Success?

I have no idea if my first attempt at pickling things worked. I guess
we'll see in a few days when I can open my first jar.

The Gerber Baby

Mom thinks Taylor looks like the Gerber baby. I had someone else make the very same comment last week. There must be something to it.

Taylor is officially 4 months old and I felt like she was interested in eating some cereal. Luckily for my doctor, he agreed so I didn't have to argue with him. Her appointment was last week. She weighed in at 15 pounds and she's 25 1/4 inches long. I neglect her obviously.

She has been sitting in her high chair with us at dinner for a while now. I just kind of felt like she didn't like looking up at us from the bouncy seat on the floor. She stares while we're eating and the girls at daycare had mentioned that she seemed pretty curious about it as well.

Here she is. Happy, hungry, and unsuspecting.

Hhhhmmm. What is this spoon thing all about? Well, I guess I can suck stuff off of it.

Wait, maybe if I use my hand it will go in my mouth faster.

For the love lady... keep the food constantly in my mouth like I'm used to and no one gets hurt.

Well, she doesn't cry now at least. She's figured out that I will in fact put more in her mouth.

The County Fair

Taylor and I both had a first this last weekend. We went to the county fair. By that I mean... we went to the carnival. Todd and Ryley went to the mud bog tractor pull and ATV races earlier in the week but Taylor and I stayed home.

What they say about county fairs is true. There is some seriously great people watching to be done. I was in voyeur paradise. I could have taken so many pictures but I restrained myself.

Here's Taylor with daddy. I would post the picture of her with me but it's not that great.

I won't post the picture I have of Ryley on the blender ride since I'm not sure how Mrs. E feels about having her picture plastered on the web, or her child's for that matter. However, I'm terribly proud of Ryley for getting on the scary big kid rides. He did great. He wasn't sure about the Spider in the first 30 seconds but after I put my arm around him and he figured out he wasn't going to fall out... he had a blast!

By the way, if you ever puke on a ride at a carnival, they hose you down with a fire hose looking jobby.

We love the crazy hair

Well, the daycare girl and I do anyway. She has this little section that sticks up in the back. No matter what. I'm threatening to dress her up as Pebbles for Halloween. Please don't tell me you don't know who Pebbles is. I will feel old and have to hurt you.

Anyway, I was trying to get pictures of said crazy hair one day and she decided she didn't like that at the time. Despite what quite a few people seem to think. She does cry.

Then I finally sort of got a cute picture of the craziness...

Spongebob... the girl kitty

Ryley brought home two kitties from his last trip to Wyoming. They apparently had 9 kitties running around and we needed some mousers.

Ryley wanted to name this one Spongebob but since they are girl kitties, we convinced him that Sandy was perhaps a better name. Still revolving around the Spongebob theme, but more gender appropriate.

When we got them out of the box, I was rubbing Sandy's head on the bottom of Taylor's foot just to see what she would do. I think she liked the sensation but I'm not sure she realizes that her foot is in fact attached to her body yet. Sometimes she still seems really confused by things touching her feet.

The other kitty is all black. It became my unfortunate job to name the critter but I'm really bad at animal names. I'm still undecided almost a month later but mom suggested "Coal". When I mentioned it to Ryley, he really liked it. Secretly I will probably call it something else. No pictures of Coal yet. She's sort of shy.

She likes to be held

I finally broke down and used the timer on the camera to take a picture of me with Taylor. It seems I don't think about wanting a picture with her until no one is around. We were at the pool for a birthday party and Taylor and I were just hanging out in the grass.

She must be comfy with Grandma.

Random...

I thought I would post some random Taylor pictures. Just some shots that I like.

I have proof!

In the event that someday Ryley decides that Taylor isn't all that
cool... I have proof that once upon a time he really liked her.

As much as he wanted a brother... he seems to be okay with having a
sister. I often catch him doing things like this with her...

Child labor?

Really. He doesn't mow the lawn yet. An executive decision was made to let him putz around the yard on the lawn mower. He had fun, and Todd got to take pictures. It was a win win situation for everyone apparently. I'm sure the day will come when he hates the lawn mower.

Just looking at this picture... I see so many things to comment on. Yes, that's a mound of ashes in the yard. It would appear that we are redneck enough to have a bonfire in the yard, but really, you're allowed to burn things like slash and weeds here. That is a little barn like shed on the left. It is badly run down but may eventually be a fort / playhouse for the kids. It just needs some work and no... there is no earthly reason for a mailbox in front of it. We have no idea what that's about.

This does give you an interesting look at the east side of our property. That is the neighbor's house. They've been remodeling it, hence the enormous roll off dumpster you see here. The dumpster is actually gone and the house is almost done now. It's almost like a Mexican villa sort of house.

And really I posted that picture so that I could now brag about my gardening skills a little.

Here's what happened to that piece of dirt you see behind Rye.

Ryley has to be in a lot of pictures. He sees the camera and assumes you're taking his picture. He is awfully cute though.

Anyway, this garden was something of an experiment this year. We moved in at Easter while I was very pregnant and didn't have a lot of time / energy to devote to the project. At any rate, it came out pretty good. We did corn (duh), lettuce, cucumbers, green beans, sweet peas, carrots, onions, pumpkin, and watermelon this year. I had to actually pull 4 pumpkin plants out as I had no idea how they grew. They were taking over the garden. We now have 5 actual pumpkins and 3 watermelons going. I will probably have to give away a ton of cucumbers as I had no idea how they grew either. I'll end up pickling the mass amounts of green beans I ended up with. The sweet peas were actually a vine variety so they didn't go quite so well but we enjoyed being able to nibble on them as we weeded the garden. The lettuce, carrots, and onions were perfect. So now that we know what we're doing, the garden will double in size next year and we'll add some other things like tomato, peppers, celery, and berries maybe. It's kind of nice to spend $10 on seeds and have fresh produce at your fingertips. If I could figure out how to construct a greenhouse I might actually try to do something all year long.

What it looks like around here

I said we were surrounded by corn earlier and that's only partly true.
We are in farmland and a lot of the surrounding acreage is corn but they grow beans, sugar beets, and sunflowers around us too.

We do have a neighbor directly to the east of us. We literally live 50
yards apart but no one lives there. Yet.

I thought I'd just show you what we are literally surrounded by.

To the south

To the west

And to the north

Yes, his tractor is sexy.

Hard at work?

I wonder if this qualifies as research and development.

I live in Mayberry

People tend to ask me what it's like to live in a small farming community and most of the time I just say "it's nice" but I finally have an example of what it's really like.

On Wednesday I picked up my mail at the post office and I had a letter from the Court Clerk. It basically stated that they hadn't received my jury summons questionnaire back and that they would need it back before my scheduled court time on Monday morning.

WHAT?!?!?

This letter had actually been forwarded from my old address. When we moved here we lived in town but now we live in the country and have a PO Box. So, I got this second letter but never received the original summons and I was expected to be in court on Monday morning.

There was a phone number so I called and talked to the lovely Court Clerk who was extremely friendly. She needed this questionnaire back as soon as possible.

Wouldn't you know it... she had an appointment in town, she just brought that questionnaire by my office and had me fill it out that afternoon.

Now I don't know about you but I was a bit flabbergasted that a county official would personally bring me something like that. I realize she needed it filled out so she took the initiative but I couldn't help but think it just wouldn't happen that way in many other places.

And that's what it's like around here.

FYI - Breastfeeding mothers get out of jury duty in case anyone needs an excuse and has a doctor that will send a note. I'm sure that's not a rule specific to my location. I wouldn't have even known if she hadn't suggested meeting me on my lunch hour and I had to explain that I went and nursed Taylor on my lunch hours.

"Oh really, you can't be on a jury right now anyway! Nope, that's more important. You just need to check off the medical question. I'll stop by after my appointment"

Out in the Heartland....

I had a hard time with the title. You know I did. It couldn't have been anything normal like... Hangin' with the Hoke's or something. At any rate, we are out in the heartland so this fits. I did have a moment when I thought "Children of the Corn" might be funny but then I've never actually seen the movie and perhaps I shouldn't joke about something potentially scary involving corn. I am surrounded by corn. I don't want to have to think about it when I go to bed at night. Maybe I should rent the movie.

This site was born out of the need for me to find a less time consuming way to share pictures and stories about my kids (and us big kids too). It's amazing what the birth of a baby will do to picture hounds and their constant desire for new material. I simply forget who I've sent things to. This way I don't have to worry about it.

So, I'll start posting and maybe you'll keep reading. I might try to share some older pictures as well for fun.