I really need to work on this site more!

Delia and I spent Thurs – Sat on Basswood Lake with our neighbors.  The weather was pretty bad but we had a good time and Delia wanted to stay out another night.  Delia caught a walleye and ate it!

Henry and I went fishing today for the first time today.  I caught a 20″ largemouth on Johnson Lake – my biggest bass ever (at least in MN).  Emily and I worked hard to get rid of the leaks in the boat and it worked.  Not a single drop came through.  The motor performed well but did have one instance of surging / bogging.  I’ll keep an eye on it.

The big news is our house addition which is moving along, though it feels like it’s going slowly.  That’s just how this type of thing goes, and I think we’re finally getting very close to starting demolition and construction.  We can’t wait!

Joe and Bev were here and we did some work reclaiming our land from the onslaught of brush.  We bought a device called a brush grubber, which is basically a clamp with teeth that grabs onto small trees so you can yank them out by the roots.  It works great.  We cleared a lot and Emily mowed and now the land across the driveway is looking great.  We planted three apple trees and a cherry tree over there.  Some day maybe we’ll have a nice orchard there.

Henry is speaking more clearly but he still has a ways to go.  He’s so talkative and it’s adorable.

Delia and I made a trip to Nama’s house, and Delia did great – Nama made sure of that by spoiling the heck out of her.  :)  They had a day in Chicago and went to the American Girl store, where Delia adopted Felicity.

My garage is really taking shape.  We can almost fit a car in there now.  :)

We lost two cats in a short time.  Harvi developed liver disease and Coby had cancer (or something – we’re not sure).  It was sad and we miss them, but 3 is a more manageable number of cats in one house.

One of our chicks has an eye problem.  I’m not sure what’s wrong with it, but it’s messed up and keeps getting crusty.  I’m applying saline solution to it a few times a day to try to keep it clean, but it’s not getting much better.  She seems fine otherwise, but we decided to get another chick just in case something happens to this one.  The new one is a black australorp, which is what we originally ordered but got the (bad eyed) gold wyandotte instead when the australorp didn’t arrive.  She’s a little smaller than the others, but she seems to be doing fine.  Delia and I cleaned out their house tonight so they’re nice and fresh now.

Delia can drive the 4 wheeler by herself, and helped me deliver hay to the horses.

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I was pushing the kids on the swings yesterday and it occurred to me once again how big and grown up Delia is.  I told her how I couldn’t believe she was so grown up and how she was my tiny little baby.  She said “Yeah, I was a tiny baby six years ago!”

Henry said “And me tiny baby two years ago!”

The weather since we’ve been back has been amazingly warm.  It’s nice that we’re having an early spring, but it cut snowmobiling season short, and I only got one short ride in.  Emily rode with me for the first time ever!  We went to Giants Ridge for lunch, cruised around Wynne Lake a little, and then rode home.  That was it for me for the whole season, though it was a very nice ride.

As of today, the driveway is almost completely clear of snow, and large portions of the yard are too.  Everything is really muddy and wet, but in another week or so I bet it’ll be nice and dry.  Of course, as soon as that happens we’ll probably get two more feet of snow.

A couple weeks ago, Henry and I took my Dad’s truck to Virginia to have lunch and get a yard cart that was on sale.  I’ve been wanting one since we moved here, and now we finally have one.  Henry helped me put it together, and he really did help – he handled a socket wrench like a pro and together we got the axle bolted on to the cart body.  My 4 wheeler doesn’t have a trailer hitch of any kind, so after much thought and a great suggestion from instructables.com, I made one out of muffler clamps and a steel l-shaped bracket.  It was a bit of a tricky welding job, but I got it done and after some use it seems to be holding.  Welding is hard.  There are so many variables to figure out in order to get a good weld.  With this project I winged it, and while it does seem to be holding, the welds are far from good.  My problem was mostly getting sort of a hollow bead.  Instead of having a nice smooth fill, it’s like there’s a groove in the bead, so it almost looks like two small beads.  I think it may be due to using too much current, but it might have also been the angle at which I held the rod, and the motion I used.

My Mom stayed with us for a week and the kids had such a great time with her, as did we.  She got to meet Brad, the goats, and the horses for the first time, and she stayed at the great B&B near our house.  The weather was gorgeous so we even got to spend some time outside.  She also provided babysitting duties so Emily and I took a super romantic trip to the dump.  She even rode on the back of the four wheeler while Delia and Henry rode Sancho down the road.  Sancho did great – especially since he hasn’t been saddled since last fall.  We had some nice meals out, and she got to see Delia’s big ice skating show!  Delia did great, by the way.

We got 6 big round bales from Dale.  It was quite a chore to get them off the trailer.  The other round bales we got rolled right off, but these were SUPER heavy.  With his help, we finally got it done.  They’re all scattered about and I’ll have to get my tractor running to move them around.  Delia is having fun climbing and jumping on them.  She calls it Haytown.

We had a bit of sadness too.  Two of our chickens had apparently been sitting in some water late in the day, and ended up getting frozen to the ground.  Hypothermia claimed them during the night and I found them in the morning, stuck to the ground.  :(  We had thought about getting chicks this year and then decided against it, but now we’re going to since we only have 4 layers left.  I think we’re going to get six – two white leghorns, an easter egger or two, maybe a black australorp, and I’m not sure what else.

I’m up with Henry in the middle of the night because he HAD to go to sleep at 6 PM today, and slept until 2 AM and now… well, we’ll see what happens next.  The transition away from a nap is an adventure for sure!  The good news is I thought to write a post to try to document some of what’s been going on around here.

Henry is: SWEET.  Completely, totally, utterly sweet.  He kisses us, all the animals, gives hugs and says “awwwww” when the cats are curled up together.  When I say he hugs and kisses, I mean pretty much constantly.  Every time I walk into his field of view, or he walks into mine, he wants to greet me with a hug and a kiss.  It’s so, well, sweet.

He wants to invite TV characters over to play, he stuffs things under his shirt and says “Ho, ho, ho!” to be Santa.  He is into playing on the computers and writes all over himself with marker every chance he gets.  He loves to give high fives and ask for “up high” then “down low” and pull his hand away and say “too slow!”  He tells a few different “knock knock” jokes.  All this with most of his works beginning with D…  I translate for him quite a bit! 

Delia turned six and received some money so we’ve started her on a spending 50% and saving 50% plan and it’s been really neat to watch her spend her money in wise ways.  She invested in some beads and is working on making some bracelets to sell and give as gifts.  We are wearing some to test for durability.  A few days ago she and I went to Target.  I was discouraging her from spending $5 on a box of foam stickers, thinking they wouldn’t be much fun.  The past two days she has spent probably 10 hours coming up with incredibly creative ways to use those stickers!  I have beautiful decorations on my computer, my cell phone, a bouquet of foam flowers in a tiny vase, and lots of other neat things.  I told her earlier today that I was SO WRONG about the foam stickers not being worth the money!

For Delia’s sixth birthday we went to a hotel that has a waterpark.  We all had fun, and Delia made a breakthrough with her swimming skills.  She started practicing going completely under water.  For the next few weeks, we went swimming several times and Delia made breakthrough after breakthrough.  First she was dog-paddling 6-8 feet at a time.  Then she got the confidence to keep her feet up longer and could paddle for 15-20 feet.  Then she started swimming underwater!  The last time we went to the pool, she floated on her back, and would swim for 3+ hours if she could but her brother is not up for that!

Things have been busy and the kids stay up really late these days, so I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to write stuff.  This has been a very eventful summer!  In May we got Cowboy, and then the goats soon after that.  In June we got Sancho.  I think that’s about where we left off.

The goats continue to grow and man are they ever strong.  They’re also very stubborn.  They’ve eaten all the lower leaves and needles off our trees.  I made them a moveable pen out of cattle panels, but it turned out to not be very moveable.  I have some wheels to put on it, but I haven’t put them on yet.  Moon’s horns are growing but they’re brittle at the ends and tend to crack, so I think we’re going to have to have the poor guy dehorned at some point.  We just about have them weaned.

We just recently got a saddle for Sancho, so we can ride him now.  He does pretty well, but both of us need more practice.  He’s a very sweet horse and the kids love him.  Delia can ride him around the pen by herself!  Unfortunately he has bad table manners and likes to destroy round bales rather than eat them.  I’m hoping to make a round bale feeder out of some pipe I salvaged to make the bales last longer.  Speaking of the dump, I’ve been making semi-tegular trips there to get materials to build various things.  Delia and I made a really cool cooking tripod for the fire pit out of tent poles, a grate, and cables we got from there.  Delia has cooked brats, burgers, and even stir-fry on it!

Delia just had her last baseball game of the season.  She went to every game, and I’m very proud of her for that.  She seemed to have fun with it, even though she often asked me “Daaaaad – when is this game gonna be OVER?”  She’s a very good hitter!  I’m amazed by how many hits she got since she didn’t really practice baseball much before joining the team.  She’s also very interested in pioneers now.  First it was cavemen, and now we’re up to pioneers.  Her interest began with Little House on the Prairie.  Emily read the first book to her, and the watched the recent mini-series adaptation a few times all the way through.  Just about every day she does some pioneer activity, such as making a fire, weaving, gathering wood, etc.  She even went to the woods with me one day to cut down trees for firewood.  She brought her own saw along and cut up little logs while I used the chainsaw on the trees.

Henry is changing faster than we can keep up with!  He’s growing up.  He’s the sweetest little boy in the world, and he’s so funny.  He likes to dress up or put on funny hats (usually using something that’s not really a hat), and then when we laugh at him, his face just crinkles up and he cracks up.  He’s always hugging us, and he’s the best hugger.  He’s gotten good with legos, and he builds robots (and then makes “beep boop boop” noises), and the other day he made a hammer.  He ran up to us and said “I made hammer – wubbzy”.  One of the characters on Wow Wow Wubbzy uses a hammer called “The Whammer Hammer” and that’s what he was talking about.  He’s such a great talker.  His pronunciation still isn’t great, but he has so many words, and can really get his point across.  He has a few lines he got from TV shows that he uses a lot.  One is “Daddy too!”  That’s from Caillou.  It wasn’t even really that funny, but he sure thought it was, and whenever he sees it on TV he cracks up and then repeats it about a hundred times.    Another is from the Legend of Zelda cartoon.  In it, the character often says “Well exCUUUUUSE ME, Princess.”  He says it so much it’s completely obnoxious actually.  What’s funny is Delia thought that was hilarious when she was younger too.  Well Henry picked up on that on his first time watching it.  He laughed and laughed, and then repeated it.  Some months later, he saw a picture of the characters, and he said “Edoose Me Dincess”.  That’s another thing – most of his words start with a D.

Henry also likes to help, and loves bringing people things such as cups of water.  The other day he brought Emily a little cup of water and had one for himself.  “Dea” he said (which meant tea).  When he asks for things he always says please, such as “Water peese” or “Hep peese” (help please).  I hear “Daddy hep” a lot when he needs help with a computer game.  And likewise, he always says thank you.  “Dane doo dada” or “Dane doo mama”.  He even uses “peese” by itself.  A sample conversation:

Henry: Dada, pop tart?

Dada: No bud.  Not until you eat something good.

Henry: Peese?

Dada: Sorry buddy.

Henry: PEEEEEEEESE?

He has become pretty independent too.  He’ll start to walk away to do something and if I follow, he’ll hold his hand up and say “No.  Daddy stop.”

The plants we planted yesterday don’t look so good, and we don’t know why.  The stems are still looking okay, but the leaves are shriveled and/or brown.  It’s almost like they froze, but it didn’t get below freezing last night.  We’ll see what happens.

Emily and I switched hours with the kids today.  That means I worked this morning and played with them in the afternoon.  It was quite nice.  It’s a lot easier for me to relax and spend time with them when I’ve already gotten work out of the way.  When I have them in the morning, I feel like I need to be working.  It also meant I got to spend some one on one time with Delia, which I haven’t been doing much of lately since Henry requires a lot of chasing.  We made a kite out of a garbage bag and willow stalks that didn’t work very well (but was fun anyway) and we shoveled manure out of Cowboy’s paddock.  That may not sound like fun, but it was.

Henry continues to speed all over the place on his 4 wheeler.  I can’t believe he’s only two when I watch him ride it.   This evening we heard the four geese that have been visiting our pond coming from down Norby Rd (we hear them before we see them) so I told him to watch them land on the pond.  They chose to land on our shallow swampy pond instead, so he didn’t get to see them and was disappointed.  He ran over to his 4 wheeler and took off.  It’s really rough terrain around there, but he was determined to see the geese, and amazingly, the 4 wheeler made it!  He finally got stuck right near the pond, but I ran over and got him out.  He yelled “bye deese!” as he rode back to the driveway.

I need to read about geese.  I know they make strong pairs, but this year we have four that are always together.  Originally it was two and then the other two came.  The first two would try to chase them away, but after a while the second pair fought back and held their ground, and then I guess the original ones gave up.  Last year we had lots of ducks and this year I’ve only seen one or two on the pond all spring.  We seem to have one sandpiper that spends a lot of time on the banks of the pond too.

“Someday, if we ever meet a builder, one that’s better even than Papa, way way way better than Papa, if we meet one like that, I’m going to ask him to build me a dinosaur robot that I can ride.  A nice one that won’t bite me.  Someday.”

Cowboy has been tied out in three locations on our lawn, and in those three locations, there’s a perfect circle of short grass from where he ate.  Emily mentioned to Delia about how we wanted to move him around to keep the grass short, and she said, “Hey, he’s my riding mower!”