Making the best of Kindergarten...

On Rory's first day of school, I did something that I've been wanting to try since...well, since we stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in Quebec that served fresh, homemade croissants for breakfast. I actually did it and was quite pleased with the results. I really had a hard time believing that 'kneading' butter in ice cold water would soften it at all...but lo and behold it worked just like the recipe said it would.

Ladger says he's going to miss harvest because I've been feeding him so well. Isn't the nicest thing for him to say?

Today was Rory's second day of school and I spent the day completely cleaning out the master bedroom and closet. I was thinking I needed more drawer space but I decided that before I would take up more floor space with furniture it was time to be sure my closet was utilized as efficiently as possible. The reward for my hard work is going to be a sitting area in our room instead of an armoire or chest of drawers. Woohoo! I never imagined we would have the space to have that luxury.

Ready for school!

School is bringing some new things to this homeschooling family. I never had to worry about shoes for school before. He's been wearing sandals (or rubber boots) all summer and his spring runners are too small so we had to get two new pairs this fall. Rory is rather attached to them as you can see. His favorites are the ones on his hands...American chopper with blinking lights. He really wanted the blinking lights... I really didn't want Superman or Spiderman. So when we found these, we were both happy. *grin* 

Out of sync.....

I mentioned that we were having problems with our header. Here's how I understand it. There are two drives pushing knives - one drive on the left and the other on the right side of the header. It's hard to get two drives synchonized but when they are, the whole thing is smooth. The engineers thought it was better to design it to fluctuate in and out of sync (rather than be always out of sync). So one drive was designed to be a little faster than the other.

Well by 700 acres, it was out of sync far more often than in sync and it was starting to break down because of the intense vibration being out of sync causes. Meanwhile the company has been working on an electrical control to automatically adjust and keep the drives in sync. That's what I went for on my road trip.

All day Wednesday, Ladger worked at getting that set up on the header and it wasn't working. And by noon yesterday and many phone calls back and forth, Ladger was as discouraged as I've ever seen him. So we started to plan to invest in another header to do the job and start the process of requesting our money back for a header that has never worked the way we need it to. (Although, when it does work, it can do a terrific job). And I prayed.

Finally, Ladger just went to the field and started combining with a header that was in danger of breaking apart. But it worked. This morning there is hope again.

As I was praying about it, it occurred to me how much that is just like our lives. So many times we have so many things driving us and it can put our lives out of sync. The ride is a bumpy one and things start falling apart. And it's then we need to get back in sync with our main drive....and that's the one way that Jesus talks about. After all He is our Chief Engineer.

The Day I Hung Out with Rob Bell

Our header for our combine (the part on the front that cuts and pulls the crop into the combine) hasn't been working well. In fact it's been vibrating and breaking apart and we're hoping it lasts the season. So the company has been engineering some new things to make it work better and I knew it was likely that I'd be the one driving there to pick it up as it would take too long to get it shipped from the US (customs).

So yesterday, I got a phone call that a guy was driving the parts to the US border and was leaving in half an hour. Yikes!!! I quickly called Ladger and then his mom to look after the boys and then as soon as I figured out where I was going, off I went. Road trip. 10 hours return trip. Luckily, I had just received my audio book "Velvet Elvis" read by the author, Rob Bell. It was awesome. A spiritually rejuvenating day...almost as good as a retreat. I'm glad no one could hear me because I had a great time belting it out with some of my favorite praise and worship CD's. An unexpected kind of day....a blessing....tiring but good.

"It's both of ours..."

Here's why I have a few minutes to myself this morning. He's been tuckered out with four trips to town this week. Yesterday was really cute because he got a new tractor and everywhere he went he marched in carrying it and so obviously proud of it. But what made me proud: Ladger was telling Rory to remember that the tractor was Paxton's when Rory was playing with it and Paxton piped up: "It's both of ours". 

In the end I had to give in......I frequently mess up when entering those letters for verification on comments. The other day, I had to re-do them at least three times to finally post my comment. I held out for awhile on putting them on comments to this blog but I had to give in because the amount of junk coming in was getting ridiculous.....and it does help. I hope you have an easier time of it than me - maybe I'm going blind...maybe I'm in too big of a hurry to decipher the letters properly but I do love the comments that come in....so thanks!

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

There must be a hole in our house. We've had such a massive invasion of little black flying insects...the infamous house fly.

I hate the feeling of walking into a room and stirring up a bzzzzzing.
I hate looking at light fixtures and walls and seeing fly crap everywhere.
I hate spending so much time out of my day swatting flies (no matter how nicely the electric fly zapper works).
I love the silence in a room finally rid of bzzzzzzzzzzzing.
I hate the constant vacuuming to remove the carpets of the dead creatures.

So I declared war on the flies in my house. I set out poison in strategic locations on our yard. I bought a large bug zapper that I plug in every evening and leave all night. And then I started washing down walls and started my fall cleaning.

But do you think I've won the war?

Oh No!! Now, I've got the biggest, healthiest, juiciest flies I've ever seen. I mean big, meaty creatures. These little miniature airplanes zoom by my head and I just know they're laughing at me as I cavort around my house to catch every single one. The boys laughed at my antics last night and the only way I could get them to bed was to promise them a similar show tomorrow. Because one thing I'm becoming sure of .....is that tomorrow will continue to provide more of these huge, evasive, scary flies!

Oh and did you want to come over for a cup of coffee? Oh yeah I guess I understand why you wouldn't dare!!

Getting Ready for School...

Ladger and I decided to send Rory to Kindergarten this year which may come as a surprise to those of you who know how highly we think of homeschooling. But this is the one year that he gets to go two days a week and get to the know some of the kids in the area as well as reinforce what he learned last year. We'll continue with some extra subjects on the alternate days and so I'm really looking forward to it. And so is Rory. Today we bought a backpack, lunch bag and various items for school. This is the binder he needs to have and we had fun finding some LarryBoy pictures to color and decorate it with. Rory did almost all of the coloring on his own and he even looked at the real LarryBoy to make sure he used the right colors. I've never seen him color that carefully.

His class will be interesting. There are 12 boys and only two girls. Those poor girls... The poor teacher.... 

That man of mine...

If you read a few entries previously, you may have noticed that harvest got in the way of going out with my husband for my birthday...that man of mine! But I realize I'm starting to learn. I actually didn't complain and get in a huff about it. I just accepted it and was willing that it be 'another time'. And then out of the blue on Saturday evening, Ladger came in and asked if I'd like to go out for dinner and a movie. That man of mine had already arranged care for the boys. And so we went out for a really fun evening! I wouldn't trade that man of mine!

A Quick Update!

I just got in from mowing the lawn - possible the last time this summer as the grass isn't growing like it did before. I miss the smell of fresh green grass while I'm mowing. Our grass is still green but you know what I mean...that vibrant fresh green of spring.

Now, I'm doing lunch for the bunch and I found out I have to have it at least half an hour earlier than normal so I really have to make my time count this morning. I'll take the grill out to fry up some pork kebobs (I marinated the meat last night) and some rice at the same time. I also have some cheese muffins to take along and some cucumbers to slice up and salt. The only question is dessert. Maybe some chocolate chip cookies would be as easy as anything.

There now, I guess I'm ready to get started.

What's a guinea geeb?

That's what Paxton calls the guinea pigs and it sounds so cute! We had two and now we have one. Sadly, they made an escape in their outside pen and we were only able to find one. And we're all missing that cute little guinea geeb!

Thank goodness for crazy people!

The boys are playing hockey while I write. I may not be here too long before I have to go rescue my house or one of the boys!

Last night it rained - we're thankful there was no hail or strong winds. The crop is fragile right now - ripe and ready to go which means even the smallest hail would shell out the seeds and that would be that! It's a vulnerable feeling to have know you have a decent crop that could disappear in one storm. It really is true that we can't count our chickens until they're hatched...in our case, count on a crop until it's in the bin!

On the bright side, yesterday I had a conversation about Wal-mart and how it's driving small local businesses out of business. I thought afterwards how we don't have to worry about that one! Any big business like Wal-mart wouldn't touch farming with a ten foot pole - at least not grain farming in the Canadian prairies!!! Can you see it now? Returns on equity are so poor that we're just about crazy to do what we do. It's a good thing there a few crazy people left to keep it up.

Harvest has begun!

One of the things that I find challenging about farming is having no clear cut dates for anything. Usually harvest doesn't begin until well into August if at all. But this year some farmers have already put in a good week or more.

So I knew harvest was right around the corner but it's hard to know just when. And then my birthday was just a couple of days ago. At first I wanted to have a mini family vacation to Calgary and Calaway Park (amusement park) for the weekend. But as harvest looked imminent, I figured more realistically Ladger and I could go out for a movie so we were planning that until the evening before, Ladger went checking on the fields and came in to announce that we were starting harvest the next morning. So the movie never did happen....yet!!

But all was not lost. Almost all my family called me and I spent hours catching up with everyone. And then last night some girlfriends treated me to a birthday dinner which was really special!

But I came home to find out that Rory had taken off on his bicycle for the field when he was supposed to be at home with the babysitter. His grandma saw him through the window and went with the half-ton to pick him up and drove him out there and so he didn't get home until 10:30 pm. One person described Rory as intense and I thought that was a perfect description. He has a one-track mind and even though he was so excited that the babysitter was coming - he was even more determined to be part of the harvest. That kind of focus and determination may get him far in life.... one can only hope so.