Honor Choir

Saturday was once again a pretty hectic day at the Brown house. Both Levi and Caleb had baseball practice at 8am (on a sidenote, I think that 8am on Sat. is crazy !!!!!) so we all went to the ballfield for that. Afterwards, I stayed in town for a PTA meeting from 9:30 - Noon. There is no such thing as a short PTA meeting ! When I got home we ate lunch and then I had to have Levi back over to the school by 2pm to leave for his trip to PSU.

Picture of Levi and his best friend Byron singing. (I tried to load the video but after 3 hours of "your video is loading" I finally gave up and went with the picture.)

On the way there he was very distraught because the dress shoes I bought him had square toes. Despite my assurances that nobody would even look at his feet, he was sure it was going to ruin the whole experience because he looked so ridiculous. I followed the bus there and of course had to park a couple of blocks away. The honor choir did an excellent job and we hung around for a while to see what their rating would be.

While we were waiting, I called David to see how Clay's teeball practice (which started at 3:30) was going. He said Clay throws the ball so far and hard that he could only play catch with the coach because the other kids were scared of his throwing. He also hit the ball into the outfield when it was his turn to bat. He was having a great time. After we found out that Levi's choir had a received a I rating we left Pitt State and went to the US Cellular store to see if I could find a new phone because after I called David about Clay's practice, I dropped my phone and it broke into two pieces. They were closed, so I ended up getting one on Tuesday instead.

Levi seemed very happy about the competition and their rating, so I asked him on the way home if the shoes had ruined everything for him. Surprisingly, he said no one even noticed them !

Easter Happenings

This Easter was packed full of activities and unexpected events. It began Wednesday night with our family sitting down and going through the whole Easter story. Its exciting to see Clay start to be interested in and understand some of the significance of Easter.

On Thursday Clay had his Easter egg hunt at preschool. You can see he has his coat on because it was pretty cool and rainy. Me and 2 other moms helped hide 220 eggs for the 10 preschoolers. Each student was supposed to get 22 eggs, but Clay ended up with 37 eggs, so he had to share some of his with the others which he did very willingly. He also found the prize egg, so he got a new can of play-doh which he was very excited about.

Friday, we headed to Columbia to see Grandma & Grandpa and Uncle Jeremy. Friday night we went out to eat for Grandma's birthday dinner. Then Saturday morning we went with Uncle Jeremy to the Farmer's Market in Columbia to buy some fresh food for supper. We bought some hamburger and steaks from a local farm and found out that they were having a Shorthorn cattle sale at their farm that afternoon. David was interested (as always) in going to a sale and Jeremy said he had never been to one, so that sealed the deal. That afternoon David, Jeremy, Levi, Grandpa and I went to the sale while Caleb and Clay stayed with Grandma and colored Easter eggs.

Now, David is normally the opposite of impulsive, but something about the Columbia air on Saturday turned him into a guy I've seen only one other time (when we went out & bought our new flatscreen TV and Blu-Ray player). When we got in the car after the Farmer's Market, David asked Levi if he would like to buy a Shorthorn cow to show at the fair. Levi wasn't too interested in that prospect, because he's grown accustomed to the Braunvieh cattle that we already have, but he did want to go to the sale. Not to be deterred by the fact that we had left the checkbook at home along with our cattle trailer, David went to the bank and got cash. At the sale we did end up buying a young heifer calf for Levi to show and by then he was caught up in the spirit of the sale and had totally forgotten about Branunvieh cows and wanted to get another Shorthorn to show. We only bought the heifer and David got it worked out for the calf to stay in Columbia until he came back on Thursday to pick it up.

You can see her here in the picture. She was pretty calm in the ring, so hopefully she won't be to difficult to train for showing.

Later that night we had the hamburger and steaks and they were very very good. We also watched the documentary Food, Inc. that Uncle Jeremy brought over. Sunday we went to Grandpa's church and ate breakfast then they had an Easter egg hunt and then Sunday School and church. Afterwards we went to eat at Bob Evans and headed home. It was a busy weekend and we all had a great time.

Columbia Project & other news

Since I've shared with you the trials and tribulations of Levi's massive report on the city of Columbia, I thought I'd let you know the results:

I had told him if he didn't get an A that there would be some discipline involved because I didn't feel like he was trying all that hard. As it turns out, I guess he tried hard enough to end up with a 96%. Looking back over his completed project (as opposed to being embroiled in the middle of it) I think he did a great job, and we're proud of him !

In other news....

We sampled the wild turkey on Sunday night and it tasted pretty good. At Uncle Kevin's suggestion I battered and fried it in strips, so you can't hardly go wrong. It seemed like a good introductory method of sampling the turkey and since it seemed pretty good, we'll probably try more healthy ways of cooking it next. We still have about 12 pounds of boneless breast meat left.

Caleb walked in the door crying this afternoon saying that another boy had "put up his middle finger" at him at recess. He was crying because his teacher told him that they would both have to go the principal's office tomorrow to sort it all out. I assured him that he was just going so he could tell the principal what happened and that he wouldn't be in any trouble. He finally calmed down enough to do his homework - he is very averse to getting in trouble, which is a good thing !

And then there's Clay.....

Clay got in trouble at preschool for smacking other kids on the rear and then kissing them on the cheek. I have no idea what goes on in that head of his ! We had a long discussion of the inappropriateness of smacking other people's hiney's and that if it continued he would get his own hiney smacked.

That's the news for now - more to come later !

Turkey Hunter

Today Uncle Kevin showed up at 5:45am to take Levi turkey hunting. Levi was wide awake and very excited to go. They drove up north about 30 minutes or so to a place Uncle Kevin knew about. At 7am our phone rang and Levi said "Mom, I shot a turkey !!" I thought he was pulling my leg at first, but after a minute or two I could tell he was serious. This was his first successful hunting trip and he was on cloud 9. While Daddy and I were waiting for them to get back, we told Caleb and Clay about the turkey. They decided they would play "turkey hunter" and Clay quickly volunteered, "I'll be the turkey !" He ran around saying "brock, bock bock..." , so Caleb nicely informed him that those were chicken noises and that a turkey says "gobble, gobble, gobble". The hunt ended with Clay being dragged by his ankles across the tile.

After a few pancakes and some coffee, Uncle Kevin and Levi went out to clean the turkey. Mom and Caleb and Clay went out to watch, but Daddy missed out on the fun because he had to go to the baseball work day. Uncle Kevin did most of the hard work, but Levi helped him hold the turkey down and get out some of the guts. He also cut out some of the breast meat.

The turkey weighed a little over 20lbs and had an 11 inch beard. I tried to get Levi to cut off the beard to save as a souvenir, but he wants to save the whole decapitated head and neck. He wanted to nail it to his wall, but Mom had some major reservations about that plan, so at the moment we're kind of at an impasse about what to do. I told him he could keep it in his room until it started stinking and then it had to go. Levi also wants to keep both wings and nail them up as well, so I told him if he could get all the meat off, we might be able to do that. We also have two turkey feet for souvenirs as well. I never dreamed that shooting a turkey would provide a whole new decorating scheme for his room.

It's been an exciting morning. This afternoon, Daddy plans on working on his barn some more and tonight, I guess we'll have wild turkey for supper.