I Need a Weekend, to Recover From the Weekend

 

I know a great deal of the blog includes our grandson.  The fact is, he is a big part of our life out here in the country.  We feel very blessed to have access to this little boy on an almost daily basis.  Now, with that said we have all decided that it works out better for all of us if I can be the Nana rather than the babysitter, so we actually don't babysit a great deal.  The exception was this weekend....the entire weekend, like 48+ hours of the weekend.

I woke up this morning feeling like I needed a pot of coffee, 2 Advil and about 6 hours of Dateline reruns.  How can there be so much energy packed into one human being that barely reaches my waist??

Here is the weekend in a nutshell:

Saturday:  Wake up at 6:15, smiling happy...it's gonna be a great day!  Breakfast of bacon and eggs (of course).  Get dressed.  Spend 15 minutes looking for shoes, break shoestring, fix shoestring, go outside and play football with Poppy. (Okay it is only 7:45 and 37 degrees at this point).  After 12 minutes of football change of sport to soccer for an additional 8 minutes.  Come inside get out sketch pad and sharpies, draw Angry Birds, barns, Christmas trees, dinosaurs, vampires, Darth Vader and farm animals.  Go back outside (at least we can't see out breath now) chase chickens, gather eggs, climb fence and taunt the goat herd.  Then back inside asking for his 20 minute allotment on the IPad.  Then it's on to Lego's, then blocks then farm trucks and back to football outside.  Mind you that scattered in between all of the antics are multiple requests for snacks, as well as requests for new and additional toys as Eli has "no toys to play with".

To top it all off, and I am not complaining we have to count EVERYTHING.  We count steps, cars, leaves, letters, buttons and the list goes on. At the grocery store I had to shut Eli off after he reached 309 because my eye was starting to twitch.  If that isn't tough enough we also have to take note of all the words and letters in, well life.  "Nana, what does E-X-I-T spell?  Nana, what does S-E-N-I-O-R spell"?  If he doesn't stop asking me, it's gonna be like Nana what does Z-I-N-F-A-N-D-E-L spell?  Geez!  With the spelling and counting going on why I would take Eli to the grocery store is beyond me.  What should have taken a few minutes took over an hour,  mostly because we opted for the self checkout lane and we had to call for assistance three times.  Eli scanned the item and more than a few times threw it back in the cart, or he scanned it twice or he put his entire body weight on the scale when we weighed the produce.  The checkers at Safeway have memorized my face, I have been banned from the store, my Club Member card confiscated.  It is a sad day!  At this point I have to add that I don't know how much money my daughter-in-law makes, but as a third grade teacher....it is NOT ENOUGH!

The rest of the weekend was an entire blur, but it included gathering leaves, jumping in leaves, walking around the miracle mile, making brownies, leading the pony and then riding the pony, and oops getting thrown off the pony. (Not a big deal since the pony stands only 3 feet tall).  Lots of hugs and loves and nursing care to the road rash on the butt from the pony accident.  Apples and peanut butter to make it all better.  Making homemade playdoh, painting, more drawing and GEEZ more spelling and counting. 

I spent several minutes trying to explain why we couldn't pick up the hitchhiker holding a sign and looking for a ride to Limon on the corner of highway 71 and 34.  We passed him going to the store and he was still there when we came home.  Eli had a hard time with the concept.  "Nana, I feel bad that the man doesn't have a ride", he said. ( I think he's gonna be a Democrat like his Nana)

Another dissertation followed as Jon tried to explain to Eli, what "breaking the plane" means as in football.  We are still working on that one, if you all have any suggestions!!

Brush: Beetdiggers Football

http://www.youtube.com/v/o8cEBXjAerk?version=3&autohide=1&autoplay=1&showinfo=1&attribution_tag=5K_yy_AtzGZDl3X3MW3VtA&autohide=1&feature=share

Struggles at School

 

Oh I am not suggesting that my little grandson is having struggles at school.  What I am admitting to is this Nana struggles to get the kid to school in the morning.  Last year when I had planned to take Eli to preschool and we decided it was a great idea to go on a little field trip to the river, Eli's Mom threatened me with truancy court.  Yeah a bit dramatic but truancy court!

 

So now when I keep Eli in the wee hours of the morning as his Mom finishes up her nursing degree I am on my best behavior!  Let me just say what I try to do and what actually happens are well... miles apart.  I will tell you the elementary school principal, who was a complete stranger to me on the first day of school, now knows me by name.  Not a good sign!

 

It has been decades since I have had to get a school age child up and ready for school and when I did this back in the day, we merely pulled up to the school parking lot, kissed the kids good bye and drove away.  So the first time I attempted to do this with Eli he informed me I needed to walk him into the school.  Now this is all well and good, except for the fact that I had taken Eli to school that first time....in my pajamas.  "Eli", I whined.  "You can walk in by yourself can't you?"  "No, Nana, you HAVE to walk me to the door".  I took a deep breath as I looked down at my morning attire.  My pajamas consisted of sweats and a tshirt.  Not to bad except the sweats had huge, ridiculous bold blue and white stripes on them.  I had no socks on and to top it all off, cowboy boots.  Could it get any worse?  To make a long story short, I found a jacket in the back seat, pulled it on and tucked my unruly hair behind me ears.  I tried to make a hasty trip up to the door but Eli had to stop and look at every blade of grass on the school lawn apparently.  I think the school officials were probably calling DHS as we approached the door!

 

After the first day of school, let's see.  I left my coffee cup on the roof and drove off breaking the cup in the path that all the children cross.  Oh and Tuff got out and ran amok through the crowd one morning, at least I was dressed more appropriately for those times.  Not to mention the times we are um, tardy.  In this day and age the school is locked down tighter than a drum.  Once the school bell rings I think some kind of automatic lock is engaged.  That's what it seems like anyway because I have to try and smuggle my grandson into the school like a Mexican drug lord.  Geez! We have forgotten the backpack, left the house before brushing teeth and one time, not too long ago I loaded Eli up in the truck, with no shoes on for Christ sake!

 

Despite all the antics of this Nana, Eli got a perfect attendance award a few weeks ago and last night received a special award from the kindergarten teachers.  I went to watch him receive his award and I swear, when no one was looking the school principal pointed his middle and index finger at his eyes, and then he pointed them at me.  "I'm watching you"!

Cluckingham Palace

I promised you my chicken stories but I have to start from the beginning.  The "ground floor" so to speak.  You can understand my very tolerant husband's dismay when I brought 10 adorable chicks home from the local farm store.  I had discussed this with Jon prior to the purchase (when I say discussed I mean, I asked him if I could get chickens, he said no, then I begged please and he was silent - which I always interpret as a ....YES!)

So 10 little chickens joined our family and lived in the garage under heat lamps in a livestock tank.  They didn't stay little for long.  As I scoured the Internet for a suitable chicken coop design the chicks got bigger and bigger.  As I walked through our property trying to visualize the most user friendly place to build the coop, the overcrowded teenage chickens were starting to get aggressive with each other.  Only adding to my chicken induced angst was the fact that as the chickens grew, the wind howled and late spring rain and snow turned our normally sandy soil to mud.

After an exhaustive search I finally found a chicken coop that I, oops I mean the chickens could live with.  It was perfect, and user friendly and old school.....and I'm faily certain I will end up living in it at some point.  I found the plans online and I should have known what we were in for when I printed out the plans...all 29 pages of them.  I didn't have the wit to stop right there, I mean I would have only been out the ten bucks I purchased the printed plans with.  No, I hade to run to Lowes with my plans in hand and get supplies.  I figured if I got everything prepared Jon could just well, put it together, right? Just like leggos!  The kid at Lowes looked at the plan, looked at me, then looked at our pickup in the parking lot and announced, "yer not gonna have enough room in that truck, fer all this lumber".  Again should have just stopped right there.

I "presented" my husband the plans and the materials or should I say the first truckload of materials, as if it was a gift.  Here honey I did all the foot work for you, the hard part is done.  At some point I remember Jon saying "I have never built a house before, even a chicken house".  I answered that with, "Ah come on, we can read, we can follow directions, we are fairly bright, right?"  After that moment it was all a blur of lumber and sawdust, and mud and nails, and cuts and bruises, multiple bribes to our kids to come to the country to work and I think I do recall several threats to call a divorce attorney.  In the middle of this process I thought I might as well pick out a wallpaper and maybe some curtains because I would be living out here soon.  I really thought that was the case when Jon wired the coop for lights and heat.  If he plumbed in a toilet I would have really been worried!  My father, otherwise known as Sweden, you know not picking sides, had a front row seat to every last bit of the chaos.  I think he suffers now from PTCCS - post traumatic chicken coop syndrome.

In the end the coop turned out perfect.  Jon did build a house with steel siding and windows and nesting boxes, cupboards and shelves.  The now grown hens love their new digs and took to it very quickly.  Why does Jon still have the divorce attorney's phone number on speed dial??

 

Just breath

 

This photo was taken November 1st about 7:00 a.m. looking over our pasture toward the East.  I am blessed.  Enjoy!

Halloween Overachieving in the Country

I have never liked Halloween.  Maybe it is because it was too much work when the kids were smaller back in the day.  I refused to take the kids trick or treating and I refused to answer the door for trick or treaters so it always put Jon in a tough spot, and yet he still loves me!  One of the benefits of living in the country and being old is that we don't have to go out that night and no one comes to our door on Halloween.

Maybe I was actually missing the shenanigans of this holiday (or maybe it is that I am unemployed and have too much time on my hands) because when Ashley asked us to babysit Eli overnight last Saturday, I thought we might have a spooky Halloween dinner party.  Not a big deal but just a fun time with a few decorations and a little bit of party food. Jon even joined in the preparations and dug out Halloween paraphernalia we haven't seen for years!  My party planner mode went into overdrive for one five year old little boy who happens to love Halloween.  I found myself in the Halloween aisle at Target.  I went to the grocery store on three separate occasions,  and I scoured the dollar stores in Morgan County for a black light that I thought I had to have.  I downloaded scary music from ITunes and I told Ashley she couldn't bring Eli out until after dark.

The party was set.  Even though we weren't in costume the atmosphere was, well slightly spooky.  Cobwebs that glowed a spooky green draped the dining room.  A special ghoul guest sat at the head of the table with glowing green eyes.  Numerous candles were flickering throughout the room.  Eyeballs peered up from their place in a bowl of nachos.  Creaking and screeching music and scary sounds pierced the silence and then Eli came to the door.

He stopped dead in his tracks, not even a foot from the door.  Haha I did it I got Eli, I surprised him!  My intent was to surprise him not to scare the wits out of him.  He hung on his Mom as we sat down. Not considering the idea of age appropriateness, I remained in character with my spooky voice and slow moving body asking Eli to sit by our ghoul guest, if he dared.  He scooted his chair closer to mine and away from the ghoul.  We started to feast on used band aids, pumpkin vomit (did I mention I did not consider age appropriateness?) mummy hotdogs and zombie juice from slime covered cups.  At one point I looked down at Eli and he wasn't eating a thing, he was just staring at our guest.

Nana can we turn down that music, it is too loud I can't here anything.  Off goes the music.  Nana What is underneath that scary guys hood?  Off comes the mask and the hood to reveal a soccer ball and a wooden plank held together by duct tape.  Nana, I can't see my food, I need the lights on.  Off goes the black light, on goes the dining room light.  He gingerly flicked the used band aids off his plate, apparently overcome with the disgusting appetizers.   He wiped his hands off after taking a reluctant drink of his zombie juice, then he promptly decided he was not hungry.  In fact I think he may have even asked to go home which he never does!

After we had packed everything scary safely into tubs and cupboards Eli started to relax and we decided we would watch a movie.  Hell with my lack of judgement you would think I let Eli watch Carrie or maybe Poltergeist right before bed.  Maybe we skip the movie and opt for a haunted house that is appropriate for adults only.  Geez.  Poppy, being the voice of sanity found Dr. Dolittle on HBO and the world felt a little safer.

Needless to say that night Eli would have no part of sleeping in the big bed in the extra bedroom.  He slept between us and more specifically on Jon's face the entire night!  I heard him telling his Mom the next morning on the phone that he slept with us because the spooky dinner night had him "troubled".  I troubled my own grandson!!  Good job Nana.  I think I will do what I do best and leave Halloween to the professionals from now on.

Bake Sale Smack Down

Every year at the Brush Oktoberfest, the St. Marys Church ladies have a huge bake sale booth.  The proceeds are used to purchase various statues and tablecloths and stuff (actually I don't know where the money goes)?  That doesn't stop me though from participating.  Each year a week before the event I scour through cookbooks and now Pinterest to find the best bake sale item, the one that will out shine all the others.  I'm really great at fixing chocolate chip cookies but the wow factor just isn't there, I always need to come up with something better.  Of course that is all just crap because what I really want to do is outshine my mother.   She is a brilliant cook and baker and actually should have owned a catering business so I have my work cut out for me every year.

This year I wasn't above sneaking in to her house when she was away to look for an ingredient list or a recipe book sitting out with yellow sticky note page markers.  I wanted to tap her phone but I found that to be cost prohibitive.  So with no prior knowledge of what she was baking I set about to make the greatest bake sale items of the year (or at least the ones that looked better than my Moms). 

The night before the sale, I had come up with some great ideas and they were looking pretty good so I decided to spend the evening taunting my own mother!  I sent her the picture text below.

"Butter brickle biscotti AND cherry walnut bread.  BAM"

Okay so no answer, at all.  I started to get nervous, I knew she was home in the kitchen and I hated not knowing what she was working on.  I thought I needed to come up with something even bigger, better.  So a couple hours later on that same evening I sent the following picture text to my mother.

 

 "Honey crisp apples with caramel cream cheese

dipping sauce.  BOOYAH".

 

Still no answer from my mother, I was starting to think maybe she had aspirated flour, or burned herself on the oven, or choked on a maraschino cherry.  When I finally heard from her.  I received the silent message below from my Mom.

 

 

Seriously?  Really?  I guess there's always next year!!

 



The Animals are Still Running the Zoo

It should come as no surprise that the animals still call all the shots at the Cook No-Kill Hobby Farm.  They dictate our time, our pocketbook and even our vacations!  Since it has been over a year since my last post to this blog I thought I would re-introduce you to all the players in order of appearance!
Big Jack, our eight year old Newfoundland weighs 140 pounds and thinks he is a lap dog.  You can have the best seat in the house....but you'll have to move the dog!  That's our Jack.  He is also the best photo bomber in the county.  He is my loyal companion and dear friend.

The goats rate a close second in pampering.  They have a heated barn,  a great diet of sweet feed and alfalfa and on occasion get scraps from an odd neighbor who apparently rummages through the trash bins behind our local grocery store.  We now have four kids, born just a few weeks ago.  To make a long story short while we were in Ireland our billy goat jumped a five foot fence and got in with all the nannies.  In honor of his persistence we have gifted all the new babies with Irish names, Patrick, O'Malley, Clare and Collin are up and running, jumping and playing the days away.  Shout out to our nephew Tanner who tried like hell to keep the herd separated!  We also have Lucy (the goat who thinks she is a dog) Lucky, Baby, Starflyer (yeah, never let your grandkid name a goat when he is in his Star War phase!) Bhindi, and well geez I can't even keep track of them all.  My last count was 13 goats but when people ask me how many goats we have I give them the standard answer of 6, so they wont call me the "old crazy goat lady"!

In the past year we also got into the chicken business.  I use the term business very loosely.  We don't make any money but we do enjoy farm fresh eggs from happy chickens who aren't cooped up in crowded unsanitary and cruel conditions.  We also get to sit out on the back patio and watch what we call chicken TV, because their antics and actions are always entertaining.  We started out with 10 baby chicks, little did I know chickens sex organs are located on the inside (your biology lesson for today) and therefore the sex is really not known.  We ended up with three large roosters and I was lucky enough to find a man here in Morgan County who took them to live out their days on his farm.  Now I have seven hens that lay approximately 3 dozen beautiful large brown eggs a week.  Yeah, I know more on that issue soon! 

We also have a part-time dog, our daughters Corgi who would really just rather live on the farm so she spends a great deal of time with us.  She is the keeper of the herd of sorts and rather than stay in the nice warm and dry house opts to sit out by the haystack for hours on end sitting quietly watching the goats.  Tuff has become a fun part of the Cook No Kill Mini Farm.

Our last acquisition is Beyonce, bear in mind she already had that name and we didn't feel it right to change it, and it suits her.  She is a miniature horse (not a pony as Jon corrects me).  Our neighbors, who are moving needed to find her a new home and we couldn't bear the thought of her being sold at the sale barn.  She is short, overweight and pigeon toed....and the most gentle adorable creature.  We know um exactly nothing about horses and less than that about mini horses with bad feet, but like all fun things that happen out here we are just gonna wing it and see what happens!

Oh, the alpacas?  They are merely on my wish list, I will also keep you updated as this list changes!





Unemployed in the Country

As most of you know, and much to Jon's dismay the floods of 2013 have forced me to join the ranks of the unemployed.  I have been traveling to beautiful Estes Park 3-4 times a month to work for nearly three years.  Since the route to my work was basically destroyed, I have found myself with plenty of time on my hands.  Okay Estes Park is one of my favorite places on earth and I adore the folks I work with but not working is so, sooo SWEET!

For the past 6 weeks I have found more than enough projects to fill my time, in fact my to-do list is growing rather than becoming smaller for some reason.  One of the first things I wanted to do was reinvent the blog.  We just have too many ridiculous and hilarious things that happen to us out here on our Cook No Kill Mini Farm, to not share them with family and friends and even strangers.  You, yes you may be the subject of the blog, just as before!  Yep, I just can't wait to talk about ya! Oh yeah and Follow Me if you don't already, leave your comments, share your thoughts so can all read them!

So anyway I can now cross the blog off my list, and for a compulsive list maker such as myself it is a glorious moment.  Okay and can I just say that when you chose to use the notes app on your IPhone you are denied crossing items off the list, which is the most satisfying part of making the list in the first place! What kind of things have been on the list for the past 4 or so weeks?   (Secretly and just between us I add a bunch of items to my list and then cross them off so Jon will see it.  I add things to the list like, take a shower, feed the dog, get the mail)   Here is my list of actual projects minus copious amounts of bogus items
Can everything edible on the mini farm


By the way did you know it takes 40 pounds
of tomatoes to make 8 pints of salsa.  40
POUNDS!

Clean every cupboard in the houseMake various photo book gifts
Enter photo essay contestStain windows
Shampoo all carpets
Apply for doctoral program
Learn how to use photo shop software
Make several more batches of goat milk soap

Just kidding about the doctoral program, had to make sure you were reading.  Okay so anyway I have managed to do most of the items on the list.  I am absolutely exhausted and thinking I might need to go back to work just to get some rest.    It doesn't help when me husband, God bless his heart comes home from work and one of the first questions out of his mouth is "What did you do today?".  The first few weeks when I wasn't working when he asked me that question, I told him the truth.  I told him things like, I watched leaves fall from the cottonwood trees through the front screen door or I walked two miles with a quiet mind the entire time or I drove 9 miles out to the middle of nowhere to find free flowers to dry.   Okay when I told him things like that his eyes rolled so far back in his head that I had bad zombie dreams for a week. 

What he REALLY means when he asks that question, and lets be honest just like most men I know is...."Hi honey, how much money did you make today"?  So now when my wonderful spouse of over 30 years comes home from work, takes his coat off and pets the dog then asks, "What did you do today"?  I simply say.....zero.