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Faux Monday

I had a completely different post in mind for this morning, but this was too great not to share… I think…

Just call me the crazy lady after this post I think!

So at 4ish am this morning my little dog (the Cocker) is barking her head off. I finally decided I needed to get up and at least make sure she or the Lab hadn’t fallen in the pool and were trying to get our attention. Nope. So I went back to sleep.

Well tried anyway. About 5 minutes later I got up to yell at her and tell her to quit barking but hubs beat me to it. She quit for all of about 5 minutes and then started up again. So he got up, went outside to see what was going on.

When he came back in he said it was sprinkling. Yey! (side note sorry) and I said I thought it had been thundering. He said, no the Lab has been running across our roof. (Now remember, my house is a Berm house so it’s surrounded by ground on 3 sides and it’s only about 2 feet from the ground to my roof.) So he yelled at them for that and we proceeded to go back to bed.

Nope, the Cocker starts friggin barking again. But eventually I must have been tired enough because I fell back asleep.

Hubby got up and left early this morning because he had a dentist appointment so when he went to leave our Cocker ran him back into the woods where we have an old pickup parked like there was something out there. When he went to investigate she ran tail between her legs all the way back to the house like she was scared of him or something. Don’t know if that is involved with any of this story or not…. but it’s weird it happened today!

So as a side funny, my alarm goes off at 6:35 and I must have been dreaming because about the time the alarm went off in my dream I slapped myself in my face. Weird I know.

So I’m up, getting dressed and I hear this thump thump thump thump thump starting from the far end of my house to right above my head. I realize its the dogs running across the roof again. btw, they’ve never done this before that I know of! So we have a door in our bedroom so I go running out of it. Now please remember I’m getting dressed so at this point… well I might have been naked….. I live in the country and have a privacy fence for all but about 6 feet outside my door. Anyway I go running outside yelling at them.

They looked at me like geez lady, take a chill pill. So I went back in the house to finish getting dressed. About 5-10 minutes later I hear the thump thump thump thump thump starting from the far end of my house to right above my head again. By this time I might have been swearing just a bit. I go running out the door again, this time, bra & panties with my dress in my hand trying to get it over my head. I proceed to yell at them again. This time they ran from me.

So I went back in the house to finish getting ready. I had enough time to put on what was left of my make-up, turn the tv off, brush my teeth, call hubby and tell him about this ruckus, find my shoes and grab my cell phone. Hubby told me to put them in the crate if I could. So I go walking down the hallway and realize they are walking around on the roof of the house.

I kicked my heels off and took off running out the front door as quietly and as quickly as I could so I could catch them in the act. I just about ran out into the front yard (where they generally do their business…. buttheads 20 acres and they choose that patch) so I ran back in, grabbed my flip flops and tore off outside again.

Sure enough they were on the friggin roof. I took off one of my shoes and threw it at them which caused them to go up and over the top to the back side. So I tore off across the patio toward my bedroom and jumped on the roof, one shoe on, one shoe off and in a dress (yeah I was cute) yelling at them to get off the friggin roof.

Have you ever run across a roof barefooted? It doesn’t feel so good. Just saying.

Anyway they tore off the far end and turned around and looked at me with front paws on the guttering, so I took my other shoe off and threw that at them. They got down then. I decided I’d leave my shoe on the roof and let hubby get it but, but then decided that well, if I can’t get them in the crate they’ll eat my shoe so I ran back across the roof, grabbed my shoe and jumped off the roof and ran around the back side of the house barefooted. {Not a brilliant idea because these dumb dogs tore our Christmas lights off last year and who knows if there is broken glass :(.} So I take off running and screaming at them and they hightailed it to the front of the house. I ran across the gravel barefooted, grabbed them and put them in their crate.

So here we are, my dogs are in trouble, my throat hurts from screaming and my feet are aching b/c of the roof. Oy, it might as well be a Monday!

I Want to be a Kid Again!!

Do you remember as a kid how we always wanted to “grow up”? Wanted to be big. Wanted to be strong. Wanted to be on our own.

Yeah I’m thinking I want to be a kid again. Let mom and dad deal with the problems of the world and I’ll be oblivious! I want my most important decision of the day to be: Do I want Mac & cheese or a hot dog :).

Ah, that was the life!

Have you ever seen the movie, Legally Blonde? If so, do you remember the scene where she was busy studying for the LSAT while all her friends were out enjoying Sorority/Fraternity type adventures? I so felt her pain this weekend!

Hubby invited Earl and her kids over to pick cherries/swim. At our house, we’ve yet to turn on the AC, partially because we’re being cheap :), but partially, it feels so good to have a breeze blowing through the windows and the smell from the outside coming in! ah! That’s the life, however… I heard them all screaming and yelling outside while I was inside studying. Blech!

Yes, I’m complaining! Yes, I’m grumbling. Sorry! I did stop for a real quick study break though to snap a few photos of them having fun!

Trying to look all innocent!

Marlie was keeping an eye out on them.

Cherry Break

And don’t worry, I got to participate in a little swimming action of my own… although I’m not 100% sure it was my idea!

Have a Happy Monday. A week from today, I’ll be taking my finals. I can’t decide if I’m happy or sad about that. I think I’m a walking contradiction!

Splish Splash

So the other weekend, hubby decided he was ready to start getting the tarp off of the pool and start cleaning the pool.

I’m not going to lie, I think he’s a bit early on the git go there, but we did kind of get the tarp on it late last year so it got a little dirtier than we would have liked…. And then putting the pump on top to get the water off the tarp, the tarp slipped in the pool and tried to drain the pool and it just wasn’t a good deal. So I guess it was time to at least get more water back in the pool so it didn’t pull down on the sides! Audrey wasn’t enthused, especially after Marlie knocked her on the tarp.

The pump did a good job of draining down most of the water, then came time to scoop leaves out.

This is the first year Marlie will really see our pool, so she’s not real sure what to think… that and there were a lot of tadpoles on the top that really claimed her attention.

She wasn’t real sure she cared for that net either.

Anytime honey would move she was out of there, or under my feet one…

There were a few areas of sever leaves, but over all it wasn’t too bad.

The bad part was it was chilly that particular night. This spring weather has been crazy!

I had a stressful day at work so when I got home, I kind of refused to work. My lazy bone took over… sorry hubby!

Suzy the Sock Monkey decided she wanted to help though. She tried to fill in my job.

She even voluntarily jumped on the lawnmower to help move the old nasty leaves to the burn pile.

But after all that strenuous work, she kicked me out of the hammock and decided she needed a rest for the evening.

And what did I learn? My sock monkey can’t do nearly the work I can… LOL 🙂

What happens when…..

Over the weekend hubby and my dad worked on the tractor and then drove it to my MIL’s house so they could knock down some annoying trees and actually get the field ready for bailing.

Do you know what keeps you from being able to brush hog?
This isn’t a trick question…
Answer: Flat Tire.

And I got tickled because the brushhog has enough ~~dirt~~ (I’m sorry Dr. Fuqua, I know that’s a dirty four letter word) errrr Soil on it to grow grass.

You can sure tell it’s spring around here. Although it really didn’t spring early… We usually start looking like this in March anyway, although we have had above normal temps this month. I just hope we don’t get an April or May freeze that kills my Cherries again this year. Maybe I should invest in an electric blanket for my tree, what do you think?

And look at the widdle baby calves. {and widdle is little :)}

Marlie was excited because she got to go for a ride.

She sure loves her rides.

And when she stands like this her lips flap in the wind. It’s cute! She’s doing ok since Audrey went missing, but the first few days she was a pretty upset gal.

Don’t worry, we weren’t breaking any rules. But it was caused due to the week of rain. But where did the rain go? People really shouldn’t have complained because they chased it away!

There is a pond on either side of the road. When it rains a lot the ditches are shallow and the ponds meet up across the road.

I’ve never seen it completely over the road, but when I know it has flooded, well we don’t go this way….

At least one side of the truck go cleaned 🙂

And don’t worry about Marlie. She went to the other side of the truck and stayed dry.

Although I bet she wondered if she would for a few minutes….

Once we got home I went to look at my pretty flowers. Aren’t they gorgeous!

These photos are all straight out of the camera. I haven’t had time this week to tweak any of them…

My flower garden smelled pretty sweet too!

I’m actually surprised these guys are still hanging around. They usually disappear before the others start blooming.

Marlie had to come help of course 🙂

And look at this dude! I love spring!

Then Marlie decided to leave me and go get some lovins.

She sure loves her lovins.

And you’ll notice Tbug’s arm/hand. Yeah she broke the growth plate doing a back hand spring in Cheer. She can’t lift, push or pull for 4-6 weeks. If I remember right we’re like on week 2 or 3 now. But her last Cheer competition which is this weekend, she can only dance.

Eetz all Beezness

Happy Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, which ever you’d like to call it!

So for a while now I’ve been bugging husband and telling him I wanted bees. Why bees is beyond me, but it is something I got in my head I wanted. We’ve been together (dating + marriage) since July 2009 and he’s heard about Bees on and off since then.

My dad has kind of even gotten in on it and randomly sent us listings for bees for sale every now and again. Last week, the Bee-sness started again. I got 3 emails from my dad about places to buy bees. Of course I sent them on to hubby. The next thing I knew, he was on Youtube watching videos about bee keeping.

Before I knew it, we made a decision that we were getting Bees. Now we don’t get the actual bees until Mid April, but we went ahead and located the hives to get them all put together and set up now. They came in this last weekend so we spent the weekend putting them together and painting them.

He looks so excited! Maybe even a little too excited? Nah! He’s holding “Frame Feeders”. You fill them with sugar water to feed the bees when the nectar flow is not available.

His helmet & the screen guard. Keeps you from getting stung!

The black is the Foundation for the frames. The blue Hive tool is used for prying apart the boxes after the bees glue them together with propolis. Bee gloves, don’t want him getting stung! The white looking thing is an entrance feeder. The queen doesn’t get to go up where the worker bees are, so this helps feed her. And the yellowish looking bands are leg bands that hold your pant legs tight so little bees cant crawl up them. So you don’t have to do the bee dance!

Top left to bottom right: box of box parts, box parts, bottom board that your bee boxes set on, queen excluder (which keeps the queen in the brood chamber and keeps her from laying eggs in the area where you will harvest honey from), inner cover, and outer cover.

Gluing the boxes together

We staple the boxes together to give it more support and stability.

The finished outside box. This is what you normally see, except they are usually painted.

Next you stack it all together, 2 brood boxes for the queen to use to populate the hive, then the queen excluder (did you realize the queen can’t fit through the grates but the worker bees can?)

finally honey super’s.

T came over Saturday while hubby was assembling the frames, so he jumped in and helped. The frames are what the bees will use to build comb on and store their honey if they are in the honey supers (the upper boxes), or they will build comb and the queen will lay eggs in it (down below in her chambers) as well as store honey to feed the babies.

Then just paint them your favorite color. Most people go with white, but hubby chose my fave color.

Smoking & Burning

Boy, I’m a little slow on the git go this morning. Every week for the last couple weeks I’ve been almost wide awake at 4:30-5 in the morning and can’t go back to sleep. I guess on a work week that isn’t TERRIBLE but on a weekend, man that’s no fun! This morning was no different, but I’m still not fully awake even though I’ve been semi-up since 5:15.

Anyway that has nothing to do with anything. Just thought I’d share; thought you might like to know my crazy sleeping patterns :).

The last couple of weekends we’ve spent splitting wood and bringing it up to the house. We burn wood at our house. I love fire places. The warmth, the crackle, the calm, serine feeling you get. Plus, I’m not going to lie, it helps with the electricity bill in the winter. Can’t beat that!

A couple weekends ago our Wood rack looked like this…

Don’t worry. We weren’t out of wood. Just out of wood on the wood rack. We had this pile that fell over this summer after we stacked it all nice and neatly…

The thing is, all the leaves blew in this fall and we weren’t really sure how much wood was actually there… which creates a slight problem. So we got to cutting wood, in a hurry!

But the problem with big logs….

They might not fit in the fire place…. So that makes it hard to burn them. So after we chopped them up in the right length of pieces, they were going to meet their fate with the log splitter.

We went and borrowed a log splitter so we didn’t have to chop them the old fashioned way with the axe. Boy wouldn’t that be a lot of work! I think I might go back to our electric heater :).

Sorry, sometimes I’m a little lazy.

Enter, one of our best friends. I should name him, Chuck maybe?

He is motorized. Yeah he burns that expensive gasoline, but he makes our lives so much easier!

So the first thing you do is roll the honkin logs over to “Chuck”

You get them into position. This case you put a flat side down and slide them against the red upright beam. Make sure you move your hands from the top! That could be dangerous and bloody and just flat out hurt! Holding the outside (usually the side closest to you if you position yourself right in front) is best! But it needs a stabilizing hand.

Then you pull down on the lever. This is what moves the axe.

And look. It splits the big honkin log in 2 pieces.

Clear down to the base. How easy was that. We need a Staples button here stat!

Then you keep positioning the log until you get smaller, more manageable pieces such as this one.

And then throw them in a pile out of your way. Now trust me, all of this is still labor intensive b/c you are sitting or kneeling on the ground and using a lot of upper body to throw these logs around. But it’s so much easier and FASTER than swinging an axe with all your force! And much safer too. Is Safer a word or is it more safe? Well anyway, it’s that 🙂

Then someone (ie usually me) gets to load up the truck. Now don’t be fooled, Hubs helps with this too and I help with the splitting, but I don’t run a chainsaw even though I can. Why do I need to if he will 🙂

And then you take the truck to the house and load up the Wood rack.

Now this was just the first day. We have much more now, plus I actually restacked what was in that pile (pic up top). See, I can be a good wife some days :). And sometimes I might not even be lazy… haha… Although you might mark that on your calendars that I wasn’t lazy. That way if you need to go back and double check you can find it!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night

I just grabbed a handful of the 687 photos I took for Christmas. Now you’ll have to understand, these photos range from putting up the tree, decorating the house, putting together Christmas presents, wrapping, cooking, opening, etc… so yes those photos add up very quickly :).

Because my parent’s rock, we got a new Christmas tree this year.

(more…)

What I love about Sunday's

Sunday night we hosted Sunday Night Dinner again. Normally it’s always at Pokey & Earl’s (or as I affectionately renamed them Perky & Early) but this summer we volunteered a couple times since we had the pool. Here before long we’ll have to shut it down so we thought, why not one more shabang!

My kind of dinner party, laid back, relaxed, & Pot lucks! LOL

I “brought” Tator Tot Casserole.

2 lbs hamburger
1 onion chopped
2 cans of cream of celery soup
shredded cheese
tator tots
salt and pepper

Fry hamburger and drain. Add 1 chopped onion, 2 cans of cream of celery soup, a dash of salt and a dash of pepper. Stir together and put in 9×13 pan. Top with shredded cheese and tater tots. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes.

This is what was left of it….

Here are some of the other dishes brought:


She waited patiently for those brownies… LOL

And here are a few more photos from the rest of the night

There is something about this photo I love…

Brothers

My good buddy T 🙂

He’s good at flips! I’m to scared to even attempt it…

The pups were even chilling

Hey Memaw, gotcha!

Hi hubby!

Great thing about a telephoto lens, they don’t know you’re shooting photos of them 🙂

Interesting… I think

Am I gonna have to come in there?!?!

boy I hope she wasn’t looking at me, oh wait, she isn’t… I’m across the deck

She sure wanted daddy!

Yehaw!

He’s a little nervous in the deep end but he has gone off the diving board twice.

She is a fish! Loves the water.

Gotta Love summer! It’s one of my favorite times of the year!

Want to know my other? That’s easy, between Thanksgiving & Christmas!

The time of the year I don’t like…. SNOW season 🙂 And you know what…. that’s coming… beware!

Do the Brokey Pokey

Sunday morning it was confirmed that we’d have Sunday night dinner at our house this week since we finally got the pool back up and going. Then around 3pm on Sunday Earl called and said that Pokey had fallen off a mule and possibly broken his arm, was there anyway she could bring the kids over and we watch them while she took him to the hospital.

We told her absolutely, bring their swimsuits!! 🙂 So the kids swam in the pool all afternoon.

By all afternoon, I mean all afternoon. They showed up around 3 or so and got out when it was time to go home around 8ish.

Pokey in fact shattered part of his arm. I’m not really sure the details but it wasn’t good. Especially since he’d planned a hunting trip with a bunch of people for September out in Colorado. Not sure he’s going to be going though because he had to have surgery yesterday. Dr. said everything was good but they had to add pins and plates to his arm… No Bueno!

Now Earl teases me that I take a bunch of photos but then she tells me she shouldn’t because I get some cute photos of her kids too… LOL so as I’m sure you all know, I got my camera out and played 🙂 Hey I can’t help it!

So without further adu, here’s my Sunday afternoon in photos!

Happy Wednesday!

How do you spell Relief? (plus a recipe)

I spell it:

R-A-I-N

That’s right folks, after I dunno how long, we finally got a measurable amount of rain on Sunday, Monday & Wednesday of this week! In fact Sunday night I went and stood in it. Monday & Wednesday weren’t an option because they might frown about that at work!

Our hayfield was burning up as was pretty much everything else around here. Maybe, just maybe we’ll luck out and get a second cutting. I’m pretty afraid this winter will be rough!

I’m still praying that Oklahoma & Texas get some much needed rain!

And, since it’s Friday, and because I can wear jeans to work today, and because I love y’all, I have an interesting recipe for ya.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Cake

Say what? Have I lost my mind? Nope! A while back at a Sunday night dinner, one of the girls brought this amazing dessert. So after much digging for a similar recipe, btw none exist until now, I came up with this creation by myself. Not even sure this is how she did it, but by George this is how I roll!

Now Janet over at A Farm Wife’s Life taught me that I can in fact make a No-Bake Cheese Cake that isn’t the Jello kind. I’m not a huge cheese cake fan anyway but the jello kind really isn’t my cup of tea…

So let’s get started!

Filling:

What you need: 2 packages Cream Cheese, 1 Lemon, 1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk, and Vanilla Extract

Now with an electric mixer mix the cream cheese till smooth.

Then add the sweetened condense milk a little at a time. Mixing it in between each addition…

Until creamy and smooth.

Now add 1 tsp of vanilla extract and…

the juice from one lemon.

Once again blend those until creamy.

Now simply spread the filling into the crust.

**I cheated, I used a pre-made Graham cracker crust 🙂

Now, by following Janet’s instructions here’s where you would cover and refrigerate for 2 -3 hours till firm.

But I added my next twist.

Although I’m thinking I should have let the cheese cake set up and then added my twist. I’ll have to try that the next time around. So here’s my twist now…

Next tear open a package of Chocolate instant pudding.

Add your milk

And whisk together for 2 minutes.

Then pour on top of your cheese cake and spread.

Then (I would place back) place in the fridge to set up.

When you go to serve it up, top with Whipped Cream or Cool Whip and enjoy!

It might not look like much there, but oh is it dreamy!

Chocolate Cream Cheesecake

Makes One 9-inch Cake

Filling

2 8-ounce packages cream cheese, room temperature

1 14-ounce can (1 1/4 cups) sweetened condensed milk

1Juice from 1 Lemon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

Using an electric mixer set at medium-high speed, beat the cream cheese in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in the condensed milk a little at a time, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat in the lemon juice and vanilla.

Pour the filling into the crust; smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Cover and refrigerate until firm, 2 to 3 hours.

Mix up the Chocolate pudding according to the package directions. Spread over the top of the cheese cake and refrigerate to set up the pudding.

Then top with Cool Whip or Whipped Cream and enjoy!