28 February 2019

Starting The Garden

We got the seeds started for this years garden.

By we I mostly mean my super gardener husband.  Calling what the rest of us contributed “help” is stretching thing a bit far. We were there though! 😉

Lots of petunias, my contribution. A variety of tomatoes, celery, egg plant, and probably peppers. We planted them last Friday and, the petunias especially, were coming up already by Monday.

They are a sign that spring may eventually come again. We are more than ready for it. February was cold.

 

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27 February 2019

Getting Old

Now that he’s four 8 keeps telling us he’s big enough. it doesn’t matter big enough for what. He’s just big enough, he can do it!

I got him to come out with me to sort off a couple of head of cattle by promising he could help drive. I thought he could push the gas while I helped a little. Instead I accidentally put it in low and it was perfect.

We took off across the cornstalks with him in complete control. I wrapped my arms around his waist and held on while he drove. He zipped and zoomed. Not too fast though, because it was in low and couldn’t. He steered all over the place all by himself and generally did a great job. I drove while we brought the cows up, he wasn’t doing a great job of going slow behind them. Or following them.

In the corrals though he took over again. He pulled through gates while I opened and closed them and he helped chase cows where we were trying to get them. By the end he was done. It was cold. He was tired. He wanted to go inside! Where he promptly fell asleep. It’s hard working being all grown up.

 

 

Category: 8 | 1 Comment on Getting Old
25 February 2019

Happy Birthday!

We celebrated 8’s birthday this weekend with a cake and playing with the cousins. Just a little party ad lots of play. We went swimming last weekend at the pool in Chadron and are trying to get up to Rapid for to go swimming up there. That seems like more than enough celebration for one little boy.
We may never actually make Rapid. There hasn’t been a lot of snow this winter just enough mixed in with lots of cold to make it hard to travel. But we’ll keep trying!

Category: 8 | 2 Comments on Happy Birthday!
24 February 2019

The Archer

I always see pictures of beautiful women shooting bows off their horses. I see them and get very jealous. So when I saw a bow for sale the other day I made an impulse buy. It’s nothing fancy a cheap little youth archery set but I couldn’t resist the thought of teaching Rusty to let me shoot it off of him.

It was warm enough the next day to try it out. I lugged a couple of straw bales out and set the in front of a shed so we wouldn’t shoot any horses by accident. Then my new toy was stolen.

The Goblin Child was fascinated. She worked and worked until she had the basic idea down. As good as I do at least. Neither of us have figured out the aiming and that silly stuff yet 😉 She spent quite a while practicing and was able to mostly hit the bales before she wandered off.

I even got to shoot it once or twice before other duties called.

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13 February 2019

Winter Activities

There were hardly any children at the first Clover Buds meeting of the year. So we were able to sneak 8 in. He’s still a year or two too young. He stuck it out for a little while then left for Lala’s room and a computer to play on. Theo goal was to design a path to guide the little tooth brush head robots with vibrating motors to all the pants that needed pollinated. It was all about bees.

They has fun even if no plants got pollinated.

I have forced everyone kicking  and screaming out the door as often as I am able. They have fun once they are out there. What could be more fun than trapping your sibling under the sled?

For Valentines day and the hundredth day of school The Goblin Child got a shirt to decorate with one hundred things. They both got shirts of course, how could I let one decorate but not the other? I only got pictures of her because he chose one hundred fingers, which meant twenty hand prints. It got messy.

 

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11 February 2019

Kiwi Crates

They’ve been building up all summer. The children beg to work on them we tell them to wait until it’s not so nice outside. To wait until we aren’t so busy with other things.

Now is that time.

It’s cold and icky outside. They can only play the Tractor Game and Minecraft so much. In between they work on the Kiwi Crates. It’s a great family activity. For the rest of the family. My inability to read directions forces me to forgo this pleasure. So sad 😉

 

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10 February 2019

Girls Day Out

It seems like it has been cold forever but I know it was warm once. I know because we went out and played in it. heather brought Whitten and Brenna and Owen over and we climbed all over the hay bales and ran around out side.

Then to make a god day even better Tanna came over and she and Heather and I abandoned my poor long suffering husband with the children and went for a ride. The horses were crazed and zipping all over the place. We laughed and screamed trying to talk over the wind. Tanna found a hair ball, not from a cat but out of a cows stomach. Hard and round, like a rock but light as a feather. We inspected it carefully and showed it to the kids. They were distinctly unimpressed. Then sent it home with Tanna, its finder.

Then the cold weather moved back in and we returned to the indoors, hoping to ride again some day.

 

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4 February 2019

Confidence Challenge, Scary Object Edition

It officially starts today!

A friend of mine approached me at the end of last year. She wanted to know if our other friend Ineke and I would be interested in putting on an online training course. It sounded fun to us so we all umped right in. It took a good while to plan and get everything down and working. Now, finally, it is going! Not only did it fill up, within two days!, but we also have a waiting list for the next one already.

We all do clicker training with our horses, and our dogs, and children, and husbands, and anything else we can get our hands on. Now we are working hard to teach more people about it. Jain is the tech guy, lady 😉 she is one of the few people who’s work my very particular husband approves of! As well experienced in online training stuff. Ineke is the sweet hippy chick who is great with people as well as horses, I actually did a lot of writing for the course and am happy to be along for the ride.

If this goes well we are looking forward to doing more like it!

I am Noche, in case you were wondering who in the world those people were  😉  Who wants to use their real names online. I certainly don’t!

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