Tidbits

Stuck Cow
So far, the cow that was stuck has managed to make it. John gave it some shots to relax it's muscles and has been taking it water and feed. It has moved some on it's own and even made it to the shade, but yesterday he couldn't find it. Hopefully it found a good spot to rest. Still not sure what will become of it.

Pear Bombs
This weekend we took a bedsheet and the kids and I held it under the pear tree while John knocked pears out of the tree. The kids thought it was pretty cool to see pears flying out of the tree and rolling around in the sheet or falling on the ground (splat!). I thought it was pretty gross when a rotten one would fall into the sheet and get splattered by the others. Rotten pear juice, yum! We took some of the pears to my parents and my dad is going to attempt to make wine out of them. Hope it turns out! Also, we borrowed a dehydrator from our neighbors and are going to try dehydrating some of them since I read pears don't freeze well. Guess we'll eat the rest of them. They turned out really big and juicy this year due to the rainy weather. There weren't quite as many as last year since a lot of them got knocked off during one of our crazy weather events. It's amazing we had this many considering the 4 inch hail and ~70mph wind. We found that the dogs actually helped us to keep the pears that made it this far... we discovered a dead raccoon in the yard the other morning. We couldn't believe it... usually they just bark all night at stray cats. Guess they really had something this time!

Parent Homework
I went to a meeting for the parents of first grade students last night and decided first grade was too much work for me! Really, though, we will be having to read every night and practice spelling words and spelling sentences and make sure they can pass their reading tests and know what to do to help them when they're struggling with words while reading and write down the books they read and help them practice writing and, well, I'm sure I'm forgetting something. Between that and helping Ashlyn with her homework, it'll feel like being back in school again! It is exciting, though, to see Colten reading. I know he'll enjoy it considering how much he loves being read to (especially Captain Underpants!!!). Wish us luck in getting to 60 words per minute by the end of the year! (That sounds like a lot, doesn't it?)

Blimps
Seriously, how often do you see blimps these days? John called this afternoon and said there was a plain white blimp flying over the ranch. Strange!