Ups & Downs

Experience is a harder teacher because she gives the tests first, the lesson afterward.

It's been a while since I posted about the farm and I thought "the girls" deserved their turn in the spotlight too.  I mean afterall, I spend roughly 63 hours a week (on a good week) with them and they have become part of my family really.

This past week at the farm has been a little rough.  No, my boss hasn't been giving me a hard time or anything, but as with everything in life, we've had some unexpected things occur there that have left us feeling a bit down.

Sunday morning, during milking, one of our more experienced cows (I talked about her in a previous post), when into labor early and the vet was called in to take a look at her.  It ended up that she was pregnant with twins, and the vet delivered them both alive (two little girls), but because they were so early and weighed only roughly 20 pounds a piece or thereabouts, their little lungs weren't developed good enough and they both died within 30 minutes or so.  I don't like to see that kind of stuff.  I know they are just cows to most people, but I never like to see stuff like that happen, I think you all know why.

Mama cow who had the baby twins :(

So that was the first bad thing this week.

Then we found out Tuesday night, via Facebook, that the high school kid who had been working for us for about a year, has decided "he wants to get out of farming".  I love how he worded that..."get out of farming", makes it sound like he ran the place and was going to make it his future.  So once again, we are short of help at the farm.  Only good thing is, we do have somebody else in the works, so hopefully that turns into something.

About this time, the whole attitude we have is bummed a tad, and then we get to the farm on Wednesday morning, only to find that our bull calf that we have been raising for about 9 to 10 months (Bernie) hung/choked himself to death during the night by getting his head caught in a headlock and he must've panicked and fell once it was stuck.  My heart sank when I found him.

Seriously, he wasn't a baby calf really anymore.  I went with Jeff to pick him up when we bought him from this other farm back in September.  A red and white Holstein bull that we were raising for breeding purposes with a very good bloodline.  He weighed roughly 700 pounds now and he would always let you pet him on the nose, Zach did this almost every time he was at the farm and adored him.  Talk about a kick to the head.  All that work and time we had put into him and something like that happens?

This is a picture of Bernie I had from a few months back when he was much smaller.  Poor guy :(

What lessons I have learned this week around the farm.  The circle of life just keeps turning.  As rewarding as the job can be, at the same time, it can get depressing, as can life.

BUT!!!

That is when I kick myself in the ass, not always but most of the time, and remind myself of the good things and the other blessings I am a part of.  So onto more daily images from around the farm to cheer myself and hopefully you up as I've been a little bit of a Debbie Downer so far.

Here are some of the other babies I have around the farm that call me "Mama".  I swear, sometimes when they moo just the right way when they are hungry it sounds like they are calling me that.  Maybe I'm just losing it completely, but it does to me.

Some of the bigger girl babies I am feeding every day.  They are so sweet.

A familiar scene in the barn anytime food is given to the animals.  I see a lot of animal behinds!!!

One of my new bottle babies.  I love how spotted she is.

Another bottle baby.

Another bottle baby.  I love her nose and eyes.

I have a bunch more I could show you but I'm pretty sure you'd get sick of seeing all of those little calves.

So onto the big mamas and experiences I take part in every day.

This young lady apparently wants to be a cheerleader or something and has a problem with "doing the splits" in the cowyard.  Doing the splits for a cow is not an easy thing to get out of so it's not necessarily something to be proud of.  So...to avoid her doing them too much she has special accomodations in our loose housing area between milkings to avoid showing off in front of her friends.  The soft, fluffy straw housing in there helps to avoid her doing them :)

This is a familiar scene at roughly 4:00 pm every day.  The girls are waiting to come into the barn to be milked.  And yes, most of the cows will come up on their own at that given time as they "know the routine".

Some of the girls getting their last bite of "grub" before heading into the barn for milking time.  I think they are giving me the evil eye or something?

Everytime this cow comes down the aisle I crack up.  Her marking on the top of her forehead looks like a bow to me so I can always spot her as it looks like she is wearing a bow in her hair.

And next is the cow I affectionately call the "Grandma" cow when talking to the kids.  She is one of the oldest cows in the barn and doesn't get around the best.  She also has special accomodations in the loose housing barn most of the time or the other younger cows push her around out in the cowyard (big bullies!).  I found out her real name is Mandy.  Pretty name for such a docile and easy going cow, heh?

And the last girl I'm going to introduce you to is one of our "newbies".  She just started being milked about 1 1/2 months ago and I took to her right away because of her face.  Another farmer I know, when I made the comment that she had such a precious face, said they "all look the same", and I disagreed right away.  I think they all look a lot different.  The combination of their markings and personality and the sensitivity you can detect in their eyes makes each one of them different.  This particular one stands out to me because of how black her face is and then you get the white in her chest for the contrast.  Like I said, I think she is pretty darn sweet and distinct looking.

So yeah.  I hope the next week is better at the farm and we aren't hit with anymore surprises like this week.  Seriously though, I still wouldn't trade it.

I visited briefly with some co-workers at my old job earlier this week.  I would've liked to visit longer but I had Luke along and he was tearing up the joint.  But I can tell you, although I love and miss a lot of the people I met there, I didn't walk out of those doors wishing I could go back.  I think I made a good move.

God Bless!!!

Small Town Living

The nice thing about living in a small town is that when you don't know what you're doing, someone else does.  Anonymous

Truthfully that has got to be one of my favorite quotes ever and I think it's because it is both funny and has a lot of truth to it.

I have lived in a small town with an actual water tower for many years now and grew up out in the country near some almost nonexisistent little towns as a child and there is no doubt that everybody knows everybody and what comes along with that is that everybody "thinks" they know everything about everyone.  I smiled and giggled just thinking about how the rumor mills fly in our small town and how some people would literally have nothing to do and wouldn't know which way to turn if they didn't have their local gossip to spread about.  Sad really.

Gosh, I don't think I can count on both of my hands how many times over the years that I have likely been the subject of one of these stories, and I often think it would be real fun to be a fly on the wall when people are talking about me so I can hear everything and see how falsified the story really is.  I'm not quite sure why certain people get off on this kind of bullshit really.  And why they have to be so childish when they are grown adults and dish out information to others that isn't even true 80% of the time (percentage is just a guess of course), but I choose not to be a part of it.  Another reason why I left the corporate world, where rumors are as common as changing your underwear, and have recently turned into somewhat of a hermit.  I just don't need that kind of stuff in my life and don't see a reason to hurt somebody else by talking about them.  I'm better than that.

This by far is one of the biggest downfalls to living in a small town BUT at the same time there are a lot of advantages to living in a small town as well and the boys and I took time today to experience small town living.

Samantha has left us all for the week to travel to Washington DC and Virginia through a school trip opportunity and it's been just me and the boys.  Yesterday was spent grocery shopping and running to the White House of Music to pick up an Alto Saxophone rental (not cheap by the way) for Zachary as he has decided he wants to take band in summer school and next school year and try this out.  We'll see how that goes?  Wish me luck. 

Well today, after getting some things accomplished around the house the boys and I and Lucy the dog took a walk to our local drugstore, Burmeschs, to get a Slushie (or Hushie as Luke would call it), a glass bottle of Coke for Zach and an ice cream cone for Mom.

Zach and Luke on the way to Burmeschs for our "goodies".

Lucy watching the window at Burmeschs to see where her boys went?

The boys enjoying their purchases.

Oh the trip back had it's moments as the boys kept competing for first place on the ride home and Luke kept getting ticked off that Zach was passing him up and "winning".  Meanwhile I am carrying my ice cream cone, Luke's Slushie and trying to walk the dog who keeps stopping to smell things while monitoring the situation ahead of me.  I wanted to drink heavily by the time we got home.

But once again, it was at that moment when I decided that once again I was blessed.  I felt lucky to live in a small town where I can go for these crazy walks with my boys on a daily basis if I want and not have to worry about crime and being safe.

Blessed that I wasn't in the office at my old job all day while my kids were on summer vacation and that I could spend this extra time with them when they are home now.

Blessed that although I live in a town where everybody knows everybody's business it is a small enough town that I also know who to keep my kids away from and chances are for the most part I know all of the parents of the kids my children are going to school with.

I don't wish to live in some big Metropolis.  If I choose, I can visit Milwaukee anytime I want and enjoy the "big city life" at that time.

You take the good with the bad in pretty much everything you do in life and you learn to accept them both.

The boys are getting along now (I won't say that out loud).  Once again, that is also a blessing :)

Oh Can Boys Keep You Hopping!!!

Mothers of little boys work from son up till son down!
-- Author Unknown

Oh Boy!!!  It has been one heck of a week.  So frantic and crazy at times that I'm not quite sure where to start?

I do know that I am one tired Mommy and you can thank my two crazy boys for a lot of this.

My week has been filled with one trip to the Emergency Room, way too many stressful situations trying to control my 3 1/2 year old son, baseball practices, games and a tournament and many interesting conversations about puberty with my 10 year old son.  Nice!

I'll start with the scare we had early last week.  Luke almost always comes along with us to the farm every afternoon.  Sometimes the other two kids end up there as well after school and they keep an eye on him and hang out with him to keep him out of places he shouldn't be while Jeff and I do our chores.  On this particular day however they both had activities after school and couldn't be there so he was hanging out with us.  He was with Jeff at the time and Jeff had just turned on the roller mill to roll some corn for the cowies.  Jeff had just told Luke to stay away and he had moved back a bit, but he apparenlty was acting goofy and lost his balance/footing and when he fell he fell towards the belt/pully area portion of the roller mill sending his right hand into the belt and over the pully, all the way around and back out again, landing him with a bigh thump on the ground and a lot of screaming.  Jeff came flying into the barn with him in his arms and within minutes I was on my way to the ER.  Thankfully there wasn't any major cuts or anything but there was immediate swelling of his entire hand which eventually led to Xrays and thankfully negative results.

It was scary.  I dislike trips to the ER with my children.  I think the most painful thing any Mother can endure (or Father as Jeff was worse than I was) is to see their child in pain and feel as if you didn't do your job to protect them.

Luke was a toughy though and had actually stopped crying shortly after we left the farm to head to the hospital.  He smiled at the hospital and even told me he wasn't going to do this ever again on the drive there.

I stopped and counted my blessings many times over since then.  It could've been a lot worse and I won't even go into details about it.  Let's just say we are lucky, very lucky.  It took a few days for him to start using that hand again, but all is back to normal now for the most part.

One would think that an injury like this would make this little guy slow down a tad but apparently it doesn't.  Luke was still full of piss and vinegar and pushing all of my buttons on a daily basis.

An example of one of the things Luke likes to do to Mom at least once a week.

Most of the time throughout the week I am home alone with him.  And I get home from the farm and one of the things I have to do almost immediately is take a shower as I am quite smelly.  Well, he thinks it is really funny to unlock the door and take rides on his bike, 4 wheeler or whatever down the sidewalk and almost to the corner intersection while I am in the shower.  So I get done with my shower, peek around the corner to check on him and then he isn't there.  So, I quick throw some clothes on and look out the window and lately I have been chasing him down with my Ford Explorer so I can catch up to the little shit.  Seriously!!!  He's quick!!!

It's always an adventure with boys.  Which leads me to my next story.

So Zach, our 10 year old, has been learning about puberty in school all week.  The girls are taught in a separate room from the boys and by a female teacher and the boys have a male teacher. 

The first day he came home and decided to talk about it and the first thing out of his mouth went something like this, "So yeah Mom, guess what I got to learn about today in puberty class?"  Said with a little sarcasm of course.

To which I replied (a little nervously of course but curious at the same time), "What?"

"All the parts of the penis, oh yeah," he stated with a smirk on his face.

At this point all I really did was raise my eyebrows a bit with a quizzical look on my face and said, "Okay.  That's interesting."

"Sure is," he said and he walked away.  Apparently that was my clue that the conversation was now over.  It cracked me up.  I know Samantha had these same classes a few years earlier but she never came home and really mentioned much about them to me.

The next day comes, Zach gets home from school and I am done with work and that leisurely time of the night comes and Zach says to me.

"Soooo, guess what we learned about today." 

"Hmmm?" I say, "No clue."  Playing dumb.

"Sperm and eggs and how they come together to make babies!"  More sarcasm of course.

My eyes lit up at this I'll admit so I responded with, "Did your teacher tell you that these sperm and eggs can't come together to make babies until AFTER you're married?"

"No!" he says.  "Our teacher said that this can happen after you have gone through puberty?"

To which I corrected him by saying, "Oh no, he was wrong.  You have to go through puberty AND be married for this to happen.  It's a rule.  Your teacher must've forgot the married part."  Ha ha.

He then left the room with a puzzled look on his face.  Oh brother!  This will get more interesting in the next few years I'm sure.  He already had a magnifying glass out (not really but close) looking for signs of the "changes" he will be going through. 

Truthfully there is never a dull moment in my life.  Not anywhere close to dull.  I can't imagine the last time it was.  But with that said, I wouldn't have it any other way.  I adore my boys and they keep me young.

I hope all of you have a great week and never have any dull moments either.

Weekend Adventures

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. ~Barbara Bush

What a gorgeous last few days.  Sure, we had a little much needed rain here and there, but for the most part the weather was spectacular for me.  Not overly hot, but tolerable heat, and heat that made all of us want to get out and explore a little more and take advantage of.

And despite being a full time farmer now, and not usually knowing the difference between a Monday and a Saturday as we work every day of the week, for some reason it did seem like an extended weekend to me anyway.  I'm sure that was because the two big kids were off of school Friday and again today and having their presence around the house made it "different".  A LOT LOUDER but different.

To anybody who knows me, my kids are my world, and despite the fact that I am a lot of times dragging butt by roughly noon or thereabouts from getting up so early I made a point of spending some extra time with them this weekend while they were off of school and doing some things together. 

Jeff has been busy at the farm doing field work that he hasn't taught me how to do yet (notice I said yet), so we planned some of our days around bringing him lunch to the field.  And it is a given that anytime we bring lunch to the field you can expect us to have to hang around for a little bit so Luke can get a tractor ride for a little while.  But you know what?  It is worth it to see the look on his face every time he is sitting in Daddy's lap on that tractor.  His smile is ginormous!!!

So what did we do for entertainment?  Well, we found some real cheap entertainment within walking distance from our house (although we chose to drive down there this time), we headed to the lake!!!

I know a lot of people rip on the lake and how dirty it is and what not, but I don't care, I think we are very lucky to have this so close by and to be able to just walk or ride bikes down there on any given day to break up the monotany of our daily routine.

Zach and Luke took advantage of the gorgeous weather immediately and didn't waste any time getting into the water.  I am not a water person really and would much rather hang out on the beach and just "observe" and relax a little.

Sam's idea of being at the beach is text messaging the entire time, but isn't that what every 14 year old girl thinks she needs to be doing these days?!  Ugh! 

In-between texting her and I did manage to have some good conversation so I suppose it wasn't all that bad.

I love to sit back and watch my boys interact with each other.  Even though they do fight occasionally, it is obvious that little Luke really looks up to his big brother and just loves to hang out with him.

And Zach was a gracious big brother and let Luke (with the help of Mom) bury him in the sand.  Luke thought that was cool as all heck!!!

It was nice.  We went early before it got too hot and before it got too busy with people.  It's a lot easier to keep track of your kids when the beach and water is emptier.

I dipped my feet in the sand and the water.  It seemed cold so that was all the farther I ventured.

Instead I decided to sit back, relax and take in all the sights around me.

Sorry...I just couldn't help it :)

I hope all of you are having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend and wanted to end this by giving a shout out to all of our service men and women who are serving or have served for our country.  The sacrifices you have made for our country are unbelievable and for that I am extremely grateful.  God Bless every single one of you always!!!

Exhausted by Blessings

Count your blessings.
Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with grace, strength, courage, and confidence.
Og Mandino

Wow!  I am E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D to say the least.  What a crazy weekend!!!  I don't know that I can possibly remember every detail of this weekend, but I can tell by the way my body feels and how my energy level is dragging that I obviously had a busy one.

I can also say, as I sit here typing this, while hearing my 3 1/2 year old grunting on the toilet roughly 10 feet away, that I had one of those weekends where I felt extremely blessed although there were moments of stress as well.

Saturday morning started with chores at the farm and then I rushed out to get home and take Zach to his soccer game in town, my Mom had already left with Sam for hers in Elkhart Lake.  Thank goodness I have mastered putting my hair back in a cute little pony tail twist thinger or I would never get to any of these events on time.

Zach had a good game, they won 2-0, but of course when he scored his goal of the game I was on a long walk to the porta potty at the soccer field with Luke and missed it.  Never fails.

Immediately after the game the boys and I headed home, Sam was dropped off soon after by my Mom and after they showered from their soccer games we headed off to run some errands.  Today was not one of our better days when it came to running errands with Luke.  He had me a tad ticked off before we even ate our lunch at the Pizza Ranch, but thanks to the help of the other two kids we managed to calm him down and Mom down and went on our merry way.

Next we ventured to the Hobby Lobby to pick up craft "stuff" to make a school project for Zach this weekend (like we needed anything else to do right?).  As my day would have it, they didn't have everything I wanted to make his project so we are now going to improvise and make do with what we found instead.  Sounds a lot like the story of life if you ask me.

At this point, I seriously was losing my patience with this defiant son of mine and nixed even attempting to go grocery shopping with him for fear I may completely lose it in front of a million people and well, we just know that wouldn't be good.  So we headed home for a little while and then headed to the farm for evening chores.  Didn't finally stop moving and sit down until darn near 10 pm Saturday night.  Ugh!

Bring on Sunday's plans....

Our first born, Samantha Joyce, was confirmed today at our church.  The same church she was baptized at 14 years ago when I was a newby to the whole motherhood thing and had so many life experiences to take part in yet.  It honestly seemed like this day was so far away a few years ago but all of a sudden it is now here and gone.

I confess, I sat back and watched her while taking pictures, along with her friend Treylee that she has grown up with at our church, and my heart was filled with a sense of pride and I gave myself a little pat on the back for how she has turned out so far, at the same time there was a part of me that was sad inside.  Sad that she is so grown up already, sad that I can't hold her in my arms and rock her to sleep anymore, sad that in a few short years she will move on with her adult life and possibly never look back.  Tears are building up in my eyes while I type this.

During the ceremony at church her parents, her Grandmas, her Godparents, her mentor from church, the boys (I left Luke in the church nursery for this process) were invited up front to say some prayers with her and we all had to place a hand on her somewhere, and I had tears in my eyes, tears of joy and a little of sadness too.

Where did my sweet little baby girl go?  She certainly can't be this old already can she?  Time just flies by way too fast and before you know it, well, it's gone.  Man, a person really needs to take advantage of every single opportunity they can and savor it, treasure it and if you can hold it forever.  You really can't get these kinds of things back.

So when my kids climb into bed with me (Luke still almost always sleeps in our bed with us), I don't ever kick them out.  There will come a time, and I've seen this with Sam and Zach already, when they won't ever do that anymore, and I'm going to keep them close to me as long as I can.

I end this by saying I am so proud of Samantha and the person she has become.  She has made many of us so proud.  And at the ripe old age of 14 I honestly think she is more strong in her faith and has a better relationship with God than most adults do.

Today was a good day.  This weekend was a good weekend.  I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I'm still exhausted, but it's a good exhausted and I can live with that.  May all of you be exhausted by blessings too.

Hidden Treasures

Motherhood brings as much joy as ever, but it still brings boredom, exhaustion, and sorrow too. Nothing else ever will make you as happy or as sad, as proud or as tired, for nothing is quite as hard as helping a person develop his own individuality especially while you struggle to keep your own. -- Marguerite Kelly and Elia Parsons

What a gorgeous day it is outside today.  The sun is shining, there is a nice steady breeze and I am making sure to take all of it in and reflect while watching my little man play in the sand.

Mother's Day is just around the corner and quite honestly, it is hard for me to believe that I have worn the title of "Mother" for 14 years already.  It hasn't been easy, that's for sure.  But at the same time it has been by far the most rewarding and most important title I will EVER have.

I think about all of the cute experiences I have had the pleasure of experiencing and retelling over the years with each of my children and the conversations we have shared.  The singing, the dancing, the storytelling, the vacations, the school projects, the sports they have participated in, the talent shows they have been in and all of the good times.

For example, the time my dear little Samantha, at the ripe old age of 4'ish asked me the following:

"Mom."

"Yes dear," I replied.

She continued, "Why do I only have one mouth?"

To which I replied, "Excuse me?"  As I thought I misheard the question.

"Why do I only have one mouth?!" she asked again.

To which I replied, "Well how many do you think you need?"

"Three!!!"  she exclaimed.

"Three?"  I said.  "Oh Lord know.  You drive me crazy with the one you have."  I stated with a smile on my face.

I mean seriously.  Where and why would she even ask something like that?  It's not like she saw other people walking down the street with three and she thought she got ripped off or something right?  I'll never forget it.

Being a Mom brings all kinds of hidden treasures on a daily basis.  Some maybe not the kind of treasures you may really want to find.  Like the stain in your rug, the marker on your wall, or the phone call from the school principal (we've experienced all of these through the years).

I did find some cute hidden treasures this morning when doing my laundry however.  When opening the clothes chute and taking various things out of it underneath the pile of laundry were these.  I think I know who happened to put them in there and it made me smile instantly.

Our dog's toy football

A toy baseball

A toy basketball with an empty paper toweling roll in background

An empty milk container

So, after finding these wonderful surprises Luke and I headed outside for our daily walk to Burmeschs for an ice cream cone and then headed next door to the park for a while.  Oh sure, I could've been doing other things in the house as the good Lord knows I never seem to get caught up around here but seriously, what's more important?  A spotless house or spending time with my kids and letting them explore and enjoy the beauty surrounding us.

While observing this innocent little guy just entertaining himself in the sand I thought about other stories of the past with my kids and felt very blessed.  I have three healthy kids, knock on wood.  Three smart kids.  Three individual kids who are different in their own ways but alike in others, and I think that's cool as all heck as I have always taught them to be who they are no matter what other people may think of them.  Dress the way you feel comfortable (within reason of course), be friends with the people the most like you no matter if they aren't the "popular" or "cool" people necessarily, and fight for your dreams and yourself no matter what.  I hope they realize, I think they do, how hard that may be at times but how important it really is. 

And most important, to treat others and themselves as God would want them and expect them to as he truly is the ultimate judge.

Which brings me to the last cute story.

Truth be told, our two older kids have seen the Jackass movies.  I do use the remote to skip certain scenes however that obviously aren't appropriate but apparently they left a mark on our son, Zachary.

A few years back, him and I had a deep conversation about heaven and hell.  And after losing both his grandpas and baby brother he decided his ultimate goal would be to do what God wanted and be a good person (he does struggle with this occasionally) so that he could go to Heaven when he died and see them all again.  We talked pretty in depth about this for quite a while when he was in the bathtub and I was sitting on the toilet (fully clothed) talking to him.  After this conversation he paused for a short while and said:

"Hey Mom.  I bet those guys from Jackass aren't going to Heaven, heh?"

To all you Mommies out there, Happy Mother's Day on Sunday.  You all deserve it.  It is the toughest job in the world!!!  And may God bless you with many more hidden treasures every single day to come.