This is a whole new world for me. A good one, like taking a horse to a show, having a friend over or going to a friends house points out holes in your training. Last week we went to visit a friend at their house this week they came to ours.

The Goblin Child is our little social butterfly. She loves to see people and play with other peoples toys. When it came to someone else playing with her toys it wasn’t quite as fun. Having another child in HER house came as a bit of a shock. Then to top it off he wanted to touch HER toys. The other mother is so good about making sure her child is well behaved, she makes sure he shares and doesn’t take toys away from guests. That is amazingly hard to live up to.

I always thought my little Goblin was well behaved. I have learned otherwise.

All in all we both enjoy the visits, I can only hope the other participants do too. If I have discovered that I am not as good a trainer as I thought then that gives me something to work on. Hopefully with time the two children will start playing together in stead of

separately in the same room. They are cute to watch in their separate togetherness. He is a big boy who talks, a lot, and is very sweet and cheery. The Goblin Child is tiny and overly energetic, she doesn’t talk but knows lots of animal sounds. Maybe he will teach her to talk the way her cousin taught her to walk.

How old are you now? I believe you are getting perilously close to forty. I can never remember, to me you never seem to age. Stuck forever at perfect, how awful. You are still the worlds best husband, and father. I hope you have a good day today, as usual I wish you didn’t have to always work so hard. If were up to me you would stay home all day and we could watch movies and play on the computers, maybe even venture outside, if the weathers nice. As it is we are looking forward to lunch and can’t wait till you get home from work.

The weather has been miserable this winter. I want desperately to go outside. I have been running out during naps to feed chickens and grain the horses, I never grain the horses usually but it is so cold out. Yesterday it got clear up to twenty! We went out and played in the snow, it was fun. Last night she was acting a little sick. So much for getting outside.

The whole weather thing gives me lots of time to write though, for better or worse. I should be cleaning house I suppose.

My husband is a tech genius, he wont tell you that, he is humble, but I can say it, so we are inundated with technology around our house. It’s pretty cool. Combine that with my new favorite topic of child training and training a child to use technology effectively becomes a topic of interest.

The schools spend ridicules amounts of time and money trying to teach this. The attempt is failing miserably. It’s sad when there are so many very good resources out there. One option is the Raspberry pi. They are small, cheap computers, just a mother board really, and endlessly programmable. We have two of them and I’m sure will collect more around the house as my tech savvy husband dreams up more uses for them. We watch TV through it somehow, don’t ask me how I am not the techie, and listen to pod casts using the other. He talks about getting a camera and a waterproof case and taking time lapse pictures of the garden.

Right now there is a push for students to learn one hour of code. Our local school librarian/computer teacher has done this with some of her students they have some great resources available. I have had a page with lessons and games for beginners open on my desktop for a week now meaning to study up myself. Never do get to it, I’m the horse person not the techie.

We have some really cool games here, ready and waiting for The Goblin Child to get a little bigger. She has the want to, she is constantly grabbing at our phones, computers and remotes. She just doesn’t get that she is moving the mouse or pushing buttons for a purpose yet. Seriously, she’s only a year and a half, patience people, patience. But when she does, there are games available on Linux that boot through a CD or USB stick so a child can’t break the computer. My child can completely break a phone or computer with a single touch so that is very important. I played one the other day, when my husband was experimenting with them to see if he could get it to work. The one I played was fun and hard. We did physics with crayons, I am hopeless.

I also see talk of this sort of thing on my favorite homeschooling blogs. Penelope feels that gaming is a very good teaching tool, as a very beginner player at WoW, more on that later, I think it is incredibly difficult and I see how it would teach many skills including technology. I suppose we will let her dabble in that sort of thing also, with supervision of course.

That said I am off to read The Goblin Child a book, of the paper variety. Technology is great up to a point.

My brother keeps asking what we plant as he tries to figure out what he wants to try. He planted his first garden last year and was almost as excited about it as I was. This year we will be planting:

Beans: Cosmos, Dragon Tongue, Provider, Top Crop

Cabbage: Gonzoles, Super Red 80

Cantaloupe: Honey Orange, Honey White, Lambkin, Sarah’s Choice, Savor, Serenada F1

Carrot: Deep Purple, Mokum, Nelson, Romance, Sugarsnax

Corn: Mirai, Vision, Xtra-Tender 277A, Xtra Tender 3473, Wilda’s Pride (Ornamental)

Cucumber: Sweet Success, Sweeter Yet

Kohlrabi: Kolibri, Korriodor, Winner

Lettuce: Black Seeded Simpson, Butter Crunch, Five Star Greenhouse, Flashy Trout Back, Green Star

Okra: Carmine Splendor, Chant, Clemson Spinless

Onion: Undecided will see whats available in the greenhouses at the time, probably a red, sweet white, white and a shallot

Peas: Green Arrow, Premium, Sugar Heart, Super Sugar Snap, Wando

Peppers: Cayenne Purple, Garden Salsa, Goliath Griller, Highlander, Purple Bell, Purple Jalapeno, Orange Blaze, Sweet Goliath, Yummy(favorite)

Potatoes: Masquerade, Red Norkotah, Viking, Yukon Gold. Not purchased yet but this is the usual

Radish: Cherry Bell, Crunchy Royale, Ping Pong

Spinach: Emu, Pigeon, Red Kitten, Space

Sun Flower: Royal Hybrid 1121. I actually got these harvested last fall and roasted for seeds, good.

Swiss Chard: Prima Rosa

Tomato: Black Krim, Fresh Salsa, Gourmet Heirloom Blend, Heirloom Cherry Blend, Jetstar F1, Roma vf, Solar FireHybrid VFFFSt, Speckled Roman, SuperSauce Hybrid (huge!), Sweet Tangerine

Watermelon: Crimson Sweet, Million Bucks Hybrid, Orange Tendersweet, Sweet Favorite, Tom Watson

Zucchini: Greyzini, Gadzukes

It seems like a ridicules amount when written out. It seems excessive when planting and harvesting, but when sitting inside in the winter looking at seed catalogs they all look so good. If we didn’t practice great restraint the list would be much longer.

Guest post by Tammie:

One church, started in the eighteen hundreds, by young men and women believers, waiting for the return of Christ. Teaching from the bible, spreading the word of God across the world. One of their founders spoke often of how God spoke straight to her in visions.

Just when winter is at it’s darkest we are offered a reprieve. The seed catalogs have been pouring in since Christmas, we sat down a couple of weeks ago and chose the seeds we were out of, and the new ones that sounded fun. Now it is time to get those seeds ordered and get them started. There’s just one problem.

Last year I decided I wanted to start some flowers too. They worked beautifully, I had huge baskets all summer. We didn’t have enough room to start them all though. My dedicated gardener husband jerry rigged enough lights and we staggered the starting dates so everything worked but it was not pretty. This year he decided to build a real honest to goodness seedling starter stand, we aren’t really sure what to call it.

Sure he could have ordered one ready made but what fun would that be? Not to mention expensive. Our favorite garden catalog, Johnny’s, carries them.

Earlier this winter my tech genius husband remodeled his computer . Many of the old parts were good just not good enough, so with all these computer parts laying around he decided to redo my old Mac. My dad gave me the old Mac way back in the early 2000’s when he got a new one, it was still good just not good enough. He may also be a bit of a geek, I love geeks. I haven’t used it much since I got my beloved little Netbook but before the Mac went into temporary retirement she was still working great for an old girl, I believe this series came out in ’99?

Nocturne:

I removed all Apple components from inside. they were not upgradeable and severely outdated. Replaced them with more modern PC hardware, quite a challenge because Apple did things there own way. The case modifications made insure that new PC hardware upgrades can be made easily in the future. With the new hardware we were able to install the newest version of OSX, Mavericks. At some point I will install Windows Seven as well and dual boot between operating systems.

I thought his computers remodel was impressive, it was nothing compared with this.

My husband and I sat on the couch the other night reading. On the end table lay an old treasured book of mine showing the wear and tare of many well enjoyed readings. He picked it up turning it over in his hands. The cover was missing and the pages badly dog eared.

“We could try to find a new one on Ebay.” he said. ” One with a cover maybe?”

I looked up from the brand new book I was reading and began to tell him that not every body cares if their books are as pristine as he keeps his. I had barely started the sentence absently folding the page to mark my spot when I noticed the horror on his face and followed the path of his gaze to the book in my hands. Taking note of his consternation and knowing full well the cause I looked him straight in the eye, wallowing in my meanness, and took care to tighten the crease in the page sliding my nail along the folded edge as I finished talking.

The look on his face clearly showed his distress over the savage cruelty of my actions in mistreating a book so.

I love being married.

We started a new session with a new book last night. We finished a very good book, who’s name I can not remember but it was written by Francis? Chan, I can’t remember anything anymore, at the end of November and took a month off for the busy Christmas season. Flash forward to February and we are starting up again reading The Case for Christ. I am really looking forward to it, I love the author and his very fact based style.

During the very first study of the book and the very first accompanying video I noticed that the preacher that got Lee Strobels wife into church thus starting this whole journey and great book series was Bill Hybels. I saw him and Willow Creek mentioned and I was like “Hey I know them!!”  To myself of course I didn’t think anyone else would be interested. It struck me as very interesting that this widely read book and the conversion of, if no others, the author and his wife were accomplished through a church that my grandmothers church has preached against, stopping short, I hope, of calling them evil.

It amazes me that this tiny little church with a miniscule congregation feels that they are doing so much more for Christianity and I can’t help but wonder why? We go to a church that I like to think of as Willow Creek in miniature. The congregation is vibrant and enthusiastic and ever growing. The music is loud and beautiful with guitars and a drum. Oh I think I see the problem. According to this other church, which shall go unnamed, music with a beat is evil.

They claim that these “mega churches” don’t preach from the bible, that they preach a watered down version not the truth and all the very difficult requirements that true Christians must follow. No music with a beat, for example and no cheese I believe. While they were busy preaching the evils of large effective churches we were listening to a sermon preached from the bible in which our pastor talked about dissension among Christians and churches. He stated that it is not usually caused by a true difference of beliefs but instead by petty jealousy and envy.

Because I even bought a ticket this time.

I thought about that live in nanny thing and decided it was just too much togetherness. I really don’t like having to be around people. I will put her in a house a mile down the road, that’s plenty close enough for a neighbor. She can be on call for when I want to get out. I she could keep house too that would be great. I guess she would have to be willing to travel with us to visit family and my other barns/ranches and of course to shows. Maybe also like to ride that could be very handy.

I have been looking at a building in town that has been for sale for years and thinking what fun it would be to open a store. Only if I didn’t have to depend on it to make money. What fun would a practical store be? I want to open a tack and book store. I have been planning this for years. It will have to be a pretty two story building. The one in town isn’t pretty but is the only empty two story building and is on the highway so I’ll go with it. On the ground floor will be the tack, new and used. I’ll go back east and pick up stuff at the tack sales and come out here and sell it. English, western, dressage all the good fun things that probably wouldn’t sell, anything and every thing horse related.

Upstairs will be the books new and used. It would be fun to emphasize local, Nebraska, authors with the new books. Marie Sandoz is as local as it gets. Maybe other locally made crafts and the like and who doesn’t love a used book store. There is no money in it though so it is good that I will have won the lotto. In front of the big windows I will put nice comfy chairs and have coffee and tea fresh brewed so people can sit and read their books. Ahh, it will be so fun, as long as I don’t have to sit there all day. I will choose books and decorate.

What really amazes me is that my very content husband has no dreams of what he would do if only. Is that good or sad that he has no great aspirations? I would have to insist that he stay home and quit his job and farm full time. Help manage all the horses I have collected.