It keeps giving

Let’s see here. So far in 2020 we have had a global pandemic, wildfires, murder hornets, Carole Baskins, forced homeschool, protests, rioting....and now?  Now a Saharan dust cloud.  Sure!  Why not?   This one didn’t really seem to do anything more than give us a poor air quality warning and some haziness to the sky.   I can hardly wait to see what July brings.  ;)

Despite the poor air quality, we had a great day. We had a birthday lunch for Colin, enjoyed visiting with him and Spencer.  We got a lot done around the house too.  

Preston and Quincy spent quite a bit of time making themselves a cornhole game this afternoon.  They realized they would need beanbags.  I suggested that they call grandma and see if she could  sew them some.  She agreed!  I dug out a couple bags of dry beans I had, however grandpa said if you are playing cornhole, the bags have to be stuffed with corn.  He donated some feed corn to their project!   It should be fun to play!  

This dog is covered in stick tights.  Absolutely covered.  He is going to get held down and brushed tomorrow.  I ran out of time today. It’s going to be a terrible process.  

I wish the weekend wasn’t over, but thankfully the upcoming one is a short week!  

Langfest 2020

Yesterday was Langfest.  Colin and Spencer came over to our house and spent the day smoking ribs and visiting.  Saige loves playing with Volt.   I had to snap a photo of Colin and Andrew taste testing the ribs!  

We had a fun afternoon/evening at My brother’s house.  Langfest is a favorite of mine and I think it is a favorite of the kids too.  Most of my cousins didn’t come this year though and a few of my aunts and uncles also stayed away.   The pandemic has made crowds a bad thing.  I had told the kids we would go, practice social distancing and sit outside.  I think we did a fairly good job.  No hugging goodbye!   

Grandma and Grandpa lost their dog a few weeks back.  They got a new Aussie puppy.  They are still hashing our names for this adorable little guy.   Saige was in absolute heaven with all these puppies to play with!  

Cameron is in self quarantine as he may have been exposed to the Rona.  He was bummed about not coming home.  We are also in limbo over what we will do next week when his lease ends, and he was going  to move home for a few weeks until he starts his new position in the dorms.  I’m on record saying the way they are handling this virus is a true disaster.  Cameron was possibly exposed by a friend.  The friend has the symptoms and has been tested. The friend has been waiting for days for their test results.  Days.  They told him anywhere between 2 days and 2 weeks.  That is a long time to not know in my opinion.  No wonder this thing is spreading out of control.  

The rest of us had a fun time blowing junk up and eating bbq foods.  I hate that we weren’t all together. And I pray next year will be different....but I certainly understand.

Side note.  My grandkid loves fireworks.  Loves! No fear. No hesitation. She kept wanting down, and then would take off toward where they were lighting them off.  It was hilarious.  Oh and she is fast now!  So fast!  

More projects

Several months back, Andrew helped me fix a couple of the holes left by the puppies and also by a small incident when Jim was installing a new toilet in the downstairs bathroom.  We had everything patched, but it needed to be sanded and repainted.  Today I decided I had sat on it long enough.  Preston helped me get the sander running, but he has asthma and has no business around sheet rock dust.   I got it all sanded down and thought it looked pretty good.  I then hatched a little crazy plan to save myself a trip to town.   I mixed left over paint from Quincy’s bedroom, Mallory’s bedroom and Saige’s bedroom.  In my mind I thought it would be more gray with a hint of greenish blue. Or maybe blueish green.  I honestly didn’t care because I love to reuse things I already have.   That bathroom is dinky so I figured 3/4 of a gallon would get the job done.   The color is not what I expected, but I rarely use the downstairs bathroom, so honestly I don’t really care what color it is.  The holes are patched, it’s not too ugly, and someday the kids will move and that place will need to be completely redone.  I’ll cross that bridge later.  

Confession time - my Saige sometimes gets left out of stuff Harper and Quincy are doing.  She was feeling sort of sad, and so I told her she could help me paint.  I then made her do the area behind the toilet, and along the baseboards (the worst places).  Is it really child labor if she was having fun?   Of course, we weren’t quite halfway done when Preston busted in begging to go to night swim.  Some of his friends were going.  Pleassseeeeee!   So I told him he could go if he took the girls. And if he promised not to stay if it was overly crowded.  Saige was very quick to abandon me when swimming was put in the table.  

A couple weeks back, Aunt Amy bought the kids a tie dye kit.  I had been telling the girls we would get some tshirts but we haven’t really been anywhere to buy them.  This week I ventured into Walmart during a swimsuit crisis Harper was having.  I happened to find white shirts for everyone on clearance.  The girls had a good time figuring out how they wanted to fold the shirts.   They are now sitting in plastic bags waiting for tomorrow when we can open and wash them.  Preston refused to participate, so we had to do his for him.  He is a party pooper!  

So far Jen and Judy are doing good.  They have been drinking the school milk, and the girls lock them up at night to keep them safe from the multitudes of owls that seem to always be around here.   They are pretty sweet!  

Also, about three weeks ago our neighbor’s kid wrecked his car.  The car then sat there wrecked in the ditch.   We had a little family bet going on how long it would be there!  Quincy was sure to snap some pictures when we saw the tow truck hauling it out.  You know....we don’t have much going on - we find entertainment where it presents itself! 

22 years and 18 months

Today is Colin's 22nd birthday.  What an incredible journey that went by in a blur!  I am so proud of this kid.  He is doing great things with his life.  We love seeing him be successful!  We also love his girlfriend, but that is a post for another day!  :)  

Colin won't be here this year for his birthday dinner.  I was sort of thinking about it, and this is not the first time he has missed being home for his birthday....there were so many years of summer camp, being a camp counselor, wrestling trips, and I believe maybe a CWF trip.  We will see him this weekend when he is home for Langfest, so we will celebrate then!  

I will say that I do miss having Colin around.  Colin is fun.  He can't sit still, and is constantly figuring out some place to go, something to see, something to do.  When he is home,  we don't ever stop moving.  When Colin moved out, I missed him and a slew of friends he constantly had around.  I hope that he enjoys his birthday!  I love you Colin!

Colin isn't the only one celebrating a milestone.  Evelyn is 18 months old today!  She is celebrating by destroying first Mallory's house, followed by my office.  She has her grocery list all made up, got out all the poop bags from the holder, dumped every single toy, and somehow ended up with my phone!  She is also walking around saying "Mallwey, no no!"  I don't think we could love her more!  She is awesome and we are so thankful for her!

Learners

I often mention that I feel extremely blessed to live where we do.  Our little town is filled with amazing people and we are so lucky to have them in our lives.   One big example of this - the vineyard owners up the road.  They first hired Colin and Cameron to help them with setting up and tearing down for a wedding.   At that time, Colin had 4 part time jobs, but Cameron didn’t.  They hired Cameron to help them with their grape harvest, and a long-standing friendship was born.  They love Cameron!   Cameron loves them too.  When Cameron was getting close to graduating, they hired Preston as a replacement.  They are master gardeners, vineyard owners, native grassland lovers, food preservation experts, wine and grape juice makers,  and Bill is an engineer.  To say my kids are surrounded by knowledge would be an understatement.   About a year ago, they hired Quincy as well.  Since that time she has become Marnie’s wing-woman.  She has helped make wine, canned so many foods I can’t even keep up, learned about all sorts of vegetable growing and harvesting, and learned several methods besides canning for food preservation.  It is impressive what she has picked up in a year!  

Today, Bill helped Preston work on his van.  It was a long tedious process, and they didn’t quite get finished.  We sincerely appreciate Bill teaching Preston how to fix mechanical stuff.  I will never be able to repay these people for how they care for, and teach our kids.   It is truly a blessing. 

Bill posted this picture of the garlic crop for this year!   

I know I already posted this picture, but we have been talking a lot about uses for wheat lately.  I love the ripe wheat....so beautiful.  I noticed some cutting test strips today, so I’m guessing not much longer and the wheat will be gone for the year. 

We also have a new love of going to the farmer’s market in town.  Last week I bought some new potatoes.  As I was cleaning up dinner Quincy asked me what the creamy balls were - and if I could make them again. It was creamed new potatoes!   I bought more tonight.  They were so good!  We also got some spring greens, carrots and baby squash.  Our gardens are looking great, but we are a little ways from having any fruit or veggies out of it still!   

Father’s Day weekend

We had a fairly busy weekend.  Not as busy as it was supposed to be though.  The 4-H was supposed to paint fences this weekend as a fundraiser. They postponed it due to weather.  The weather wasn’t an actual issue, but it’s Kansas so who really knows what will happen!  

Saturday evening as we were just hanging out, our neighbors from up the road called.  They were out driving and found a couple of abandoned kittens.  Since our kittens from this spring didn’t make it, I agreed to taking these in as barn cats!  The girls named them Jen and Judy. They are sort of wild, but I guarantee they won’t be for long!   

Quincy and Preston worked this weekend at the vineyard. It was garlic harvesting time.  Quincy helped with that. They grew a lot of garlic!   They sent Quincy home with a sack of garlic and instructions on how to preserve it.  We chose to clean it and freeze it.  Saige and I may never smell the same again, but we have a lot of garlic in the freezer for making salsa and garlic bread, and other yummy things!   The amount of stuff they learn up there is astounding.  

This evening we had a family dinner at Madison and Andrew’s house.   Preston and Quincy went over early and went fishing with Jim and Andrew.  My husband and son in law both love fishing and think it’s the perfect way to spend Father’s Day.  I don’t know if there are pictures, but I heard there were many fish caught!  We had a great time at Madison’s!   Everything was amazing and it was awesome to be able to get together.   

This Father’s Day, I must say that I am surrounded by amazing dads.  My father and my father in law set the bar pretty high.  I am also constantly impressed with my son in law.  He is a good dad and a good husband.  He cares about doing things the right way, a trait I absolutely love about him.   He is a blessing to our family.  And my kid’s dad, my Jim.  He is a rock for me and for the kids.  He has a very strong sense of right and wrong and keeps us all on the path of righteousness, which would be enough of a reason to love him.  He goes further though.  He is a hard worker, a helper, a supporter, and although his dad jokes aren’t always funny, occasionally he is pretty funny.   We are very lucky to call him ours.