Colten's 7th Birthday

Colten turned 7 last week Wednesday and we had a small party for him this past Saturday. He wanted a "Surf's Up" party because he loves that movie, so I went online and ordered some plates, napkins, penguin squirt toy party favors and this cake topper set that looked really cute with a penguin, a surf board, palm trees and some other stuff. I received the package on Tuesday with most of the correct items, except that I had Surf's Up fruit snacks instead of a cake topper set. I was obviously upset about that since the party was Saturday, so I called the place I ordered it from and they assured me that they would get me the correct item by Friday. So I calmed down when I saw a package was delivered Friday. However, when I opened it up, low and behold, more fruit snacks!!!! ACK! I was pretty irked at that point, but they place was closed so I called them the next morning and told them they needed to figure out their problem with fruit snacks and cake toppers and got my money back. Now I needed to improvise to decorate the cake, so I took one of the penguin squirt toys and some palm trees toys that Ashlyn had and did the best I could. I couldn't find anything to replace the surf board, unfortunately, but I guess it turned out alright.
The party went pretty well, I just had to follow the boys around to make sure they didn't break anything. A few of Colten's toys bit the dust, unfortunately, but he was excited about his new stuff and having friends over, so he got over it pretty quickly. I'm pretty sure it'll be awhile before I have more than 1 of Colten's friends over at a time again, however. That was a little too crazy for me!!!

Barn Update

I kept forgetting to take pictures of the latest developments on the barn, but here it is finally. The outside is not yet complete. The wall above the porch still needs to be painted red and the eaves are all still open, but John has one of the lofts inside done, complete with stairs to get up to it and most of his shop set up so he can get some work done to start paying off this monstrosity. I really like the way the big doors turned out.

New Year, finally an update!

Hope everyone had a good holiday. I'm back at work again after having two weeks off... I could really get used to that! We had a pretty good holiday except for the fact that John ended up with pneumonia, but he's better now and life is back to normal again.

The Mason County Stockshow was this past weekend and the kids each showed a pig in it. Ashlyn got 1st place with her pig and was in the running for Grand Champion, which she didn't get, but that's fine, too. Colten's pig, which we thought was the better one of the two, didn't place at all, and Colten was pretty upset about that. We told him he couldn't do anything about the fact that the judge didn't like his pig and we'd just try again next year and maybe have better luck. Hopefully we do! Anyway, I was proud of both of them and we're glad to not have to remind them to feed piggies anymore!

Here are some photos of the kiddos showing their pigs:

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

See ya next year! (unless something really interesting happens and I really feel like trying to post using our dial up connection... hmmm probably not!)

Murphy's Law

If ever John has had a case of the 'Mondays' it was yesterday. It's quite comical after the fact, but I'm sure he was cursing a lot as it was occurring. Hopefully I can remember all of the details....

First of all, let me point out that the yellow ranch truck has been out of commission since last week when it died on the way back from Mason one day and it hasn't gotten fixed yet. He usually would use this truck, which has four-wheel drive, but has been forced to use his white truck, which doesn't.

The afternoon started out with John going up to Linda's ranch to check on her cows. She has a high fenced area that is supposed to keep deer out, but some have gotten in and she asked John to get rid of them. So, when John saw a couple of them and they both just stood there, he decided they would make for some good sausage meat and shot them. He backed his truck up to them to load them up and managed to get it stuck in the grass/mud (it hasn't rained much for awhile so I'm sure that he wasn't expecting the ground to be THAT wet). Try as he might, he wasn't able to get it unstuck. He ended up having to walk the couple of miles back to the house to get the jeep. He wasn't able to pull it out with the jeep either and broke his come-along in the process. He drove back home and got the tractor, which of course, died in the middle of Salt Branch Loop and refused to even start up enough again to move it off the road. So he walked back to the house again. Fortunately it was close to the time that the bus comes and our neighbor comes to get Jayde off the bus at our house. He was able to help John get both vehicles back to the house. Unfortunately, by this time, both deer had been laying out in the sun too long, and are pretty useless now. Talk about an unproductive afternoon!!! Hopefully things go better for the rest of week.

Band Concert

Ashlyn was really nervous about playing in the holiday band concert this past Sunday. She was sure they'd sound awful and I bet it didn't help that we agreed, but jokingly! Anyway, for a band that has only been learning for 18 weeks, I think they sounded pretty good. They played three songs and they were all recognizable. Here is a video of them playing Jingle Bells. Ashlyn's in the middle with the Santa hat on. We were all very proud of her!

Pet Cemetery

We've lost yet another cat to the evil FM 783. That brings our total domesticated animal loss since moving to the ranch 2 1/2 years ago (that I can remember anyway) to:

Cats: 8 (given, some of them just disappeared, but they could've been run over)
Dogs: 1
Cows: 1
Calves: 3

Fortunately, our neighbor called us to let us know of a possible run over kitty near the spot where the kids get on the bus before they went to catch the bus. Thankfully, they didn't have to see it.

So, if anyone needs to get rid of some cats, just bring them to our house. We've never needed to get them fixed, they never live long enough to multiply.