Wyoming, cousins and what's important.....

It was a nice, short weekend to be able to go to Wyoming last week. We left Wednesday, and drove back Sunday. It's 720 miles each way. We have driven this trip so many many times the last 20 years that we finally have it down to where we stop for gas and to eat, and it usually works like clockwork. It's usually not too bad if you leave at 5:00 am, you get to Wyoming at 5:00 pm. Long day, but manageable.  And so much cheaper than flying.  I do miss this, though. You definitely don't get to see this in the middle of Iowa!

This time, however, was a teensy bit different. To start off with, my dog, Tai, has epilepsy. He has to take meds twice a day, every day to (hopefully) keep him from doing his "stevie wonder dance". He thinks flies are flying around his head and has fits trying to bite them. We also give him Valium sometimes in between to fend off the fits that come between the daily meds. Whenever we travel he gets worse, but he's even worse if he's at home in the kennel. So we had to take him. We had to give him two Valium on the trip out. (only 1 on the way back, maybe he knew we were going home!)Then you put a 4 month old baby in a car for a long drive. Then you top it off with a (actually very well behaved on the trip) Chihuahua who Tai doesn't care for.  And then you put Sarah in the car. She just got off a 12 hour shift at the ER and had had no sleep. Then you put us all in a Tahoe for a 12 (at least) hour drive! We couldn't leave until 8:00 am. To say the least, the trip out was a bit long. It took us almost 14 hours, and it usually only takes 12. I just wanted to snap my fingers and wish I was already there, but sadly it didn't work.  I usually drive when we go to Wyoming and it's fine, but this day I was wishing I wasn't doing all the driving.

But it really was nice when we got there. I got to see new babies of two of my cousins, and everyone got to see Ava. Mandy's baby McCoy is so all boy. He is 10 months old and just loved Ava's toys and Ava as well. He's a big guy, just like Matt was. I'm not sure that either of the girls thought too much of him yet, though, although he had a great time!

I think Mandy's older kids, Markie and Mason really wanted a little sister, as well as a little brother. (anymore on the way Mandy?) Markie just packed Ava around everywhere we went.

My other cousin Jamie has a girl Jacie, who is 6 months old. She was very quiet. She's a big girl, too, and very laid back. Except when McCoy decided to check her out.  Then she didn't really care for that. Keep it up Jacie. Boys are bad!

Even Uncle Blake got in on the act, although not by choice. I just plopped Ava on him and he didn't have a chance. She was happy to see him, though. 

Aunt Susie made her laugh and giggle like crazy. Maybe it was the new boots she bought? I think Ava is just telling Susie that she liked them.

But the best one to get to see her again was Great Grandma Pat. It was nice that Ava is older now and able to laugh and smile and interact. It makes it better to be able to see that, especially since we are so many miles apart.  Ava found out that she can ALMOST grab what she wants while we were in Wyoming. It was fun to see her try to find her feet, and to see Great Grandma help her.

Overall it was a great weekend.It was nice to see everyone and let everyone see Ava.  There are some other things going on right now, that I'm not going to get into, but I just want everyone to make sure and cherish your family because you never know if they are always going to be there or not. And you do not want to be wondering "what if only....".

Trick or Treat!

Since we don't live in town, we obviously do not get trick or treaters. And this year there  was a special one that we really wanted to see, but the only way to do that was to go to CF (her mom said it was TOO far to go to bring her to us!) This actually didn't work out too bad, though because Lauren loves to hand out candy and Joe ditched her to spend the weekend with Matt and Matt in DSM, so we kept her company.

She had the walk and porch ready...

and the dogs in costumes. This is Violet, I missed a picture of Clover in his Broncos shirt.

There were over 75 kids that came. (she said this was a record for the last 3 years that they have lived in the house.....I'm not telling how she knew that, and I'm not going to post the photo I took to prove it, either!)  Love ya Lauren!

But the cutest one by far was the giraffe that visited at the end.

 

To be fair about the dogs in costumes, I did do that with Roxie last year (she's a bit too grumpy now to mess with that). I know, pretty silly, but oh well. 

 

Tai doesn' t really need a costume, he pretty much always looks like a freak. Although he's a very loveable freak.

They're back....

I like the fall. It's usually a nice relief from the heat and humidity of the Iowa summers and it just seems slower for some reason. (Maybe that's because the kids are out of the house now and we don't have football or cross-country to deal with anymore). I don't like the winter, and do not look forward to the snow and ice, but fall is nice. Maybe we can just go right into Spring? The thing it HATE about fall are the lady bugs, or more specifically the "Asian Beetles" that we get in our area. For those of you in Iowa that live in town, you kind of get what I'm talking about. For those of you that live out of town, you REALLY know what I'm talking about.

From what I read, they may have been accidentally brought to the US on a ship in the late 1980's. You see them on the first warm day after the first frost. Monday must have been that day. They usually stay in the corn and soybean fields, but now that the farmers are in full harvest, they start flying.   It was very warm and sunny and they decided that our porch and side of the house was the best place to be for the day!  Al called me at work and said they were so bad outside that they were even bothering the dogs (although, to be honest, any bug is going to bother Tai anyway).

There had to be thousands and thousands of them. They were crawling on everything. We spray around the windows, doors and everything twice a year, and it does kill them, but they just keep coming and keep coming.

They don't actually sting, but every now and then when one lands on you, they will bite. And they stink. The whole porch smells. I can't really tell you what it smells like, but it's terrible.  They must taste bad, because even the chickens won't eat them. Every sq. ft. of the porch has at least 15 or more, calculate that by 1,000 sq. ft.! And this is just one porch. When you really get to thinking about that, you can't even count how many there are in the area.

And the worse part is, you vacuum them all up, the next day you just get to do it again.  And the next day and the next day until finally it gets cold enough and they go wherever it is they go!

 

I'm ready for them to leave already!

Family.....

It has been years since we took an actual "family" pictures. I guess it's better late than never, right? Some of you have already seen these, for the rest of you.....enjoy! They were all taken at the park, seemed like the obvious place since we have been here for 17 years now! If you click on the picture, you can see them a bit better.

I love the look on Joe & Matt's faces in this one...

The kids: Joe, Sarah, Matt

Joe and Lauren

Morgan, Craig, Ava and Sarah

We have 6 dogs between everyone, so might as well try to include them in the family pics as well, right? These actually turned out pretty good, although Roxie (the Basenji on Al's lap) wasn't too happy with the whole situation, everyone else did pretty good!

 

I just love these of Sarah and Ava:

Baby it's cold outside.....

This weekend was the annual Hickory Hills Halloween Outing. We have had this celebration for 5 years now, and it's always been wonderful temperature-wise. Usually this time of year we are dealing with the "autumn beetle" (looks like a lady bug, it invades Iowa every fall when the farmer's harvest: I will write more on that when we actually have them invade us!) and the temps are usually pretty comfortable, sometimes even a bit warm (hot). This year it was unseasonably cold. No autumn beetles (which is a good thing), and sadly the trees are already losing their leaves, so probably not much of a color show this year.

So, back to the Halloween outing....This is usually the only weekend that the campground is completely full. People make their reservations early in the year to be able to have the perfect spot for this weekend. Everyone decorates their campsites festively, they have a costume contest, a haunted house and everyone just gets in the Halloween mood.  Especially since it's probably the last campout for most of them.

This year it was sooooo cold, though. The temps Friday were around 55 and the high for Saturday was a balmy 45 or so. And of course, you have to have the wind. The sun did peak out every now and then, but the best place to be was as close to the campfire as possible.....preferably with an alcoholic beverage in hand. Al had to run around and tell everyone to disconnect their water from their campers, as the low last night was only 20 degrees.  And there were actually a couple pop-ups even. That had to be a bit miserable in my opinion.  (Even though we had our camper in the campground, we didn't sleep in it for two reasons: the furnace quit last week. (brand new camper, who can figure?) and why would you sleep in a frozen camper when your house and king bed is only 1/4 mile away?) It's nice to have it there for the bathroom and as a place to put the dogs when they get cranky, but I'm not going to sleep there when my own bed is so close.....

But surprisingly, the campground was almost full (maybe 4 sites empty) and I think everyone had a great time. There were noticeably less kids Trick-or-Treating, but overall it was a good time.  This is Danielle, Colby and Kennedy. Danielle is a volleyball friend of mine that came out last year, had a great time and couldn't wait to reserve for this year. (sorry it was so cold this year! I PROMISE next year will be better!) Nice costume Danielle!

This is Dave, Ann, Dawson and Macie. They won the group contest: Buzz Lightyear, Woody and the whole gang. (Ann actually borrowed Al's Carharts! She had to have LOTS of pillows for stuffing, there is a BIT of a size difference)

Overall, I think it turned out pretty good in spite of the weather. The kids all had a great time and didn't seem to mind the cold as much as the adults. Although it was pretty quiet pretty early in the evening.  And I was sooooo glad to get back to the house with the woodstove roaring. I'm really not ready for winter or the cold. Maybe I'm just ready to go south, you think?

We have eggs!

Okay....to set this up.....in April for some unknown reason I decided I wanted some chickens. We have the space, we had the building, and the chickens were cheap. Who knows why, but we got them. We painted the building, built the fence and the rest is history. We started with 17, then 9, now 8 (last week some unknown critter got one. All we found were feathers!). The many roosters we gave away (ok...two are in the freezer, but the rest we gave away!), we only have two left to wake us up at 5:30 every morning. Truth be told we thought we were down to only one rooster, but all of a sudden another one started making noise, now I can't get rid of him.

They are so tame now that they actually think they need to be near us in the house! The dogs have no problem with them at all, Tai likes to chase a little bit, Roxie just walks right on by.

Supposedly when the roosters are at the age to start crowing, the hens will be at the age to start laying eggs. Well, the roosters have been crowing for at least 2 months now, and no eggs. Until Tuesday.... 2 eggs! Okay, to be fair....one egg is really the size of 1/2 a regular egg and they are funky colors (kind of blue and brown), but we actually finally have eggs! We had two more today.   The two on the right are our chicken's eggs, the one on the left is a regular store-bought egg. Not much of a meal, but whatever. I don't know what we will do with them come winter or how long we will keep them, but for now I am enjoying my chickens. 

(don't look at my burnt countertop....didn't notice it until I posted it here. That's a whole 'nother story!) And what's the deal with my weird hand?

TTFN!

I had a visitor today.....

.... and she even smiled!