That pretty much covers it. 8 in his current quest to kill himself fell down the back stairs as well as off the play ground equipment and breaking all the glass over his head. He gets ibuprofen regularly for soreness as well as all the teething he’s doing. Not a happy boy.

They are planting corn using the GPS, and alfalfa and millet. Not that they need it but hey, apparently it sounded fun. The corn is being planted with it because when the guys come to spray for, what weeds?, they wont even try to drive down the rows, they drive at an angle across them. Unless they have the GPS, again what? settings? location? whats the right word? Last year it made him even madder than usual and thus the base station. My brilliant husbands base station is working beautifully, there is a couple of centimeters error most of the time. Now, I think, he needs someone else willing to try it.

We do love getting boxes from Grandma, she sends the funnest stuff. The only thing that would be better is her being here when we open them. Or just being here, we always miss her.

Here’s the next best thing. They loved the box, opening it was sooo much fun. Thank you Grandma!

Not necessarily in chronological order:

I had forgotten to put a horse away. Again. I do that sometimes, as The Goblin Child would say. When I realized it I was on my way to bed, it was dark and it was raining. So out I went me and my flashlight. The rain was gentle and not too cold. The horse was easily found, huddled against the fence wanting in.

I put him back and turned for my house, wanting back in too. The rain had let up and it was really a beautiful night to be out and about. The frogs were croaking in the distance and the air was still. From across the yard I heard a growl and a snarl and thought about Daisy, wondering what she had cornered now. As I thought that I glanced down at Daisy trotting along next to me. It was one of those times where it takes your brain awhile to catch up with whats going on. I did a double take and realized Daisy hadn’t been doing the growling. Then what had?

My first instinct was to run for the house. So I turned around and turned on my flashlight, shining it in the direction of the noise. Many eyes shown back at me from across the yard. Daisy was running for the house even if I wasn’t. I decided it was best to go with her.

How have I not heard of this before?

Not the song or the actuality. The Movie.  It’s a fairly old one, 2006. And it’s not like it’s a little self produced church movie, it has real actors in it, like Benedict Cumberbatch, of course this was pre Sherlock and Hobbit but still.

I love the period stuff, clothes were beautiful, acting superb.

Of course, right now, in the book we’re listening to ( Ship of magic by Robin Hobb ) there is lots of discussion of the slave trade. One of our heroes is attacking slave ships and freeing the slaves, not for purely altruistic reasons, he is after all a bad man (he’s happily feeding the slavers to the sea serpents). And another has narrowly missed being sold into slavery. The two must come together eventually, these thousand page books that the men in my family tend to read, the plots are long and twisty. But any way, her descriptions are long and way too detailed. Completely different slave trade but watching this during the reading of the book ties it all together nicely.

A friend of my husbands needed a ride to the airport. His plane left at six-thirty. In the morning. Of course we all rode along.

Getting up at three in the morning is surprisingly easy when you have already been up all night with a rather obnoxious, screaming 8. We loaded in the car and drove off under the light of a full moon. Nobody was willing to go back to sleep, we stayed up looking at the moon and talking.

After leaving the airport, having ridden the escalators in a scene somewhat resembling Crocodile Dundee, with all the wonder and none of the fear, we went for breakfast. Perkins was a quick easy choice and, it turned out, an excellent choice. Our waitress was one of those rare, incredibly awesome ones. Her name was Ellie, we had fun with that, and instead of being annoyed by rowdy, overly tired children making noise and, big, messes she brought toys (chocolate chips inside a plastic cup for 8. How great is that?) and an extra cookie. We ate until we were sick.

Then we saw the Dinosaurs. We had seen them from the restaurant, the towers sitting next to them at least. They had been sticking tall out above the clouds way up in the sky. Now we could see the bases as the tops disappeared into clouds. The sunlight was bright and hazy through the low clouds and fog, an amazingly beautiful morning. We had the park all to ourselves so early in the morning. This time I got to go see them too, instead of sitting in the car with 8.

Next came the Air and Space Museum. The drive over took enough time to get us past opening time. And the kids fell asleep. Just as we got there. It was just outside of Ellsworth Air-force base. The rest of Box Elder, the area we we were in at least, was pretty trashy, came past a beautiful strip club on our way there. Not much to drive around and look at. So we sat in the parking lot and let them sleep for awhile. Once we got bored waiting we woke them up and went to look.

The outside displays were closed for landscaping but it had gotten cold and cloudy for real as we drove across town so we wanted to go inside anyway. The inside was great, lots of neat stuff to look at I’m sure. Didn’t see much of it. 8 was off and running and The Goblin Child was quickly bored and ready to move on.

We wound up at the parks down town by the Civic Center. They were chilly but fun. 8 crawled all over fascinated by the rubber footing. There were bridges to cross and water to look at. People were actually fishing in the lake. Looked kind of gross to me with garbage floating on the edges, hope they had fun though. Maybe catch and release?

All of that and we still managed to get to Olive Garden early, ahead of the church crowd. We got right in with no wait for once. Then all hell broke loose. The Goblin Child  squirmed and wiggled and refused to sit still. or down. 8 arched backwards flung food on the floor and screamed. We made it through the salad but by the time our meals arrived the place was packed and 8 wouldn’t stop screaming. I took him out to the car, it was preferable to having to sit there with the other and wait for doggie bags. 8 fell asleep as soon as we sat down in the car. I had a few moment of silence before G.C. and her exhausted father came out.

We headed for home immediately. It had been a fun morning. Hard to believe it was barely past noon and we had already accomplished so much. Both children slept, for varying amounts of time, on the way home. Slept while we carried them in and continued to sleep while we took a much needed nap. Then we had Olive Garden for supper.

Our family, meaning me!, has been immersed in clicker training for the last few weeks.

It’s good when spouses can share passions, by which I mean that we can both be totally obsessed with our individual passions and not mind that the other is preoccupied. He is still working at the tractor GPS thing and I have the horses.

I finally took the plunge and  got the horse tricks 101 academy. The Goblin Child has been watching the videos with me, a little, she has the attention span of a gnat. We saw a horse playing with a ball and I told her we could teach Princess Onna to do that. I didn’t realize she would remember much less with such enthusiasm. I thought I would sneak out and get Onna started so G.C. would be able to see more progress when we tried together. I expected Onna to respond well, or at all.

The first time I messed with her she stood looking at me blankly. I was getting decidedly worried about being able to keep my promise. Fortunately I was able to work with her a couple of times and she started to get it.

We, both children and I, were going out for a ride. I had all three horses tied to the pickup, the proper two saddled, and realized I had to put one of them away. I told G.C. to make sure 8 didn’t get under the horses. I ran Rusty back to the pen and got back to find G.C. giving 8 cereal. She informed me that it was like clicker training, she gave him food and he followed her.

But that’s not the full story of our young trainer in training.

We had the pleasure of “helping” our friend, Paula, with a pony she’s training. The pony’s person (people?) are the same age as The Goblin Child and she wanted to see how the pony would do with someone of that size. The Goblin Child is a good, aggressive rider and was happy to help.

The wind was howling the day we went over. Fortunately the place has a nice indoor arena, even in there it felt as though the walls would be ripped away and moment. The pony stood quietly. Paula hopped on in The Goblin Child’s saddle and the two were off like a shot, in a speedy little pony trot. I had a few moments of doubt. But I trust Paula and if she says the pony is safe I believe her, with only a little trepidation.

They came back at a much slower pace and we threw G.C. up. She stayed on the lead line at first, then we turned her loose. They did great, pony wasn’t very interested in listening and G.C. wasn’t overly enthusiastic about going that day. Paula grabbed her horse and they rode around together for awhile. Then G.C. was done. Once she has declared that there is no point in pushing her any farther.

I got to get on Paula’s horse and they handed 8 up in front of me. Our neighbor, Tanna, who comes over to ride with me had come along and she swung her incredibly long legs over the pony’s back. They didn’t drag the ground, it’s a perfectly sized pony. Together we played around in the arena until Paula offered to let me try her horse on the cutting dummy. I jumped at the chance, he’s a good cutting horse and I hadn’t had a chance to play like that in a long time.

He was awesome, I was not so great. I allowed him to creep in on the dummy and we kept ending up right on top of it. It was a rush getting to feel a good cutting horse under me again. Then she let Tanna try him. She did her best, he took advantage a little. For a sport that is supposedly all about letting the horse work by its self, it’s amazing how much rider input is sometimes required. Tanna has been coming out and getting some lessons and is doing incredibly well for a beginner rider. She has a great seat and is willing to listen and wants to learn but we spent our lives learning seat aids, leg cues and how to do this stuff, she still so young. If only I had started paying attention to this stuff at her age. She is going to be a great rider and this was an excellent opportunity for her to learn.

Then Paula got back on and fixed all the things we had broken on her horse, just before their first cutting of the year. Hope she was able to get everything back to normal and does great this weekend.

The time came all to soon for us to head home.

The kids had gotten along so well. The Goblin Child and Sabbath weren’t too surprising, there had been some concern that Sabbath wouldn’t like having to share Grammy but she did such a great job of spreading the attention evenly, she must have been exhausted, and The Goblin Child had Different Papa and her aunt and uncle to be fascinated by. The immediate rapport between 8 and Truly was a quite surprising. They’re babies, nearly, but were best friends at first sight, interacting more than I’ve ever seen children that young do. Not that I have much experience with babies.

We always hate to say good bye but the parting was made slightly easier by lack of sleep and the travel packages mom always makes for the kids. Planning ahead of time, something I’m not capable of, she chooses and carefully packs, for each grandchild a very personalized bag of treats. We saved them until we had been on the road awhile. Grand Island to be exact. They slept until then and we listened to our audio book in peace. The first book in the live ship traders trilogy, Ship of Magic. (Dad, highly recommend it) This was a peaceful time, the last we were to enjoy.

At Grand Island they woke up, we ate lunch at Runza, then we gave them their bags. They loved them of course, as always. But it did not keep them entertained, we did not get to enjoy our book further much less finish it. The Goblin Child loved her dolls, insisted I read her her books immediately and ate on her snacks. Then she wanted 8’s tractors and he was not allowed to look at his own books, she must be read those too.

We stopped at Broken Bow to exercise them. Then encountered a herd of cattle being moved down the highway. Not a novel happening but somehow more fun and unique seeming when away from home. Despite, or perhaps because of lack of sleep there was none of the hoped for napping done for the rest of the trip. Instead we got to experience the dreaded “Are we there yet? Now are we there? How much farther?”

So much fun. But finally we did arrive and turned them loose outside to run and use up some of their pent up energy before we all collapsed, exhausted into bed. Glad to be home while wishing we were still away. It was good to see family and hopefully wont be too long before we see them again.

We got to Lincoln late and went up to see my brother and his family who had beat us there. The children all climbed in the tub with my brother for a quick swim, it was a big tub. We picked up Runza! and brought it to the hotel for a late supper when who should show up but my parents. Not that we were surprised but they were certainly taking their time getting there. It was long past everybody’s bed times so we went to bed looking forward to seeing everybody again the next day.

The next morning my husbands aunt joined us for breakfast. We were so glad she was able to come see us, we always love to get to visit with her. It was far to brief and somewhat interrupted by the hotels fire alarm going off. We were sitting next to the door and there was no sign of smoke so, other than my husband, the dedicated father, going to find The Goblin Child who was off with the rest of the family, we didn’t see any need for alarm. They finally got it shut off, it was a false alarm, about the time we were ready to go and we headed off to the zoo.

The zoo was fun and exhausting. After dragging our tired selves out of there we went to Romeos for a belated birthday supper and stuffed ourselves to the gills.

That night the two older cousins enjoyed a sleepover with Grammy and Different Papa. For some reason they wouldn’t take the two yearlings. The party animals stayed up till all hours of the night, ate popcorn and did some more swimming in the hot tub. And got treated to breakfast in bed the next morning. Grammy and Different Papa are SOOO much fun.

Sunday morning was a little more relaxed. We ate our usual, not relaxed but somewhat leisurely, breakfast. Then it was off to the pool. The Goblin Child had the inner-tube that Grammy and Grandma  brought last time, technically it was for 8 but she was making good use of it.She was nearly fearless with it’s assistance paddling around the pool and even jumping in.

We frolicked until lunch time then The Goblin Child got to ride in Sabbaths bike trailer and we were all off to Valentinos for lunch. Again we ate until stuffed then headed downtown to the museum. My crazed brother again riding his bike pulling Sabbath this time.

The UNL campus is beautiful. Lincoln was beautiful. All over trees were in full bloom, filling the air with their scent and pink, white and purple flowers.  We walked around looking until the museum opened, The Goblin Child clinging to her beloved Different Papa the whole time. My mom used to bring all the kids she baby sat to elephant hall, we’d see the capital and do stuff downtown. It isn’t until I had kids and tried to do things with them that I realized how impressive that was. This was before mandatory car seats, she watched a lot of kids and squeezed them all into the little hatchback. She is awesome.

After we wore out there we went to yet another park near by, A waterway had been developed with playgrounds and bike paths and fountains. It was very nice, the kids loved it, we could have skipped the zoos and museums and played at all the parks for free and the kids would’ve had just as much if not more fun.

The Goblin Child got to ride clear back to the hotel on the bicycle. A very long ride. It was warm still when they left and I put a light wind breaker on her. We got back to the hotel and they weren’t there yet. We let 8 nap, hung out and visited, they still weren’t there. Finally we spotted them pulling into the parking lot, from the third floor window we could see her little head bobbing as she slept. It had gotten much colder as they traveled but she was cozy back there sound asleep.

They had another sleepover that night. Again lots of fun, swimming and food followed by breakfast in bed. We were doubly grateful for this sleepover as 8 was up screaming most of the night.

The next morning it was time to tear ourselves away and head home.