Tis the season...

Yes, tis the season. The season for caring, sharing and of course giving.
Now my little ones are still at the age of which they think that the holidays are all about getting. Trying to incorporate the giving into the scheme is slowly working, though. My older one is all about the homemade gifts, and the smaller one she would rather buy. I wonder where she gets that from.
Speaking of buying I am so pleased with myself. I have already finished my x-mas shopping and I have 16 days to spare. This is not normal for me. I usually wait until the 23rd or the 24th, then have at it. So for once I am done. All except one gift, so thats not too bad. I think going to school really has put the pressure on me to get everything done in a timely fashion. With my shopping out of the way, I am not free to concentrate on my finals that are coming up.
Finals. That is a sentence all by its self. I like to think I am on top of all my classes, but I am not. I am struggling with 2 out of my 4 pretty bad. I just want to get at least a B in those two. If I can pull that off, I am golden, plus I think it will put my mind at ease about the next semester. College is very different than high school, and going through it 12 years post high school, is crazy. But I am hoping to make it through and acutually complete something in my life.
Well I am hoping that I will continue this blog, even when the class is over. It has been great reading everyones, and getting a sneak peak into others worlds. Plus it has been a good place to vent.
Hope everyone does great on their finals, and hope to see you around here in cyber space sometime.....

Oh turkey day, oh turkey day, the malls are oh so busy!

Oh the great joys of turkey day! I am very blessed around this time of year as I get to spend it with my husbands family. Now I really mean this in the nicest possible way. This year we traveled to the twin cities area to eat lots of turkey and sit around with the family. We ate way to much and laughed way to hard. Thats the way thanksgiving day is supposed to be. I do wish that I could have seen my mom and dad who live in Vegas, but seeing that they went home 3 days before I won't whine to much about that.
Now spending the weekend with my in laws is always great fun. You never know whether you are going to laugh or cry. However, I will say I lucked out in the in law department, mine are alright. I don't have one of those crazy overbearing mother in laws. Now she maybe crazy, but it is a known fact in the family, and no one holds it against her. She is however a young mother and is still years away from 50 so that makes for getting along pretty easy. We both like to go shopping, and hang out. We can easily spend the weekend together with so much as one fight. That is nice. My father in law is also a pretty good guy, he only makes me cry about 2 times a year now days.
We also got to see my brother in law and sister in law. It was great because they came over and we sat down to a rousing game of poker. It is something we do at every holiday, and this year I did pretty well and kicked some butt!
Then around 12am me and hubby decided to go check out the lines at the big stores, and see if they were that bad for black friday. We were thinking about standing in line for a cheap lap top, kinda a romantic evening of hudling together on the cold concret. I couldn't think of any other way I would want to spend time with my significant other. The lines had already started, Best Buy had a line all the way around the store, with people in big tents. So there went any ideas I had in my head about my quite evening for two. It was crazy! I can't believe that people will wait in line that long for a good deal. So we gave up that bright idea for some sleep.
All in all I have a love/hate relationship with the holidays, simply put, sometimes I love them, sometimes I hate them....

Chickens!!! Oh My!

I thought since I had a few spare minutes before my test today I would post a few pictures of our beloved chickens. Cause who doesn't want to see chickens???
We came to have chickens on a whim. I made the mistake of leaving my husband and girls alone for the day. They ended up going to town and at the local L&M, picked up 35 chickens. For something to do. When I got home there they were in a rubbermaid box on my kitchen table. They stayed there for about a week. Then they were moved to our basement in a old horse trough. I think they were there for another 2-3 wks. At this time they were getting way to big for the trough, so my husband made a chicken coop for them. It is 6x6 and then they have a large fenced in area to run around in. We had a good assortment of chickens. We had 30 called cornish cross. They are fast growing meat birds. Yes, that means you butcher them. They are yellow at first then change to white. We had 5 feather footed bantes. They have feathers on their feet, very cute! These are egg laying birds. These 5 are named, Brownie, Braised, Blue, Star, and Stu. Stu however is not with us anymore. We had a freak accident where the door fell on him. It was very traumatic for my oldest daughter. So needless to say Stu has a shrine. Oh well. We also have 5 Americanas. These are a multicolored egg layers. They lay colored eggs, green and blue colored. They say that the green eggs have little cholesterol in them. We didn't really name these ones, but have also lost one due to the dog.
Even though I was not to happy with the dang chickens at first, I have grown to like them.
We did butcher in July 28 of the cornish crosses. We now have a freezer full of chicken to eat. We are getting 5-6 eggs a day. I never thought it would be so hard to use so many eggs at once.
Ok here are some pics of the chickens. The one to the right is Blue! He is a crabby rooster!


Below are some of there eggs. The larger ones are laid by the 2 cornish that we kept, the other ones are by the others.














So there are the dang ol dang ol chickens. That should explain a little more about me. LOL!

Oh my....

Well my parents are in town, they flew in from Vegas saturday. It is always an exciting time when they are in town. The last time they were here all my father did was complain about how things were done around the house. I mean, come on dad, I know I suck at housekeeping but everything? He even decided that he and my husband should get up at 8 in the morning and saw down trees. Now granted they probably did need to come down, but they have been there for 30 years. They did not need to come down that day. So needless to say we survived a very long 3 days before they left.
So before they came home this time, I made sure to set some ground rules for my dad. I know this may sound harsh, but 3 days of crying! Come on! I called him and told him that when he came this time there was to be no negative remarks, at all. Now maybe I didn't say it just like that, and he did hang up on me, but it was all good. One has to understand my father and I are very much alike. We are both hard headed, and very vocal. So this is nothing new for us. Anyways, they came home Saturday and instead of saying negative things, he decided to say nothing. He sat in his chair and dozed off and on. He spoke when spoken to and joked with the girls. But other than that, pretty much nothing. Now I am trying to figure out whether speaking or no speaking is better. Hmmm.... for some reason the no talking bothers me about as much as the negative talking. Oh well, he's my dad and he won't change for nothing. I gotta love him!

It is never ending!

So for the last week I have been dying. Well, not really, but I have walking pneumonia along with like 2 other things. It sucks. But on Friday I went to the doctor got more drugs, and headed to the cities with my girls. Daddy went hunting with Grandpa, so we decided to go hand with Grandma and Auntie.
It was really nice to get away from everything for awhile. We just hung out Friday night. Saturday we went shopping all day. Then Saturday night we all went to church with Joes(husband) grandma, and then to the great TURKEY BINGO! Good clean family fun! But this leads me to the things children say.
My little one is 6. She is very loud sometimes. So while sitting in this very formal Catholic service, a very quiet one at that, they passed the offering plate. Of course I only had a $5 so I threw it in. My 6 yr old took one look at it and said, " Take that out of there! Let's find something else, here put in this yellow paper!" And she tries to take the money out to replace it with paper. I could have died! And to try not and laugh, was so hard. Needless to say we left the money in and the yellow paper was taken away from her.
So if that wasn't enough out of her for the night, we went to play BINGO. Grandmas church has a priest that is from? Solmalia, or India. He is really great, but does have a heavy accent. So he is up talking, and Kay looks around then turns to me and says, " I don't speak Spanish, I can't understand a word he's saying!" At that moment I felt that we should just leave. I think we had enough church for one weekend!
Oh well, kids are fun! The rest of the weekend was very nice and quiet. We headed home on Monday, stopped at the cabin to see Dad and Grandpa. And headed home.
So onto home. We got here unpacked, and then I took the girls to a friends house so I could go to school. On the way to school, we passed 4 cops and a DNR truck with lights on. The first thing we(me and Jill) thought of was that someone was hurt in a hunting accident. No other thoughts of it. I dropped Jill off and went to get the kids. When I got there, the girls were getting ready to go, the phone rang. Jean got it and the person wanted to know if I had been there yet. She said I was still there. The person then proceeded to tell her, not to scare me, but someone was on the loose in my area, and was armed. Ok, scare me to death! So of course me being the curious being I am, I load my kids up and head home, with the understanding that if something didn't look right I would go back to my friends house. Well long story short, I didn't see any action around our house, so I took the kids and went in. Everything was fine.
And they caught the guy around 10:30pm. But it was scary there for awhile.
Alright enough of this. Algebra is calling...

How boring is this?!?!

I am a bit on the bored side this week. Now mind you that this is a good thing, because for myself sometimes being bored is a good thing. It usually means that no one is sick, I haven't went to the ER and no chickens have died. So maybe bored is a harsh word. Maybe I should use the word good, or nice.
I am trying to get the girls ready for Halloween. I am one of those parents who talk alot about making these fantabulous costumes, but never do. I usually end up at the store the day before, searching through the scraps that are left over at
the discount store. However this year I started 5 days in advance, so we are almost done. I am going to have a pirate and a reniciance princess. Fun fun! I am surprised they didn't want to be farmer girls and take a chicken around with them.
Chicken update. The dog did almost kill a chicken today, guess they got it away from her in time. But from all the excitement the chicken laid an egg that didn't have a shell. It was pretty strange looking. I guess that happens sometimes. Our chickens do not hide the eggs, they do lay more than one egg in the box at a time.
We carved our pumpkins tonight. That was fun, not! 4 huge pumpkins and some crazy designs. They are from our garden. And I guess they turned out alright!
Alright, maybe I will have something exciting to write about soon. Something like HALLOWEEN!

Behind a bit....

Well I guess I am a bit behind in posting on here. It has been crazy busy in life thats for sure. I am just getting over a nasty sickness that has been hanging around our house for several weeks now. I am hoping that it has left the building for good. All three of us girls were sick, and it was not fun.
My husband is now home for a month. It should be real interesting as he is not usually home for this long. Right now he is working at the Ford plant in St Paul, and usually comes home on the weekends. I have to say right now, because the Ford Plant is going to be closing soon, and we are a bit shaken by the whole ordeal. Well to put it frankly, it just SUCKS!
We just went through this last year with my job, and now his. But one always finds a way to get through everything. And the good part is that when he is done, he will be home forever. Although, I am not complaining about being husband free during the week.
Other than that, I am looking forward to hunting opener. The hubby is going hunting with his daddy, and me and the girls are headed to the cities for a weekend of relaxation with grandma and auntie. It will be so nice to just go and hang out.
Chicken update: We are getting 3-4 eggs a day from the dang ole chickens now. It is pretty cool. We have little brown eggs, big brown eggs, and some green eggs too! The girls are having so much fun with them. They can't wait until we have enough to sell eggs?!?!?!? I am not to sure about that, but we will see.
Alright, I have to go learn about bones for another class. Until next time

Weekends, whats up with those?

I am starting to think that I should have just called my blog, Weekends! Lately that's the only time anything interesting happens to me. But thank goodness this weekend, didn't find me in the hospital, and none of our chickens dead. That was the good news. The bad news was that I have one child with pnenomia, one who turned 6 and a friend that was in a bad car accident. It never ends around here. We spent the day in the hospital with the oldest tuesday, found out she has pnenomia. She is feeling much better now, to my relief. My baby just turned six on thursay, that was fun! My friend that was in the accident did not get hurt, just sent to jail. Did you know that they have this law, about drinking and driving? Your not supposed to do that. He is very lucky that he didn't die or hurt someone else.
Alright I am done with the crappy stuff. The good stuff this weekend was the almighty birthday party. The first one we have ever had with friends. So it was a big deal. We had a total of 45 people show up. Out of that there was 15 or so kids. Lots of funs. It was a great day on Saturday, so nice, I was going to do games, but ended up just letting them play! My husband and I worked for 2 hours on the cake. A princess castle cake. Just what the baby wanted. We worked so long and it only took about 5 minutes to cut it up and it was gone.



I think that it was the best cake I have done yet. We do something like this every year for the girls. Hopefully, they will want me to do this forever!
Alright, I am done for this week....until then!

What are we on now? Week 5?!?!?!

I am trying to keep up with all this online class stuff, but it seems like I am always behind. Oh well, its the week thing that really confuses me. I think that every teacher has a different idea of what a week really is. Like one is Sunday, which is just great, one is Wednesday, one is Tuesday, and one is whenever she feels like it. I am sure just about the time I get used to it, the semester will be over, and I will have a different batch of teachers timings to get used to! What can one do?

So this weekend and week wasn't that bad. No allergic reactions, no near death experiences. So it was pretty good. I started my new job, not so bad. I think I will go back this weekend and try it again. It was nice cause I know most of the people I am working with.
Did I mention no near death experiences, I meant with myself, but the chickens on the other hand didn't fare so well. ( yes we have chickens, long story about a husband and two kids, another time i will tell you about it) Two of our chickens like to fly the coop and run around. Well I didn't realize that they were out and let the dog out to pee, and needless to say one of the chickens didn't make it. Do you know how gross it is to have to go out and clean up dead chicken 15 minutes before your children get off the bus? It was not fun at all. Damn husband!
At least the girls took it ok, and we didn't have to build a shrine or anything, like we did for the last one that died.

Other than that, I took the kids on a color tour to look at the pretty leaves. They had so much fun taking pictures and watching the deer. Oh the things we do up north for entertainment!

Here we go again.....

Okay, now I know that I am going to start sounding like a complete wacko that has way to many things go wrong, but seriously this happens to me all the time.
So last week I had to go in for an employment physical for this new job. No big deal. I go through everything, which was fine cause the doctor was kinda cute!, and find out that I need a tentnus booster. Fine, no problem. So I take the shot like a pro, got my fancy snoopy band-aid, and off I go.
Here I am home, getting ready for our trip to the cities to visit the family, and my shoulder is sore. I didn't think a thing of it, it was a tetnus shot, they are supposed to be sore. Except not for 3 days. So we are in the cities, and here I am not even able to move my arm. Great! Off to urgent care. I figured I would go in and they would tell me that I was having some kind of allergic reaction or something. (Since the bee thing, I figured what was another allergy?!?) Oh no, not me, couldn't be that simple. It was celluitis. An infection of the fatty tissue. And if it gets worse, head to the ER for IV antibiotics! Just what I wanted to hear! Hear take some pills and it should help.
Well thank goodness, it has helped and I didn't have to go to any more ERs. My arm still hurts, but come on can a girl get a break or what?!?!?!?!?!?!

Oh yeah, and I still have to start the new job on Friday!

September 11th...

Now what kind of American would I be if I didn't sit down and write something about Sept. 11th.
Five years later, and as sad as it was, many people don't recall what an emotional day it was. But none the less everyone can probably remember where they were when they heard the news, and what went through their minds.
I remember where I was when I first heard it. It was 8:00 in the morning or so and I was dropping my girls off at daycare. I opened the door to see my daycare lady in tears, I asked her what was wrong. All she could do was point at the tv. At that moment that I turned to the screen, all I could see was the second plane hit the tower. Now that is a scene that I have seen many times since then, but I will never forget seeing it as it happened. The thoughts in my mind as I left daycare were all over the place. Will they hit again? Where will it be? Should I pack my family up and head north? That thought was all about the fact that up north was in the woods and why would terrorists attack the woods? When all was said and done, life goes on. It was a very sad day, and no matter where you were you will remember it.

What a weekend!?!

What a weekend!?!

So this online schooling is new for me, well any school is new for me, cause I haven't went in 11 years. Online is a bit confusing at first, trying to get all the schedules strait, what is due when?
Needless to say I messed up my math in the first day, so that started my weekend out right.
We decided that we( being me) were going to have a yard sale with the neighbors on Friday. Did you know Friday was the only day it rained all weekend? And of course it didn't start until I had just finished setting everything out in the yard. So that was a bust, and back inside we went. On top of that I was supposed to be getting company that night, the house was trashed, one kid was sick, and my husband was really crabby! So once the rain passed I sent the kids to the neighbors with yard sale items to sit in their garage in case of rain again. My best friend came over to help me reorganize my house, and company showed up.
YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have you ever felt so excited for company to come, but then when they get there you can't wait 'til they leave?
So, our company doesn't have children so we were stuck trying to find stuff to do that was adult fun, but still kid friendly. That's not as easy as it sounds. We went to an annual corn feed, that a nearby town puts on at a bar. That was fun, they do lots of stuff for the kids, and the adults all get to drink. ( I do not drink more than 1 beer when out with my children, just to clarify!) So that was great. Sunday we did a great big fish fry and had some more friends come over to help eat it all up. Then we did a bonfire for the kids with s'mores, and bonus the adults could have a beer.
Then the company left.
I was left with the clean up, the sick kid, the now sick and crabby husband, plus school work!
I think I need another weekend!

A day in my life...

Somethings I get the feeling that I take way to much on at once. Now I know that I am not the only person in the world that has two kids, married to a man, and goes to school, but somedays it feels like it. And just for kicks I have decided to get a job.
So heres my blog, its going to be about what goes on in my everyday life. Unfortunatly or fortunaly I don't have a boring life. If anything is going to happen to someone, it usually happens to me. Sometimes for Christmas all I ask for is a boring year, somehow Santa always forgets me on his list. But I always tell myself that things happen to a person for a reason, right? If anyone figures out the reasons let me know, please!
Just to give an idea of things that happen to me, take last week for example. I was trying to get everything ready for school, my best friend was about to get married, we had just got home from the cities, and company dropped in. So being a nice person I was getting them some veggies from the garden, and picked up my pop and took a drink. Holy poop! Of course there was a bee in it and the darng thing got me in the throat twice. PAIN! And then to top it off, guess who ends up being allergic to bees? Who would have known? So I spent the evening in the ER getting pumped full of drugs so I could breathe. Then the next day I ended up having a bad reaction to the meds that they gave me. Back to the doctor. YUCK! Then more pills, DOUBLE YUCK! So needless to say, if it was going to happen to anyone it would be to me.