I cried...

It was Nate's first day of kindergarten today.

Since it was only about an 1 1/2 hours this morning I was just going to drive him. But he's been begging to go on the school bus since February and will be on it the rest of the year. So we started from day one with the routine of waiting at the front gate for the bus.

When they drove away I cried. I'm jut not quite ready for this. Letting my baby go. By himself into the big world. He was thrilled. I was in tears. I guess I should be thankful it was me crying and not him. He's ready...even if I'm not!

Sunday Round Up (Jan. 31- Feb. 6)

It was a pretty slow week around here.
Everyone is battling a wicked cold still.

Poor Greggy, has morphed it into an ear infection in BOTH ears. So he's been extra snugly and needing lots of attention all week.

Nate started his new school class on Wednesday. We're praying this will be the program he needs.

The animals may revolt!
They keep getting teased with spring like temperatures that allow them to frolic and play outside for days at a time. Then the temps plummet again like tonight -25. And everyone is back to huddling for heat.

Our only big adventure this week was heading to town and getting Nathan's haircut. Do you love the puck rocker green? He does. Taking him to the children's hairdresser that sprays his hair and lets him play in a ball pit, is about the only way I can convince him to cut his hair chopped.

This was my funny pic of the week. Taken that day in the ball pit.
Poor Greg had fought me the entire time Nate was getting the hair cut. He so badly wanted to follow the "Big" kids in there. When I finally allowed him to go in with his brother this was the face.
Right before the tears started.
Balls are really hard to move around in when you still can't even walk!

And that's about it. It's been more of a sicky/kid week than anything really interesting or farmy to report...

Sunday Round Up ( Jan. 24-30)

 Last year (like the Christmas before last) Hubs got a retro arcade plug and play game. Which has Pac Man on it. After Dad showed him a few times, Pac Man is about the perfect skill level for a 4 year old. He would have played for hours if we let him. Needless to say it disappeared that night, to come out another day. But it was fun to watch how much a game that we grew up with could still be so much fun, to someone who's never seen it.

Meow meow, somehow managed to worm her way into the house today.

Actually I kept seeing her sitting in front of the goat barn spying on them through the crack in the door. It occurred to me she's not actually that interested in the goats, she's probably after their heated water. Which means the dog water is either frozen or Jasper's being a jerk again, and won't let her anywhere near it.

So she got let into the house to make sure she had access to water.

Speaking of the Dog's guess who's also in the house tonight?
The temps have dropped drastically again. But with all the melting in the last week all the melting has caused some massive humidity. When Maggie met me in the driveway tonight she was soaking wet and covered in frost at the same time. Considering the temps are suppose to drop to minus 29 tonight our buddies are getting treated to a rare night inside. No Coyote duty tonight. Yippee!!!

Actually the whole week has been pretty wrecked, since everyone has come down with one heck of a cold!

Poor little monkey spent an entire day miserable on the couch.

(it's so strange when he goes from 60 to 0 instead of the other way around)

My only big project around here this week was the start of the operation de-clutter the kitchen. I've decided it's time for a massive overhaul, where everything in the house MUST have a permanent home or be re-homed! So far these are the donate boxes just from the kitchen cabinets. We're closing in on 2 years here, and most of this stuff has sat untouched in the cupboards the entire time. I don't know if it's just cabin fever, or if it's the fact we have "normally" moved at least once in every 2 year span up until now. The moving always forced a de-junking, and without it I had to wait for the urge to purge.

- Not bad so far-

Sunday Round Up (Jan. 17-23)

Okay so I'm a day late with this one...

But it was kind of an interesting week around here.

* The weather finally broke, and we've seen plus side temperature a couple of days.

* The Goats are nuts for this weather, running, jumping and butting heads at being released from the barn (two weeks straight in there would probably make anyone nuts)

* Maxxie the Beagle has also spent the last two weeks cooped up in the house, we've been throwing her out the front door and she comes straight back after her business. Of course when it warmed up on Saturday I was leery about continuing the practice, but gave it a shot anyways. After 3 minutes when there was no scratch at the door I went to call her. She was on the range road down past the driveway. No amount of whistling or calling would bring her back. All of a sudden she took off like a shot right in the direction of the highway. By the time I got my boots on and ran all the way to the highway she was across it and in the Buffalo paddock across the road. CRAP! Someone was watching over both of us this time. She responded to my whistle finally, and thankfully there were no cars coming when she mad her mad dash back across the highway for me. Maggie had come out to see what all the commotion was about and actually herded Max back to the house. After getting knocked into the snow a few times by a dog 20 times the size of you running full steam to the safety of the house suddenly seems like the best idea "you've " had all day. So Miss Maxxie is back to going in her dog run during outside time. Beagles and their noses, shesh!

* Our land finally made us some money! Hopefully not the last. But we got a cheque this week for the seismic work that was done. It was good feeling to have some money back, since it seems like most of the time we just are shelling it out to live here.

* After a week of crazy kids I found its great therapy to take a 4 year old outside and chuck him into snow drifts. Watching him have to fight his way through snow is not only amusing but a great way to exhaust him! Yup, another mother of the year award for that one I''m sure.

* But the biggest news around here was the final demise of  Evil Cat. I hadn't seen her or even heard her in about 3 days. That's pretty normal around here, she seems to disappear as soon as the weather warms up, so I didn't give it much thought. But Chris borrowed my Van for a run to town, and before he hit the highway he realized he was out of windshield fluid. He popped the hood to add some, and made a bit of a gruesome discovery. Guess who had crawled onto the engine block to take a final nap?!?!
Hey after all the havoc that cat has caused around here, I'm not even going to pretend I'm sad. The only gross part about it is I'm not sure I haven't been driving around with a dead cat under my hood for three days. Ewwww.

* And my MIL is nearly done the first "goat coat" from the sweater pattern I sent her this week. Apparently she's knitting them in bright orange and bright green. No chance of losing a kid in the snow! I can't wait to see them.

Haybale jumping

Not such a hot idea!

During the snow storms I've been bundling up Nathan like crazy and taking him with me to feed the goats, if the wind isn't too brutal.

The plus side to this is is he makes the perfect weight on the sled to hold down all the loose hay that needs to be dragged from one side of the yard to the barns on the other. ***Note to self: next year if you buy big round bales put them near the barn, dead grass is the least of your worries in -40 weather***

The downside is, super snow pants and having nothing but your eyes exposed makes you superman against the cold. Heck you'd stay and play outside all day if mom let you.

So the other afternoon he insists I help him up the hay bale while I'm tearing it apart. We have 5 sitting together, so the game soon became jump from one to the other. Land in a puff of flying snow and repeat!

Meanwhile I'm raking apart the bale thinking..." I wonder if I should allow this? is there a chance he could slide between them? No, Your just being the paranoid mom."

About 5 minutes after I had this internal dialogue. Guess what happened?

Yup, he slide right in between two. Luckily, he's old enough to have some self-preservation instinct.  He threw his arms out and held onto anything he could keeping his shoulders and head above the crevasse he was sinking into.
I couldn't reach him from where I was standing, so I jumped down, ran to the other side. Where I could grab him by the back of the jacket, a scruff of the neck kinda hold. He was jammed in pretty good. But my heartbeat was pounding, and I'm sure the adrenaline was pumping. A few good tugs, and I had him, and I was tumbling backwards into the snow in a cloud of snow and hay, with the flailing of legs and arms.

Oh yeah, I'm sure I'll be nominated for mother of the year for that one..

Rodeo Memories

I finally filled the memory card on my camera. I'm finally being forced to delete things off of there. Which means a few days of organizing pictures on the computer and making sure all files are there before I delete them off the memory card. (Yes, I realize I should probably do this every time I download...)

In organizing i realized I never posted about some of my favorite Events this year.

SEE- sometimes procrastination pays off, you find things you forgot in the process. Right???!?!?!?

Anyways

Nathan was in 2 rodeos this year. Mutton Bustin'


The first was a Bull-a-rama event in April.

He did pretty good, although they held him on the sheep the whole time.

The second was more of a real rodeo, outdoors with all events. And this time they put the kids on the sheep and let them run. It was fun to watch. Although I'm not sure I'll be able to convince him to do it again. He fell off at the end "on his head" according to him.

 Making sure he was on, and got a good grip before releasing the sheep.

This pic is my fav. With the clown racing full out to keep up

Look at him hang on right to the end. It was the sheep coming to an abrupt stop that finally caused him to fall

And the tears about falling off after. Needed hugs from both Mom and Grandpa.

I love being in the country where these kind of events are more accessible, I really can't wait till the boys are at an age for 4-H. I'm going to talk them into to going so I can tag along, and figure out some more things too. Maybe they should offer 4-H classes for adults with no clue about farming? I'd join.