Falling Behind

Wow ! I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. These last several weeks have been pretty packed with activities. Here are a few of the things that have gone on:

Father's Day (see picture)

Levi and Caleb are practicing two-stepping to Daddy's new Johnny & June Carter Cash Greatest Hits CD that he received for Father's Day.

End of Baseball season - had to take Levi to hospital during game after he got hit with a

batted ball in the face and began bleeding from his nose. (I think the end of June ER

visit was a new record for longest # of days without going to the hospital in the summer !)

End of Summer School - it was fun for one year, but I think one year was all we need.

Family Vacation: Stockton Lake on the boat - Movie (at the theater !) - Silver Dollar City (although Daddy does not allow us to call it anything other than Steal Your Dollar City) - Swimming at the Creek - Camping at Stockton Lake (talk about a long night !) We didn't even go out on the lake the second day after we woke up because it was raining and Caleb rolled a big boulder onto his toe. He was in a dry creek bed when it happened and we thought he was carrying on a little too much. We told him to get tough and walk up out of the creek to come see us (about 30 yards). I felt pretty bad when he got to us and I took his shoe off to see his blood-soaked sock. His nail was already purple and had smashed his toe pretty bad. I felt bad, but Dave was encouraged that he did actually show some toughness in walking all that way. (We did avoid a trip to the ER !)

4th of July - the Saturday of family vaction - the boys shot fireworks at home all day and into

the night. (Again - no ER visit !)

July 6 - 10 - I attended a math workshop from 8am - 8pm each day. I discovered I was not cut

out to work 12 hour days, but I did get some cool (geeky) toys out of the deal.

Last Week - County 4-H/FFA fair- The boys had a great time staying at the fair every day

from 7:30am - 10pm or later. Levi showed 2 animals (steer and heifer) and got 2

blue ribbons and Caleb showed his bucket calf and got $10.00. Caleb decided he

would show a bucket calf next year too ! Clay showed Caleb's calf in a pee-wee show

and even answered all the judges questions. We were very proud of him. Clay's calf

Spot is too much of a mule (nice word) to show. Eventually I will get around to

posting pictures of the fair.

Well, that is what we've been up to. We now have 3 weeks until I have to start back to school - a week before the boys. They will also begin Football camp that week. This summer has gone by way too fast !!!!! We are spending this week catching up on things at home and trying to freeze some of the green beans, zucchini and okra that have grown like crazy. I have discovered that I can sneak zucchini into several things without the boys noticing, although last night they were breaking their cookies into little pieces trying to see if there was any zucchini hidden in them.

Right now, they're bugging me to go out with them to pick blackberries and make a cobbler.

I guess I better go for now, and I will try to post an update on the chickens in the next couple of days - talk about a learning curve !

Chick update

Well, after 5 days the chicks are doing pretty well over all. We had one casualty which we speculate was due to the heat, but the rest of them are growing incredibly fast and seem to be thriving. We fill up their food trough at least three times a day and sometimes more, and the same for their water. We are all totally amazed at how fast they are growing in such a short time. Less than a week ago, they were a tiny ball of fluff and 3 of them would fit in your hand. Now they are looking more like chickens and only one will fit in your hand at a time. Hard to believe in about 7 weeks, they'll be dinner !

I also put some pictures of our garden up here. Clay is displaying his pumpkin vine that he started from seed indoors back in early March. It has grown like crazy and he loves to go look at it.

It's hard to tell much about the garden from this picture, but it's doing pretty well. Actually, when compared to my previous 2 years of gardening it is the best garden ever. I have 5 tomato plants (4 of which were grown from seed indoors), 2 1/2 rows of green beans, 3 1/2 rows of okra, 6 rows of corn, 9 zuchinni plants, 9 cantaloupe plants, 9 watermelon plants and 1 pumpkin vine. The thing that makes this garden so much better than the last two is that you can see dirt between all the rows of plants instead of weeds. It's been more work, but I haven't cared since I feel so much better than I have in several years. David even put a fence around it for me to keep the deer, coons, possums and rabbits out. With any luck, we'll even have enough produce left over to can and eat throughout the year.

Baby Chicks

Thursday morning at 7:30am , we got a call from the Post Office saying our baby chicks were in. We ordered 75 chickens from a local hatchery and they were born on Wednesday, so we got them when they were 1 day old. The boys stayed home from summer school and helped me get them all set up in our brooder (recycled stock tank). They had so much fun playing with the chicks all day. They started naming some of them (although I'm not sure how they tell them apart) and I warned them that naming animals we will later eat is not the best idea. So, they have pretty much limited themselves to naming only the red chicks which will grow up to be laying hens. The yellow chicks will grow up to be broilers and thus shall remain nameless.

New Pet - Short lived

The same day we got Spot, Caleb spotted a green garden snake on the ground in the calf pen. I asked if they wanted me to catch it and they did, so I picked him up and gave him to Caleb and Clay to play with. (Levi missed out on the excitement since he had spent the night at Byron's house.)

The boys wanted to keep him, so we looked around for something to put him in. He was pretty long, so the boxes we tried were too small to hold him in. We also tried a watering can and an ice chest, but he was pretty good at escaping. The boys finally decided to try and put him in the stock tank (see earlier "Who needs a pool" post). It had long since drained all the water from swimming.

Unfortunately for the snake, it was a really warm day and the black stock tank turned out not to be the best home for him. The boys came in the house sad, because the snake had died in the stock tank after about 5 minutes. We had him a total of maybe 30 minutes, but I'm sure for the snake it seemed like a whole lot longer !

Clay's Calf

We got Clay's calf on a Saturday 2 weeks ago from a dairy about 25 miles from our house. Clay had named him "Spot" before we even went to get the calf and it turned out to be a good name for a Holstein calf. Daddy carried it in to the pen and Clay spent lots of time petting him and loving on him. Later that evening, Clay insisted on making the bottle himself and he went out and fed Spot with Daddy. Clay did a great job and he seems to really enjoy taking care of Spot and being around him. It is now 2 1/2 weeks since we got Spot, and Clay has never onced complained about feeding him and taking care of him. Clay will show him at the fair in July in the "PeeWee Bucket Calf show".

Mixing the big calf bottle

Who Needs a Pool ?

The first full day out of regular school, the boys wanted to fill up an old stock tank to swim in, so I told them if they cleaned it out really good I would think about it. An hour later they wanted me to come see the result and I was impressed enough to let them fill it up. It was only in the upper 70's that day, and the water coming out of the hydrant was pretty cold, but they had a great time.

We did give Caleb a hard time about holding his nose to jump in a stock tank !

Baseball

This summer, we spend Monday and Thursday nights at the ballpark as well as Saturday afternoons for Clay. Levi and Caleb play on the same nights - sometimes in different towns at different times so that we can see some of both games, and sometimes they play in different towns at the same time. In 3 of the 11 games they each play, they play in the same town back to back which is perfect !

Levi in the past has always played first base, but this year there are 16 kids on his team, so he's got to take turns playing at first, third and centerfield. Having that many kids on one team is pretty rough because you don't usually get to play the whole game, and baseball is pretty boring when you're not on the field (and sometimes even when you are !) Levi's team is 1-3 after last night.

Caleb's team is coached by David and they are the best team we've seen so far in the league. They are 4-0 and none of the games have even been close. Caleb plays first base and has gotten several outs. He has only struck out once this year in about 15 times at bat and has hit several triples and a homerun. There are only 9 kids on Caleb's team, so they all get to play the whole game which is nice. He is in machine pitch which in my opinion is the most exciting league because there are alot of hits and action. In Levi's league, the kids are pitching and most of them aren't throwing strikes so there is a lot of walks.

And then there's teeball. There are no outs in teeball and each team bats through their line-up every inning. Thankfully, there are only 2 innings ! Clay loves teeball - especially batting. He is one of their best hitters, and generally hits it to the outfield every time. After his first game he asked if we saw when he "hit it to the clouds !" Then he wondered "what would happen if God catched it ?" I told him he would be out. He has a little trouble staying focused when he is playing in the field. He plays first base some and he has also played catcher and 2nd base. He likes to stand on the base when he is in the field, so the runner doesn't know what to do. I'm glad he enjoys it so much and that makes it worth sitting through the game.