Last night

 I fell asleep to the sound of rain (and it was a good soaking rain).

It's been some time since that has happened - probably a good two months. 

It's still drizzling some this morning too. 

It's a bit cool out and I've got the windows open - I sure love the smell of rain. 

The leaves around here are starting to turn some.

A combination of drought stress and it is freaking September.

There have been bees everywhere recently.

I couldn't believe how many this patch of flowers had on it. 

It was literally alive with the buzzing of bees.

Yesterday was jam packed. 

I hauled myself up at at the crack of dawn to go to the gym.

Wore my pedometer and got an incredible 6000 steps in the space of an hour!

Now that is what I call a productive hour.

Came home and started on the cucumbers.

I thought I was done with cucumber/pickles, but the kids have gone through most of what I made back in July already so I called around and found that one of Colton's friends mother had good cukes yet. 

I bought a five gallon bucket for seven bucks from her. 

Yeah some of them were a little bigger than I'd like, but I made it work. 

The biggest ones I'll be making relish with today and the medium ones I sliced and did up two batches of sweet and hot. Then made two different recipes for kosher dills. 

14 quarts of kosher and 4 quarts/8 pints of sweet and hot.

Soon as I get off this computer I'm getting after those tomato's to make salsa. 

Went to a wedding reception last night for our Hay guys stepson. 

It was nice, the food was good and we were home relatively early.

Alright, time to get busy with these tomato's if I'm going to get any football in today.

Later :)

Belated results and other fun

That kid is pretty fast!

He came in third in his age group, which is now 10 -14.

He ran a mile in 6 min 52 seconds!

He said he was out in front of the pack until he turned his ankle about 3/4 of the way and had to stop for a moment. 

Then he gave it all he had to try gaining back his position.

Between first and third place was a mere four seconds! 

Caden did wonderfully!

The winners in all their glory. 

Then of course we hit the thrift sales.

I got some good shit I probably didn't need, but that's ok I had a blast.

The guys waiting for the parade to start and holy cow was it freaking HOT!

We all got some sunburn.

There is the lovely Chyann.

Blogger isn't letting me upload videos today otherwise you'd be in for a treat, because I got some good video of the band this year. 

Our neighbor is getting more elaborate with his parade costumes lol

Everything else here is well. 

The hot weather has finally broken and we are having more comfortable temperatures.

Which Caden appreciates with his football practice.

I'm back to the gym since my arse has healed up some. 

I also joined a fitness thing through work where you wear a pedometer every day and track your steps.

Did you know that 10,000 steps a day is what everyone should be getting?

I had no idea.

And with working from home I sure didn't get anywhere near that number unless I really try.

So, that is my daily goal 10,000!

Try it. 

You'll be surprised at your numbers.

Have a good one :)

Saturday morning coffee

YAY for Saturday!

Once again for a short week it sure seemed like a long one.

The kids all made it through the first week of school with smiles on their faces. 

Caden had a little bit of math homework everyday, Chyann has not had a bit of homework at all and Colton says he has about three hours of homework a day.

He came home yesterday afternoon.

Ever so nice to see his smiling face. 

There will be no exercise class for me this AM as I'm still attempting to recover from my slip down the stairs. 

I've missed some good riding with Chyann this week because of it. 

I also decided not to do the twister run 5K today - it would be way too much for my achy parts.

Caden is still going to run the one mile though. 

We've got a citywide thrift sale going on too so as soon as he's done we are hitting them.

Not that we need anything, but it'll be fun.

Then the Fireman's Parade, which Chyann'll be marching in with the band. 

 Who knows what the rest of the day will hold. 

Maybe I'll make more salsa.

Have a nice day :)

Another school year

We got Colton all moved in at UWRF on Monday. 

Met his roommate, who is from a suburb of the cities and he seems like a nice kid. 

Took another tour of the campus. Checking out where all Colton's classes will be, the cafeteria, library and all that.

I did ever so much better this year than I did last year. 

The water works only turned on just as we were leaving, pretty good eh?

The kids posing in front of Colton's dorm.

And the next day in front of the school mascot.

Chyann again gave us a huge amount of grief about taking the picture at school.

She's way too cool for this crap I guess. 

One day she'll appreciate the memories I guarantee it.

Tuesday afternoon when I got off work I helped the Hubby load our last two cows up in the trailer.

Definitely was a scary endeavor.

Seemed like waaay too much COW in our little trailer.

Course they had never been in a trailer before hence the thrashing about that ensued, making me think the damn thing would just fall apart.

The Hubby assured me that the trailer may look like it's rickety, but that he had totally re-enforced the whole thing from top to bottom and there was no chance of it falling apart.

Once they got some hay in front of them and fly spray applied to their backs they settled right down.

I didn't realize until I saw them side by side in the trailer how much bigger the steer was.

The Hubby hauled the steer to the butcher and the heifer to the neighbors place to run with his bull.

So now when folks stop to tell us cows are out one of ours just might be. 

Don't tell the Hubby, but it sure is nice to have them gone.

Course he says we really need to thin down the horse herd now - yeah I know.

So, I think I've mentioned before our house is an older one. 

The stairs can be treacherous and yesterday I discovered just how treacherous when I fell down them.

No idea how or why.

I just coming down them like I normally do and BOOM!

Next thing I know I'm at the bottom stunned.

Freaked Caden out pretty good.

He ran screaming for the Hubby.

 Chyann showed up first and wanted to call 911.

By the time Caden and the Hubby get back I'm a little more with it and discern that nothing is broken so no 911.

I do however have a right elbow that is about four times it's normal size black/blue and the absolute nastiest looking bruise on my right butt cheek. It's is spectacular. If I didn't think it would make folks puke I might have posted a picture, it's just that bad - shudder.

Oh and a bruise on my foot, two knots on my head.

Hell of a tumble.

Been a bit of a scardy cat going up and down those stairs today I tell you.

Sore. sore.sore.sore.sore.

I can't even tell you how freaking sore.

Everything aches.

This morning when I woke up I could hardly move.

Two advil and some coffee later I thought I might live.

dang

toodles :)

Labor day and other fun

It's the big move in day.

I'm putting off waking everyone up as long as possible.

My last day to have them all tucked in safe and sound and exactly where they are supposed to be. 

Yesterday was full.

I managed to get together enough tomato's from the garden and make my first batch of salsa. 

It's delicious!

Since the big cows are gone we opened the run from behind the barn down to the front pasture. 

The horses are loving it.

We had some guy stop yesterday evening to tell us there were cows up on the road, not sure why everyone assumes they are ours, but there you go. 

The Hubby and Caden took the three wheeler out to round them up since the guy who owns them was out of town. 

And of course Chyann had to jump on the nearest horse and get in on the action. 

Only took them about 15 minutes to get them all rounded up. 

The boys hanging out, watching Chyann ride in since she decided to take an alternate route home.

View from the back porch last night.

Sure was beautiful.

The kids visited and laughed all evening.

Wanting to make the most of Colton's last night at home I'm guessing.

I suppose I had better get moving.

Have a good Labor day.

Already?

September 1st.

I am surely not ready for summer to be over. 

With the late start to spring and all, summer just flew by way too fast

However I will say that there are three things that I'm looking forward to:

relief from these rotten ass allergies

trying out my new skis

and 

football season - both Caden's league and the NFL.

Caden starts practice on Thursday - we can't wait!

I didn't get a hell of a lot accomplished yesterday, but we did find Colton a decent laptop.

Packed up some food and other essentials for him to take too.

Even with a food/meal plan at college he still needs some food for the dorm to snack on and a cheap coffee maker.

Colton is planning on just bringing the bare essentials with him on this first trip to school tomorrow. He want's to see what the new roommate brought so they don't have a lot of extra junk in the dorm or stuff he has to haul back home.

All his classes start at 8am, which is good. 

Get him back on a decent schedule.

He's always had a tough time finding a good sleep routine and working those 2nd and 3rd shifts over the summer did not help at all. 

Chyann and Caden had an open house at the school earlier in the week.

Meet your teacher(s), find your desk/locker and all that.

Was nice to see a lot of familiar faces. 

Chyann has been thinking a lot about college over the summer.

At least once a week she gets literature from one college or another.

Now instead of an astrophysicist she is leaning towards being a doctor of psychology.

I told her she has plenty of time to make a decision on what to do, relax a little.

~~

Caden had a lot of fun helping Grandpa when we were in OK.

He loaded trash for a run to the dump.

Course Chyann had to drive.

The kids took a walk with Mom to the mailbox.

Can you believe the height of those calla lilies?

Must be all the fertilizer from the guinea hens.

Grandpa and the Hubby rounded up the bull and a cow to take to auction.

Last year all those paddocks were red dirt,  it was so dry out and look at it this year. Nice and green with tall grass.  

~~~

later 

Saturday morning coffee

I woke up at 5a this morning panicked that I was late!

Late for what I didn't know, but late for something.

Aaah the exercise class is at 7, but I'm not going today.

I had a failed biopsy yesterday at the hospital.

By failed I mean the doc was unable to get the necessary samples she needed to examine so I'm going to be having a hysterectomy in the near future.

The whole sheebang is coming out, from what I groggily remember in the recovery room. 

Just lovely.

Of course the busiest time of year at work is coming up and I just burned through the majority of my accrued PTO.

No biggie, we'll figure it out.

Feeling pretty good today, except for a rotten sore throat that I'm guessing is from the anesthesia tube. 

In other news...

Colton's laptop stopped working on Wednesday and the computer wizard guys think it's possibly a mother board problem - which will be almost as spendy to replace as getting a new laptop.

Course he didn't get the extended warranty when he bought it and the manufacture warranty is out as well. 

Looks like today we'll be shopping for a new one since apparently you need a laptop at college like you need your right hand and he is leaving on Monday.

For school he requested and got the same dorm room from last year.

New room mate of course.

Wisconsinites are big on recycling.

We recycle just about everything you can recycle.

Especially aluminum. 

We've been holding onto about three years worth of aluminum and storing them in the back of the dump truck.

Yes, we have a dump truck - doesn't everyone?

Anywho, it took three years to fill up the back and the Hubby made a deal with Caden to re-sack all the cans and he'd get the money.

Caden spent a few hours on Wednesday evening and a few hours on Thursday morning getting them ready so when the Hubby came home they could haul them off.

He got a whopping 150 bucks!

The kid is thrilled with this windfall of his, making all kinds of plans on how to spend it.

While in Oklahoma of course Mom and I played numerous games of scrabble.

 Both Chyann and Caden decided they wanted to play as well and every evening we had some super charged games.

Mom and Gerry's dogs are the very definition of lapdogs.

They moved from one lap to the next throughout our games.

My lovely Mother

Later :)