eight and a half acre farm

It is Friday and this day means that Jakob has zoo class in the morning. This Friday was a little bit different. I misplaced my phone. Oh, the horror!!! I knew I had grabbed it on the way out the door, but wasn't sure where I put it exactly after that. Coming back to the car after dropping Jakob off I thought maybe I had imagined that I picked up my phone. How would someone get a hold of me? What would I do if I couldn't look at facebook? or Instagram, or e-mail. Again...with sarcasm...Oh, the horror!!! As I was driving toward the mall to exchange some shirts I bought Krischan I began to wonder if there were any pay phones left in the world. Who would I call anyway and why? What if I did have my phone with me and it fell out of my car at the zoo. EEKS. Ok, I will make a trip to the apple store and do a "Find my Phone" But what do I do if I see that it is at the zoo, how would I call my mom there to see if someone turned it in? Would someone actually let me...

I have recently been thinking about all the things that need finished around my house. Every project gets started, but it never really gets done. Whether it is putting quarter round around a room after it gets tiled, or putting up the woodwork around a door. If my house was a bicycle, no project would go unfinished. (If you knew my husband, this would make sense.) The past couple of days I have been going around and doing some finishing of my own. I hung back up the coat hangers on the new "coat and shoes" location, (wall still needs fixed on old location) Hung brand new curtain rods in boys room. They are monkeys and hung on the others, which resulted in them being ripped out of the walls. Hung three towel hooks in the bathroom so that they don't have to hang their towels on the ends of their beds anymore. Spackled area where towel rod was taken down, just need to paint over it now. Hung back up curtain tie backs that were ripped out of the wall this past winter by s...

Thanks to my wonderful mother, my lawn is finally mowed!! No, she didn't mow it for me, she watched the kids so that I could mow it. Mowed grass brings sanity to my life. I guess you could say that the state of my grass represents the state of my mind...When it is cut it is so clean and pretty. And of course I have control over whether my lawn gets mowed or not. The time to do it is another story.

The past couple of days have had me thinking of so many things. Old friends that I don't see or talk to anymore, memories of summers. Some of them are sad thoughts: Parents who are dealing with the 1st anniversary of their 19 year old daughters death, and some are surreal: watching the storms roll in, imagination running wild. Dream thoughts, where would I be thoughts, what would I be thoughts. Things are so busy that I feel like I can't even take a deep breath, certain days make me feel like I am suffocating. Working non-stop day in and day out whether it is for work or housework, because if you don't work, you don't get paid, and if you don't do the housework, it becomes an unbearable mess. It is a weird feeling to live with someone and miss them at the same time. How can you miss someone you live with? People talk of taking a break, but how can you take a break when there is so much work to do? How can you take a break when you are running to catch up with so...

As I have said before, gardening gives me peace. Although this time of year it is a bit hard for me to keep up with it. The weeds are growing in, and I only have so much time to get out there and pull them. But the vegetables are coming in beautifully. Green Beans. Yum. I love them straight out of the garden. Strawberries are on their second round. I don't know if this is normal, but I get a batch first thing in June and they start flowering again in July. Brussel Sprouts are a bit of a disappointment. Not sure what I did wrong, but I just have these big huge leaves. On one of them I cut the leaves off to see if the sprouts would grow (I read that somewhere), that one has teeny tiny buds, so we will see what comes of that. (see all those horrid weeds?) zucchini. Two c's, not two n's by the way. Any good zucchini recipes out there. I have already made zucchini bread, give me more of a side dish recipe. Please. Bell peppers. They are supposed to be red, not s...

Last summer I decided to cut Jakob's hair short. I don't know what came over me, I just did it. Rick and I tend to relate Jakob's crazy hair with is personality so to have it be short was a bit of a shock. I let it grow back out, curl back up and become as crazy as his personality again. Well, I did it again. I must have been possessed. I only wanted to trim it, but ended up just about shaving it. I am pretty sure his crazy personality is still there though, you can check for yourself. Before: After:

I wanted to share my new favorite app on my phone. Of course everyone (that has an iphone) probably already has it and I am behind the eight ball on this, but let's just pretend that I am telling you something new and exciting that you have never heard of. Okay? Cool. Instagram. I am in love. If you were a man, I would sleep with you. You make my photos look so cool and exciting, and my favorite part: old. It is so nostalgic to take a photo, place it in Instagram and play with the filters. It brings me to my childhood and when I sat down looking through photo album after photo album of my childhood. Without Instagram With Instagram Without Instagram With Instagram (I know I did poorly on the crop job) You get the "picture" Here is the fun I have been having. (If you feel so inclined, you can follow me on Instagram. I am at Moonbeedesigns.) This is Kadence trying out for the part in The Shinning. Krischan, wanting me to stick my camera in someone...

As of lately, I have been spending way more time than I would like at ball fields. If you have never noticed, I will tell you now: There is no shade at ball fields, unless you are sitting in a dug out. There is also some sort of weather phenomenon that happens around ball fields that cause the temperature to be 20 degrees warmer. Today for example. I was perfectly comfortable. My grey t-shirt, capri jeans and flip flops. I was even out playing with the kids and picking vegetables in my garden in these particular clothes. Then...I get to the ball field. We are suddenly ants and someone is holding a magnifying glass above us and we are frying. Seriously. I didn't sweat all day, then at Krischan's baseball practice, I am sweating like I just rode 50 miles on my bike. Even my lip is sweating. I hate that, there is nothing more creepy than someone who has a sweaty lip. I am now officially creepy. My jeans were sticking to my thighs. My shirt was slowly becoming one with my s...

Baseball season is over for some, but for the ones that made the All-Star teams, enter tournaments. Yes, this year Krischan made one of the all-star teams and I don't think my life has ever been so hectic and my house so messy. OK, maybe my house has been this messy before. This is how my schedule has been for the past two weeks: Get up in the morning, water flowers, get kids to whatever activities they are doing during the day, or run whatever errands I need to get done, get home, make lunch, clean up, then run out the door to practice, keep two little ones entertained for two hours on a ball field while practice is going on, go home, make dinner, eat, give baths, put them to bed, then sit down in office and work until 1 or 2 in the morning. This week is a bit worse because Krischan has zoo camp this week. I drove a total of 200 miles today, and there is no baseball on mondays. In a more understandable explanation it goes like this: Practice on tues and thurs, batting cages ...

Writers block is not fun. So I will just write to tell you what Jakob said to Krischan one day this week. We were in the van, and Jakob says: "Chun-chun?" He waits for the reply, then as casually as anything says this: "A bee flew up my butt and I farted it out."

Saturday night after Kadence went to bed it was just Jakob and I sitting on the couch watching cartoons. (Well, he was watching cartoons, I was reading a book.) As the sun started going down, Jakob tells me he wants to go out and catch lightning bugs. This is something he has just been introduced too, and watching him and Krischan run around after lightning bugs brings back a flood of memories from my childhood. So we go out the back door and he begins his search, but then gets distracted. Fireworks over the horizon. One here, one there, then a show starts. We meander around the side of the house and into the front yard for a better look. We sit down in the grass to enjoy the 3 backyard shows we can see and I am loving that it is just a Jakob and mommy moment. In between, I am sure, the people setting up more fireworks to set off, Jakob jumps up to catch lightning bugs. He has no luck, but tons of giggles and laughs are caught by me. I am soaking it in. He is crawling in my lap and...