We all piled on the four-wheeler and rode along to check the cows. As soon as we pulled into the corrals, there was a cow about to calve. We sat and watched, the children were hilarious. 8 kept saying baby, baby, baby. The Goblin Child was full of questions, most of which you can hear in the video.
I have more video of her cleaning him up later it is >here<.
The first birthday party we planned was canceled on account of snow. The next try went much better.
We got the bouncy houses, otherwise known as the refuge, for the evening. A very carefully scheduled evening. It is booked solid and you get exactly the amount of time you reserve. There was another party immediately following ours and another after that.
We had only invited a few families but by the time whole families come it makes for a large crowd. With the bouncy houses there was room for all and I didn’t have to clean house! Plus the kids like it, I guess that’s a bonus.
With only our group there, the need for decorum and acting like an adult was gone and the grown ups might have enjoyed it just as much as the children. We all got in on it, bouncing like idiots and plunging down the slides.
It was a great night and The goblin Child was very jealous and plans to have her party there this summer.
It was out of commission temporarily while it got moved to a new server. But it’s back and better than ever.
I need to get 8’s birthday written about but first, well, I may be a bad mother.
I let him out the door then tried to hurry his sister after. She is impossible to hurry. I peeked out the door to check on him and heard screams. It scared me half to death until I saw the reason for his screams.
It was only last night (or the night before that now) that we were out in jackets, at sunset, going for a nice ride.
Today it snows. Lots of snow. In the drifts at least. I had been inside most of the day. 8 went to help feed and The Goblin Child and I went out to try to convince the horses to go into the barn. They didn’t stay of course. So we jumped at the chance to ride along to pick up the mail. I envisioned a fun jaunt through the drifts out to the mail box and back. Then we’d play outside for awhile.
In reality even the good old blazer had trouble getting going. Then we made it half way out the drive, with the ride going just as I had expected, before plowing into a drift and coming to an abrupt halt. At the top of the hill was a drift as high as the blazer, it’s bottom at least. We got stuck. Snow was backed in tight around the under carriage, it was not budging.
My brave and chivalrous husband walked back to get a tractor.
With the snowblower he dug his way back to us, pulled the blazer home. He and 8 went off to blow more snow while The Goblin Child and I went off to play in the snow. I don’t know how much we got, a foot maybe? It wasn’t too bad of a snow, nothing like our Christmas blizzard.
It was enough though that we cancelled 8’s birthday party. Poor little guy, they were looking forward to the bouncy houses. I think he is just as happy though out in the tractor this morning feeding cows and, probably, moving snow. We’ll try for the bouncy houses again next week.
Until then Happy Birthday 8!!
Just not enough time to write about it all. I’ve been writing lots over on Rusty’s page but this one gets neglected. Between working with and writing about Rusty and my OTHER project I’ve been working on there hasn’t been any more time to write.
That OTHER project? It’s my favorite one right now. I’ve been shouting it out to anyone who will listen, and many who wont 😉 everywhere except here, so I thought I would fix that.
My mom wrote a book. She’s written many, the kids have quite a few that she wrote for them for Christmas and such. The last one though was even better than usual, and they’re always good. I decided something should be done with it and started to work on getting it published. I was going to surprise her with it then discovered that I needed her help to publish her book. Surprise, surprise. So we’ve been working together to get it ready to print and figure out the process. It’s been a really fun project to do together.
This particular book was about our constant attempts to ride to a nearby “mountain”. Somewhere I wrote a blog post about the time we made it as far as the gate at the bottom of the mountain. Fiction is kinder and in the book we make it. Plus some other fun stuff.
She has a facebook page about the book and soon, hopefully, more books. She is working on revamping at least one of the other ones she has written for the kids and some new ones maybe. She’s shy, she would have never made the facebook page for herself, or tried to get a book published so of course she wanted a pen name.
Here are some pictures of our latest attempt at reaching the mountain and a couple of pictures from the book of us actually making it to the mountain.
We got an awesome box in the mail from Grandma for 8’s birthday. They had a blast opening it.
I thought I should share this so if my children ever start showing signs of brain damage everyone can know where to put the blame. Plus they were cute inflicting it upon themselves.
We woke up to forty some degrees this morning. Although it’s cloudy it almost feels hot out. All our snow melted overnight, almost, leaving lots of mud. When 8 disappeared out the door in just a diaper and boots we didn’t try to stop him, just added a shirt. And sent his sister out too. They frolicked in the mud and water and wanted to ride Princess Onna. They wore boots and helmets, I think we had all the bases covered right?
Dad. Justin, this one’s for you guys.
The driveway was well blown in. Plowing more only makes higher drifts. Unless it’s a major undertaking, like last year. They spent days plowing snow way back into the wheat. It took forever and the wheat showed the wear and tear that summer. My very efficient husband kept wondering at the time why they weren’t just hooking up the snow blower.
This year he got to it first. He hooked up the snowblower.
As I’ve mentioned, it snowed.
I had a hard time deciding what vehicle to take to pick up The Goblin Child from school. The wind is blowing and the snow is drifting. Just out of the tree row there was a pretty good drift burying the road. I thought the car could probably make it but we took the pickup, just to be on the safe side. The first drift was bad the second, over the hill out of view from the house was worse but Billy, that’s my pickup, could handle it.
Getting out was no problem.
Coming home our tracks were drifted in but it didn’t look awful and my faith in Billy is great. We forged ahead. Billy plowed on until she could go no further. We were stuck. But no, that couldn’t be. Billy and I have been in tighter places than that!
Back and forth we went, taking care to shift slowly between drive and reverse. Billy is twenty two years old now, I’d hate to break the old girl. We rocked until she was able to get going backwards and we followed our tracks back out. I called my trusty husband, because what else does one do when the have problems? He said no, we couldn’t hope out into the wheat field and go around. Farmers are so weird.
So we tried again. With one set of tracks made Billy was able to fight her way a little farther before sticking. Again with lots of rocking we were able to back out. This time I gave up and told my concerned husband to go ahead and call his father to come plow a path with the payloader. I hate having to be saved.
We waited and watched as the payloader pushed a pile of snow taller that the bucket. It cleared the path out to us and we were able to get home. Probably still couldn’t have made it without four wheel drive. Good old Billy got us home safe, what a good old pickup.
It snowed yesterday. A nice snow, straight down with no wind. There was a good deal of it and it was wetter than the last snows have been. School was canceled, yesterday and today.
In plowing the driveway, again, the sledding hill was made better yet. It got piled good and high last time, this time it was widened. The cousins came over and they made use of it, in ways it was never meant to be used. Kids can never just go down the right way. What fun would that be? They went down the newly broadened sides and off any banks they could find. Hopefully they will sleep well tonight.
After the snow on Christmas, the children’s loving father piled the snow behind the house and shoveled a path down it for the kids to sled on. They have made really good use of it. They, and the cousins, and friends, wore it down to nearly nothing. then they had to clear the drive completely for a semi to come in. The semi still hasn’t shown but the cleared snow was put to good use.
With lots of help from his children their loving father built the hill even higher. He then spent most of an afternoon reshaping it and even digging steps into the back side for easy access. Nobody has taken a sled down it since its rebuild. No, they have found a different use for it.