes as he started to cut up the bed. I swear I would not have been surprised if all of a sudden Chevy Chase would have shown up. It was definitely one of those moments. So with the old box springs propped up against the banister and Daryl using the chain saw upstairs in our house, I was just waiting for our banister to be cut in half. But with good luck there was no problems and soon we had it downstairs and the vacuum was just humming upstairs to clean up all the sawdust. Check this off our list! 20170611_185458_resized

 

 

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Wind please GO AWAY!

Posted on June 10, 2017 by farm2011

To say that it’s been windy here is, well, it’s an understatement! I have no idea just how many days it’s been windy, but seriously this is just about enough don’t you think? 

With the weather in the 90’s and around 40 mph wind every day it’s really hard to stay positive. Because you know how much I just Love wind right? Wrong! 

But I haven’t freaked out yet and I’ve even spent pretty most of this Saturday mowing lawn. I had the hardest time mowing today than I’ve ever had in my life! See the wind was blowing the grass so hard that I didn’t know really where I was supposed to be mowing. And then when I turned around to mow back again I saw how terrible of a job I did. I know it sounds really dumb, but it’s true! So at the end of the day I think I did an OK job ? Seriously at the end of the day I really didn’t care 🙂

 

 

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It’s Parade Time!

Posted on June 7, 2017 by farm2011

The company that I work for always participates in the local parade that the town puts on and this year was no exception. 

The hardest part of the float is to try to figure out just what we should do. See last year we were given the Float Champion award and we wanted to get it again this year! 

So with a lot of talk and ideas thrown around we finally had the idea. And it was a good one!! 

The guys spent a lot of time working on it and getting everything built and up and running. See the theme of the parade was ‘You’ve got to Moo-ve it Moo-ve it’ so we put speakers on the float just cranking out the music, and we were going for the idea that the cows were exercising. Now before you say.. yea I’ve seen that done before, let me explain just how it all looked. 

This is our float. Pretty awesome right? 

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This is the other side of the float showing the windmill that would turn as we went down the parade route.

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The 5 cows on the float represented the different types of milk; Skim, Whole, Chocolate, 2%, & 1%. And with the music playing, the cows were on a crank system that they all were dancing with their ear tags just a swinging back and forth to the music. Then we also had an employee in a cow costume on the back of the truck pulling the float just dancing like there’s no tomorrow to lead the whole herd.  Every so often you would hear cow bells going off and the cow in the back of the barn would have it’s tail lifted and out would come a ‘pile’ of tootsie rolls that fell onto a farmers shovel. Genius. The shovel of  the tootsie rolls then would be thrown out into the crowd by the farmer. We even made the front page of the local newspaper! Yup, our company really kicked it up a notch this year!! 

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 I spent both parades helping in the barn but I could hear the kids all screaming outside as we were going down the parade route and the parents yelling ‘watch this!’ Then they all would laugh and the kids would scream again once they had candy coming their way.  

It was a great time and it was by far one of the best floats that I’ve ever seen! The guys did a fantastic job and guess what? We won the Float Champion award again this year!  Yup, Rock Stars!!  

 

 

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Bicycles

Posted on June 4, 2017 by farm2011

OK, so we had the wedding this Spring. Which was Awesome if I say so myself! 

And I spent two days at a Vendor show for my soap – check it off! 

What’s next? Well it’s time to go Bike Riding!! Daryl’s been spending quite a few hours getting field work done,  but this afternoon we got the bikes out and all cleaned up from the winter storage and headed out for a ride.

IMG_20170605_153030_147It was GREAT! Every spring I realize how much I miss riding my bike and I sure hope that I can get in some more rides soon.  

I remember a conversation that I had with my Dad a very long time ago. We were on the farm and I must have been about 8 years old. He needed a wrench or something and asked me to go and get it. Well of course I was at the time sitting on my white and pink banana bike with a white basket on the front of it with 3 plastic flowers gracing the front of the basket. (Can you tell that I absolutely LOVED my bike?) Well I was on my bike and was going to take off and get the tool that dad needed. Now I rode my bike everywhere to do everything. I even joined Little League in our local town just so I could ride my bike on a ‘Hard Road’ aka pavement which was a very big deal when you live on a gravel road.  So like I said off I was going to go the tool shop to get the wrench. Then I heard my dad say “that if God wanted girls to ride their bikes all the time he would have given them bike wheels instead of feet” and without missing a beat I remember saying back to him that “God invented bikes for girls to ride!”. I never looked back to see what my dad was doing and if he was going to get mad or not at me with my fast comeback, but it must have been OK because we never had that conversation again 🙂  

My only regret? Not keeping that totally awesome banana bike throughout the years. I’m not sure what I’d do with it now, but it would have been pretty cool just to have it. 

Posted in Riding bikes | Comments Off on Bicycles

It’s Show Time!

Posted on June 3, 2017 by farm2011

I woke up this morning knowing that I had a couple of things left to do to get ready for the vendor show, but of course I underestimated the amount of time that it was going to take. Yea, not a surprise right?

So I’m frantically wrapping the rest of the bath bombs and just trying not to wreck any of them. And of course when I’m doing this you think I could get the plastic bags apart easily to put the into? Not a chance. I literally stopped and took a breath and reminded myself that I had plenty of time and then I started up again. And it turns out that I did have more than enough time to get everything ready for the show.  

Now with my rest of my bath items in the car I’m on my way to the location to set my soaps out and enjoy the day. See I never leave my soaps out overnight because if it rains – well the only thing that I’d have left would be bubbles. Especially the bath fizzy’s!! 

I’ve taken the big cow picture out of our kitchen, the flowers out of our living room, the wreath off of our front door, the table runner from our kitchen table, the quilt off our bed, the shaving table from our bathroom,  and with my ‘new’ table from Penny’s Store I must say that I’m really pleased how it all looks.

20170602_110052_resized So now it’s show time and the Friday’s crowd didn’t seem like it was overpacked during the day. I seemed to have a steady crowd at my booth and I’d realize later that today was one of my best days so far. SCORE! 

And I think I’ve got a perfect spot for my booth. Not only location, but where I’m sitting there is a vendor that makes and sells American Doll clothes. We all kind of keep our same spots so when I’ve seen her the last two shows that we were at,  I seriously just thought that these were dolls clothes. With raising two boys, I know nothing about The American Doll scene. But getting back to this ladies booth …. I would see these girls come up to the booth and just look at each little dress or outfit very closely. They would take it off the rack and hold it up, check it out, look at each other and say something, then pick the next one off the rack and do it all over again. Then eventually one of their Mom’s would stop by and the discussions really started. Finally they all would nod and have a couple of new outfits picked out for their dolls.  I know that I was supposed to be focused on selling my soap, but these girls and the doll dresses were so much fun to watch! 

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The vendor show lasted two days and Saturday was packed! The weather was perfect and the crowd was in a spending mode which was good for me. I must say that I was lucky this weekend with sales and I feel that it was a successful two days. I had exceeded my goal of what I hoped to sell and was very pleased on how the days went. I had my belly full from a local vendor from dinner

20170602_144848and my car packed to head back home,  being careful not to hit what was waiting for me on our gravel road! 

20170610_084824_resizedBut the time I pulled into the garage and shut the car off I was pretty tired and needed a hot bath. Hummm I wonder where I put those leftover bath soaks?  🙂  

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