A Walk in the Woods

We can add another thing to the list of Honey Dids. We've wanted a trail through our woods sans poison ivy ever since we moved out here over seven years ago. Last week, Bryon and his Dad got it done through half of our woods. It is AWESOME. So if you are stuck at a desk today and would like to take a walk in the woods, come along. It's about 8 1/2 minutes long and I HAD really cool music on it until YouTube stripped it off even though it was MY music from MY cd's. Whatever. At you'll just have to imagine it I suppose :)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EWVlOgUd9k&feature=youtube_gdata

Honey DID!

It's official.

Bryon has now completed EVERY task on my honey do list... and a few I hadn't even thought of. He's the BOMB!

The past two weeks have been stressful around here (more later on that) and Bryon has been working hard around the farm.

Here's the list of things he did for me and our little homestead...

* COMPLETELY cleaned out the pellet stove and flue and summerized it. All we have to do is fill it up and fire it up this fall!

* Enlarged the garden, built new beds, hauled and spread gravel over the black plastic and Weed X we put down between the beds.

* Planted our garden.

* Total fixed my rabbit hutch with new wire on the bottom so their poop will fall through instead of me having to rake it up into a dust pan with a hoe!

* Fixed the TOP of the rabbit hutch to my liking AND made a door in the back of the thing so I can clean it out easier when I need to AND separate bunnies (boy and girl) if I need to. (So, Yeah, I plan to get a couple more bunnies. Turns out I miss the free fertilizer. Grace wants to name our two future bunnies Flip and Flop again. Seems reasonable).

* Made brand new berry beds AND planted all the berries.

* Totally redid the strawberry bed and planted the new strawberries.

* Mowed the lawn.

* Washed ALL the windows with Grandpa inside and out. Yeah, I know. It's awesome!

* Re-concreted my clothes line posts in the ground better and restrung my line.

* Made a new gate on the garden.

* Wiped down and dusted all the cabinets and wood inside the downstairs and kitchen.

* Helped me clean the house.

* Cleaned up the house construction leftover junk pile and readied it to burn.

* Set up the pig pen in a new spot and PIG PROOFED it even though he doesn't really WANT pigs again :)

I KNOW there was more. I'll have picture soon so you can see the progress.

That's right...best husband ever :)

April Fool

Grace was very excited about the idea of April Fools Day even though she wasn't too stealthy or saavy about pulling off pranks just yet. She did get me though. She kept reminding me to check for eggs (LIKE I DO EVERY MORNING ANYWAY without her reminding me, ha!).

So I said, "Yes Grace, I'm going to check for eggs."
Grace, "Right now?"
Me, "Yes, right now."
Grace, "I want to go with you!"

So we traipse out to the chicken house and guess what's waiting for me...



Now Araucanas can lay green and blue pastel eggs... but I don't have any of those kind of chickens anymore... and pink eggs? Already hard boiled?

We may be onto something there!

Dentist Daddy

Grace lost another tooth last Thursday night right before we went to her Parent's Night program at school. She got TWO dollars this time instead of FOUR. She was still just as excited.

That night we put her tooth in a cup and left it on her bookcase. Just before the "tooth fairy" was going to bed, I peeked in to leave her quarters in her cup and KICKED her bead case making a horrible racket in the process. I hopped out of the room and into the bathroom quickly but she didn't even stir, so I tip toed back into her room to try again and KICKED THE BEAD BOX AGAIN! Doh! Back out to the bathroom, then, since she was still asleep I finally got the money into her cup and stole the tooth. Geez!

Later that night about 4 am, Grace cried out for me and I went in to see what the problem was. She STILL won't just get up and go to the bathroom in the night by herself without waking me up. Why I have no idea. But this time she said she'd had a bad dream. So I gave her the regular platitudes and tried to talk her into going back to sleep. Then she said, "Do you see that web?"

"Uh, what web", I asked.

"That web up there with the wings and the blue and green bubbles" she said.

"Noooooo, I definitely do not see a web," I told her.

Well that wasn't going to be enough to get her back to sleep. She was scared of an imaginary web on her ceiling with wings and blue and green bubbles. I was back in her room three times and the last time she asked me how long until morning time.

She was scared so I finally asked her if she wanted to sleep with me. She did. We spent the rest of the short night in Nana's room together. As we lay down, she said again, "Do you see that web up there?" (now in Nana's room). Nope, I said, just ask Jesus to help you fall back to sleep, there is nothing to worry about. She mumbled some prayers under her breath and was asleep in less than a minute.

The next morning, I told Bryon what had happened and he said, "It was probably the tooth fairy and she was trying to hid from Grace, those wings were tooth fairy wings and magic". Wow, good answer Daddy! I told him to go tell Grace.

He did and she came running into the bathroom excitedly to tell me that was the TOOTH FAIRY SHE SAW LAST NIGHT!

Well, either way, she has two night lights now and there have been no more appearances of the web with wings or bubbles in the night.

Of course, tonight she said her top front tooth was loose now so we might be seeing her again soon.

Spring Peeps and Chuckle Frogs

Turn up the volume and you can hear the spring peeps and some frogs around our pond that sound like they are chuckling and laughing at each other. It must have been a good joke!

Ticket to Ride

So, last year, about this time, I got a ticket for "failure to stop at a stop sign" in Elkland. In my defense, it really SHOULD have been a YIELD sign. I DID slow down, A LOT and look for traffic (both of which the very nice Highway Patrolman acknowledged without my prompting). Of course, I still got the ticket.

I paid it. I told my boss. (It was in the company car, doh!) No harm no foul.

Well.... let me tell you. I am NOT the only one in the family who rolls through stop signs my friend.

Last Friday night Bryon, Grace, Grandpa and I were all in the pickup and had just finished eating $10 Pizza Hut pizzas and Bryon blew through a stop sign right in the middle of town. Now let me tell you, I've done my share of nagging about stopping at stop signs, especially since I got a ticket for it. I STOP now. EVERY TIME.

So Bryon rolls through it like usual and the the next thing we know he's pulling over and the nice swirly lights are in behind us. He says, "I wonder why he's pulling us over." Helpful as always, I suggested it was most likely because he totally did NOT stop at that stop sign. "No way," he says, incredulous.

Uh, yeah.

So the very nice Marshfield Policeman strolls up to the window and starts through his spiel. "Mr. Medley, do you know why I pulled you over tonight?"

Mr. Medley says, "No."

The Policeman says, "Well sir, you totally did not stop at that stop sign. At all."

Mr. Medley says, "That's what my wife just told me."

So he gets a ticket and Grace is just beside herself with questions and helpful suggestions from the back seat.

"Why did you get a ticket Daddy? Can I see it? Are you going to jail? Do I have to go? Because they'll only give you BREAD AND WATER in jail." She was RELENTLESS.

I didn't have to say a word. I just chuckled self-righteously while riding shotgun.

Grandpa offered up that at least it was dark and no one would probably recognize him.

It was all pretty funny but Grace just could NOT stop talking about it and asking him questions AND pointing out EVERY SINGLE STOP SIGN in the 15 minute ride home.

She didn't let up the next day either and was the first person to mention it to EVERYONE we saw including most of Freda's Restaurant and then again Sunday at church.

It's good to have minion even if I didn't tell her to tease him. I finally told her that she should probably stop talking about it because I thought Daddy was probably getting tired of hearing about it and she said, "But it's the first time I saw someone get a ticket and I can't put it out of my mind."

Well, there's that. First times ARE sticky for sure.

So now after a week it's sort of calmed down and I guess it's mostly out of her mind and she's on to other things.

She sure is a little mirror of our personalities though.

The other night I told Bryon I wanted the little cedar tree at the edge of the garden cut down so we could extend the beds and fence. I'm usually the advocate for the trees on the farm and don't want ANY of them cut down, EVER but that tree had to GO because it was standing in the way of gardening progress. I even tried Googling "how to start a chainsaw" but couldn't get anywhere with the stupid saw until Bryon got home and finally showed me how. I'm usually harping on Bryon NOT to cut ANYTHING DOWN.

As we were preparing to go out and dispatch of the tree Grace started getting upset and said, "I don't want you to cut down that tree. You KNOW, cutting that tree hurts it!"

"Yes," I told her, "I know but this tree NEEDS to come down, don't worry about it." As soon as she was inside the house and out of earshot, Bryon started laughing. "See" he said, "Now you're getting some of what you give me! Ha!"

I just told him, "Shut up Ticket Boy."

Gardening 2.0

Spring has sprung...or not. I was pretty excited about gardening last week but this cold snap has taken a little spring out of both my step and the air come to think of it.

We've been spending every spare minute and evening working on redoing our raised beds after reading the All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. He proposes an intensive gardening method in 4x4 foot raised beds with a mixture of vermiculite, peat and compost and suggest row planting is for machinery not the backyard gardener.



We made these big raised beds last year and had good success with them with a mixture of coffee bean compost from the Yard Waste facility in Springfield, compost and some peat but they were actually only half full anyway so we are taking the top layer of blocks off and creating more beds and plan to do more intensive planting this year according to Mel's book. We're all pretty excited about it.

You may also be impressed to know that I managed NOT to start any seeds yet. YET. I did go to Baker Creek Seeds last weekend and spent $40 on seeds, onion sets and seed potatoes (despite the great array you see there on the kitchen island) but I plan to buy the bulk of my plants at their May festival. I got all our seeds organized and I'm READY!

I also fixed up a little seedling station in the dining room and hope to get some pepper plants started this weekend. I'm not even going to bother with tomatoes ... except for the one mystery heirloom tomato I made an attempt to save the seeds from. I doubt they'll work, but who knows. It will be like playing the seed lottery!




Bryon and Gary worked on building beds for all the berries Bryon ordered from Stark Bros. which should arrive any day now. We're ready for them!




And Grace entertained herself with sweeping out the barn and garage and searching for seashells in the gravel that we are putting down between the beds to keep the weeds out.



I also finally learned how to use the chainsaw and got about a dozen loads of gravel with the tractor this week from the big pile and dumped them between the rows. I also got the chicken house all cleaned out and spic and span! You could sleep in there if you wanted to but then again... We are going to expand the chicken yard to about double the size and put a gate between the yards so later if I have two sizes or kinds of chickens I want to keep separate I can. The six hens are still laying (year two for them) but I want to get six more pullets and a rooster so I can try raising my own. I'm interested in the Buckeyes which are rare, heritage breed chickens but 25 is the fewest I can order online I think and that's way more than I want.


These are what the Buckeyes look like.
I'll have to do some more looking around until I figure out what to get and where.


Thank God I'm a country girl :)

Grandpa's Art Show

Bryon's dad, Gary, is a great artist. He's been painting in watercolors and acrylics for years now and we have several very neat and unique original works hanging on our walls.

He's also earned a great reputation around Marshfield this past year with several pieces hanging in the local restaurant we all frequent, Freda's Uptown Cafe.

The local library features works from area artist every month and March is Gary's month. He gathered up some of his best pieces and got to set them up for display March 1 and they'll be available for viewing all month.

Last weekend we stopped by and took some pictures for him and I also emailed the local paper about him and his work. A reporter called him yesterday and interviewed him in his apartment and went to the library to take some pictures too.

His artwork has a definite folk art style and many of his pieces are similar in style to the late Robert E. Smith of Springfield.

I wish I had a tiny bit of his talent. Guess I'll just have to settle for my powers of persuasion so I can talk him out of more art pieces.

Whip it, Whip it good.

Well we aren't quite ready for the Roller Derby, but maybe some day.

Sunday afternoon we all went roller skating in Springfield. Bryon and my first time since the early 90's and Grace's first time ever.

Turns out it's not so much like riding a bike after all but I didn't fall down :)

Grace liked it but it was challenging for her. I'm sure she'll be a pro in no time though.

Slumber Party

Grace and her friends have been BEGGING to have a slumber party so Friday night three of her friends from daycare came over for their first ever sleepover. The curly headed girl and the long haired girl have been at daycare with her since they were all 12 weeks old. The other girl has just been there a couple of years but they all asked to come home with us for a sleepover every time Grace was back at daycare so we finally decided to try it.

They all did great and actually made it all night long. We made biscuit pizzas and they put on all their own toppings for dinner. Then Bryon went up to the bar and served up some snow cones for them all.










They must have run up and down those stairs screaming 8,000 times and we finally got them down for bed about 9:30 and asleep by 10:30. They all three asked for their Mama's twice but ended up settling for a stuffed animal and a hug. Grace and the curly headed girl slept together in the low bed and the long haired girl slept on the top bunk. The other one slept on the floor until about 2:30 in the morning and then on the floor by my side of the bed the rest of the night.

The other girls never stirred all night.

The next morning I told them they made it all night! They were very brave! The curly headed girl said, "We're growing up." Well, as a matter of fact you are my friend :)



A good time was had by all... including Bryon as you can see...