Animal Friday

Stitch when she was home last week. 

I've actually had a bit of OT available since last Friday and have managed to get a few hours in each day. Nothing like the thrill of working for time and a half to entice me to haul my ass out of bed at the outrageous hour of 350am all this week.

It was tough, but the nap that came around at 230p each day has been marvelous. 

I'll take it while I can get it. 

YAY for FRIDAY!

It couldn't come fast enough. 

toodles

Thirsty Thursday

Our trees are really starting to turn. 

I love the vivid reds.

This was taken a few days ago in town. 

I had the best time last night. 

We went to dinner at Krissy's place on the lake.

They have gorgeous lake front property. 

Caden having fun in their hammock. 

I should have taken more pictures, but I pretty much forgot everything while catching up with my old friend. So Caden was in charge of getting a few pic as we were leaving. 

You think he'd have noticed the big glare on the picture behind us, but nope he didn't lol

I can say Kris is my oldest friend. 

We talked as work acquaintances as far back as 1989. Got to be real friends a bit after that. She was the first one to come see me in the hospital after I had Colton. We have a history. A rich history of laughter and tears. I can't tell you how much I appreciated being able to spend a little time with her. 

I hope we can do it again soon.     

The boys are at baseball practice tonight and I just finished canning 11 pints and 2 quarts of hot peppers. I still have a ton of peppers out there, maybe I'll get some more done tomorrow. I ran out of lids so had to stop for now.

Our girl is cruising through to drop off her cats tomorrow.

She is going to LaCrosse to celebrate Octoberfest with the boyfriend and his family. 

That's it, I have to rescue my wine from the damn fruit fly's.

P.S.

Krissy makes the best garlic bread. Shredded fresh garlic mixed with butter slathered on hot bread --ummmmmmmmm

Course I have absolute dragon breath from deeeeep down today, but totally worth it :) 

This and that

All the kids were home this weekend.

We managed to squeeze in a few pictures.

Here are a few.

Chyann taking selfies to send to the boyfriend, Caden harassing her, Colton looking at the soil and plants growing in the field. Hubby telling me to hurry.

I think we got some good ones.

I thought the Sunday games might be cancelled, but nope the first game was played in the mist, rain and fog. They almost won this game! Had two runners on base when the last out was made and there wasn't enough time to start another inning. UGH...

By the second game the sun made an appearance.

Our boy pitched and did an amazing job!

He threw a ton of strikes!

Making a good run in.

Next Sunday we are traveling to MN to play.

The stadium, yes you heard me, the STADIUM they play in will hold almost 8,000 fans.

WOW!

I'm excited!!

We have a dinner date with my truck driving long lost friend this week. I'm soooo looking forward to seeing her!

Instead of cleaning out the barn tonight I pulled weeds.

Lesser of two evils I thought.

Maybe tomorrow.

Are you watching the debate tonight?

Ugh..

Makes me sick to think these are actually our options.

I almost forgot to mention!

Caden got his herbst braces off on Friday! Phase 1 is complete.

Phase 2 starts November 10th when he gets full braces put on.

later alligator :)

The weekend news: Part 2

Sunday brought a fresh day of ball with the A's.

It was a perfect day for ball.

Warm, but not too hot and clear blue sky.

The Hubby and Chyann were up in the booth to keep score.

The boys were pretty evenly matched in skill.

A lot of great plays and hits by all the players.

Caden sliding into home.

Do you see Caden leading off from first?

The batter at the plate got a base run which advanced Caden to second base -

an overthrown ball keeps him moving towards third!

Third base coach sends him home!

So at this point I readjust my camera - pull the zoom back in and get ready to hit the button when he starts coming into frame.

I'm waiting for him and holding my breath, then I hear a huge groan from the crowd!

WTF is going on?

I look up from the camera and see Caden on his knees just to the left of this picture with the most stunned look on his face. His helmet even flew off on impact and I know that helmet fits like a glove so you know it was a hard hit.

He was going so fast that he got ahead of himself and fell.

Damn. You know that had to hurt.

Probably a good thing he didn't get to home as the pitcher and catcher were waiting and it would have likely been a big collision.

Tore up his elbow like you wouldn't believe.

Course that would have been the tying run which would have sent them into another inning.

He was super disappointed, but the coaches were awesome.

They told him they never seen a kid run with such heart.

Even with the fall, he played some great ball.

Next game they got annihilated. End score was 12 to zero, but at least they did better against this team than the team whom they played first - they lost 20 to zero.

Aaah baseball.

We've got another month of playing to look forward to.

The weekend news: part 1

The fall baseball league is done.

The boys didn't progress further than sixth place.

The first game was lost by 1 freaking run.

End score was 11 to 10. Damn.

If they'd have won that game they'd have progressed forward, but since they didn't it was just one more game for them.

All the boys played hard.

The coach - who was a substitute and totally stepped up to help out when their original coach had to bow out, thought the boys could only throw a specific amount of pitches, was saving the fast pitchers for the later games. Unfortunately they were unable to move forward in the bracket to use the fast pitchers.

Anywho a few pictures from that game:

Making the first run in.

And guess who completely surprised us Friday night by knocking on the bedroom door at 11pm?

Our lovely daughter came home to enjoy a weekend of games with us.

Course after driving till late then not being able to sleep once she got home she had to get a little nap all tucked up in a chair lol

Second game the boys played like they were on fire!

Making plays left and right. They got their bats hot early and kept them hot!

A few close plays.

Tater and Chyann

Silly Tater is such a riot to bring along to games.

Everyone wants to pet her and she loves to prance around on the leash.

I took her over to the bull pen between games to offer Caden a sandwich and she immediately hunkered up to take a shit right there lol

Caden was mortified, but I could only laugh.

End score of this game was 17 to 3.

Our boy even pitched for the first time this season.

He threw 11 pitches and got three outs.

Pretty dang awesome!

End of season team picture.

A nice bunch of kids.

Caden's buddy from school Drew.

This was his first season here and the first time he's been coached by other folks than his Dad.  I hope he was able to find some value in the program too.

Gotta have at least one silly pic.

Plus it was my Daddy's birthday.

It's been almost two years since we've seen them.

Hopefully we can make something work out to get together soon.

My favorite picture from the last time we saw him.

Love you Dad xoxo

Animal Wednesday

Halfway through the week folks.

I had the local phone company out today to hook us up with their cable tv package.

Cheaper by 30 bucks a month than the big name guys.

Only problem I foresee will be training the Hubby on the new remote, which Caden will likely be able to do long before I will.

What a hassle to disconnect service from our previous satellite provider.

What is so hard about I do not want your service anymore? I finally had to get cranky with them and be way firmer than I would have liked to be and tell them to disconnect the service TODAY.

jeesh.

Poor Dodgie did really well with the technicians in and out of the house for three hours. He only barked once at them, but let me tell you he never sat still until Caden came home. I don't know if you can see his socks, but they are pretty much hair socks with the amount of hair Dodge and his nervousness shed today.

This is Dewey.

One of our two barn cats.

He is a doll.

Very friendly and a great catcher of the chipmunks that have run rampant here this spring/summer.

Dodge likes him too - mostly.

Stop messing with the cat and throw the ball already!

Saw a deer on the way to baseball practice last week.

In the weeds behind him are two others.

And my favorite of the week.

Taken today is Scotch, who is proof that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence!

Do you see he even has a leg over the fence? lol

It must be time to turn the fence on and supplement their grazing with hay and pellets.

See ya!

The wrong side of the street and dingers

Home alone this evening and I am reminiscing over the last few days. 

Our boy participated in the annual Firefighters parade on Saturday. 

Gotta love small town parades. 

Tractors, hot rod cars, local businesses, politicians and my favorite - the school marching band.

Unfortunately the band numbers continue to dwindle, but they put on a good show anyhow.

As you can see once again we were on the wrong side of the street to see our boy up close. 

Happens every time I tell you.

Then we were off to the games. 

The fall boys won their first game and lost their second. 

In a typical game you have two umps. One behind the catcher and another in the field who rotates between first and second then second and third, depending on where runners are positioned.

That ump makes the call as to if a runner is out or safe on a base.

For whatever reason we didn't have a base ump for the last inning of the last game. Which is unfortunate since the game was tied and the home plate ump just cant see what happens out in the field as well as a base ump. Suffice to say we felt two calls would have definitely went the other way if a base ump were there. 

BUT 

That's the way it goes sometimes. 

I think the boys will still be seeded second or third for this coming Saturdays playoff games. 

Alright.. Who in the world thought it was a good idea for baseball players to wear white pants? Are you freaking kidding me? After the fall ball games we didn't get home till almost 9p and I had to scrub and wash those dang white pants. Which meant the Hubby and I stayed up and had a few beers listening to 70's tunes. WHICH meant 7a rolled around waaaaay too early.

And this day folks is the day we've been waiting for. 

First day of play with the A's.

Tried to get a good picture of him in the new uniform WITH the extra hand scrubbed white pants, but he was too embarrassed to have MOM taking pictures in front of the new team...... So, this is what I ended up with. Doesn't he look young and sweet?

I don't think I mentioned, but this 13U team - which means no kids over the age of 13 can play (you can be 12 tho) will play no games with another 13U team. 

ALL their games are with 14U and 15U teams. 

Apparently last year they played 13U teams and found there was no competition. The head coach has decided to play them up this year and boy let me tell you there was competition galore. 

I'm not sure how it freaking worked this way, but Caden was the first up to bat for the very first game. AND 

Baby let me tell you he totally nailed it with a double!!

I wish I'd have kept the video going longer to get all the hooting and hollering on video.

Super proud moment for us, let me tell you. 

Caden made the first run in and then they got down a few runs, but damned if they didn't come back!

However they couldn't hold their lead and ended up loosing by one run.

In the end it was 10 to 11.

After the game was over we heard the coach telling Caden that the scouting reports on him were right on!

How is that for cool!?!?

I can't tell you how pleased we were for Caden.

Up in the box between games keeping score.

Next game our boy was up first to bat and got a nice single, then they were trying rally hard to pick him off at first.

Now here is where it gets scary. 

Caden had a big lead off from first, the next batter up hits a line drive between first and second which meant Caden had to continue to second.

Somehow that second baseman tagged Caden and sent him for a tumble. 

Ya I didn't get all the shots of it because I wasn't looking through the camera, but watching it live.

So here is what I got on film.

After he got tagged

and then going down.

Seriously my heart stopped for a moment here.

 About the longest twenty seconds of my life before he popped up and ran off the field. 

Hell of a crash.

He was lucky to just have a scraped up elbow today I think.

The A's got stomped on by this 15U team. 

Final score was something like 13 to 4, but that's ok. It's all a learning experience. 

Did I mention he had to get new cleats for this team? Course his poor heals have blisters today and damn you know those have to hurt. 

Aaaah, the price of being a participant and loving every moment of it. 

I think he was a stand out player on this team. He did so well. I can't even tell you how well. 

In other news my niece in AK got married on Saturday.

She sure made a beautiful bride.

 I hope she and her new husband enjoy many happy years together and strive to make the marriage work. 

A few words of advice to any newly married couple: 

Unlike romance novels or movies you actually have to work at making your marriage what you want. Through good times and bad. A compromise that really freaking pisses you off at the time will be repaid to you at a later date two fold. Try not to go to bed mad. Speak your mind; he is not a mind reader. 

My BFF in AK became a grandmother last week too. 

Hard to believe our kids could possibly be old enough to get married and/or have kids.

Time folks, it does move on.

I took apart one garden today, then lost my enthusiasm.

Tomorrow I think I'll mow the jungle one last time. 

See ya :) 

PS

I dont know what the problems is, but I'm not seeing the video I posted. Are you?

As request and other stuff...

 The eldest complied with my request and sent us a LAST first day of school picture. 

Isn't he a handsome lad!

He will be the first bachelor degree graduate in our families. 

We are so proud of him!

Have you ever noticed that when you need to print something at home you never have any ink in your printer? I finally broke down and ordered some. It arrived today and wow I already printed out a ton of crap that I've been putting off. 

I lost my hair brush.

 Who looses their hair brush? Me apparently. No idea where it went. I've asked all the kids if they have it and they don't. My only guess is that I left it out in the bathroom and one of the cats knocked it in the trash - then of course I must have thrown it away.

We have received about 3" of rain in the last two days. 

I didn't end up doing anything with all my split tomatoes, but I did bring the best of the lot in and am enjoying tomato sandwiches for lunch and sliced up with dinner. 

Didn't end up getting the pool covered over the weekend either. Too windy.

I cleaned my oven tonight. 

No chemicals at all. Only water. 

Two cups in the bottom, turn it on the aqua clean and 40 minutes later you are looking at a mostly clean oven.

A sponge to soak up the leftover water and maybe a little scraping with the scraper thing and you are done. Pretty damn nice. 

Ol' Scotch has rain rot on his rump. I'm guessing it is a combination of all the humidity, wet weather, tall weeds that we now have out in the pastures due to having no cows that eat those rotten weeds and the fact that Scotch is low man on the totem pole and has the pleasure of hanging his arse out the cow barn in all weather instead of being snug and dry in the cow barn with the queens. 

I've been treating him with an anti-fungal and it is healing up. Takes a while for complete healing and with any luck he will be looking good before the snow fly's. 

While I was treating him today I noticed Jennifer had a good sized scratch all the way down her side. Thankfully it is a superficial wound and only required cleaning and some blue coat.  

The boy is enjoying two 2 hour baseball practices tonight. Two hours for each team he is on.

Man I hope he is careful. 

Today was picture day for the boy. 

Damn.

We got him three new dress shirts before school started and only one fit when he tried them on last night. 

Of course the one that fit had the second button down missing and NO spare buttons attached. WTF.

So he wore a halfway decent shirt that still fit from last year.

 Ok that's it. 

Happy humpday :)

This and that

Friday night as our girl was on her way home to us she sent me a text saying "Go out and see the Northern Lights!!". We went out to the most amazing light show. I was so mesmerized by the dancing colors that I didn't even think about trying to take pictures. It had probably been ten or more years since I'd seen them. I had forgotten how wondrous they are, absolutely breathtaking.

No baseball games this weekend due to the holiday, but there is practice. At last Saturday's game Caden had some great hits, plays and runs that didn't go unnoticed apparently. He has been asked to play on a AAA traveling team! Their first practice was Friday night. The Hubby says this is a whole new deal and nothing like what he has done before. Which is exciting and worrisome at the same time. The next two weeks will be pretty intense with school and two different teams practice, plus games on Saturday and lets throw in a parade next Saturday too just to make it more interesting. He is thrilled let me tell you and up for the challenge.

Storms rolling through last night brought an inch or so of rain which split a good portion of my remaining tomatoes. Man that sucks, I had hoped to savor the last of them for another few weeks. Might have to try and make something with them today so they aren't a complete waste.

We may put the tarp on the pool today. Hard to believe it's really that time. A few of my annual flowers need to be pulled up as well.

Chyann goes back to St Cloud tomorrow and likely wont be home again until October sometime.

Colton starts school tomorrow. I am going to call and request he take a last first day of school picture for me since he graduates in December this is it for him. I'm so excited for him!

Anywho, that's all I know.
Hope you are enjoying your holiday weekend.
later :)

All in a days work

After a full day at work and NO nap I picked the tomatoes and peppers. 

It sure doesn't look like much, but let me tell you folks there is some serious work involved with the few jars you see below. 

3 batches of salsa and one batch of jalapenos. 

Not shown are five quarts of tomatoes that are already in the freezer. 

My new rule is if you help with the process you get to name the batch of salsa. 

A little hook to get Caden to participate more than just hauling out my scrap bucket. 

He helped today after school so I let him name the first batch of salsa. 

He didn't think I'd actually do it, but he was wrong 

If you cant read the jars on the left they are named "hot as balls"

HA!

Thanks for helping :)

Second batch will be something like HOT and the last of salsa is definitely a Chyna sweet.  

Gotta have a sample bowl and bag of chips ready for sampling on a salsa night. 

Which means I don't have to make supper. That works right?

School started on Thursday. 

Our boy on the first day of 8th grade. 

When he got home he said he had a better day than he ever expected to. 

Gotta love that. 

(can you see the nasty green crap dripping off the vikings head?)

Our girl is on her way home to spend the holiday weekend with us. 

She sent a text earlier today that said: OMG I can't wait to get home!

That made me smile. We can't wait to see her either. 

Dinner with friends tomorrow night and baseball are our holiday plans. 

Hope you have a grand weekend :)