Best Morning ... Ever!

I received a text that asked if I could watch Logan for a couple of hours while mom took a nap. 

Let me explain something. Mom works from her home office teaching English to Chinese students via the internet. She works up lesson plans and works with so many students

She had an overnight presentation [I'm sure that I am not getting the details right] and was wondering if I could spend a bit of time with Logan while she took a power nap to compensate.

I jumped at the chance and texted back "YES!"

Logan is 5 and full of surprises. I had some pumpkin projects to do and said that we could paint pumpkins and decorate them.

I went downstairs and retrieved the wooden blocks I'd saved from the house remodel. I'd sanded and painted them just for the purpose of having little people come to the house and building with them. I've got very fond memories of my children playing with blocks from my mother's house that she and dad built....and memories of playing with a box of odd wooden pieces that my Grandparents put together from the building of their house.

I dug out some acrylic paints and a few tiny pumpkins.

As a second thought, I gathered all of my acquired toys in a basket and brought them downstairs too. Many of the toys were those that Logan had given me over the past two years to 'play' with and take home when I'd watched him at his house.

I was ready when I got the text: "We are on our way."

Pumpkin painting is serious stuff when your pumpkin needs to be black.

While the black pumpkin dried enough to tip over and get painted on the bottom, Logan decided to use some red paint and then red glitter glue to decorate the second pumpkin.

While the projects did some more drying we decided to explore the blocks and toys.

And I learned how to build a proper castle.

And we filled it with Dinosaurs, donkeys, skunks, My Little Ponies and trolls. However the Soldiers were the favorites.

Charlie inspects the toy basket and then sits on the couch to watch...

And a huge battle ensued.

Toys got waylaid all over the living room floor. The castle seemed to get blown up from the sound effects...

And we went back to the kitchen to check on the pumpkins while the toys recovered...

This is a proper 'scarey' pumpkin with red diamond eyes, nose and mouth.

After Logan returned home and I came back from walking with him, my husband quipped:

It is a good thing you have someone your OWN age to play with.

I grinned. I had such a good morning with Logan! Rich enjoyed watching and talking with Logan.

See?

Best

morning

Ever!

I hope we get to play again. 

We love company!

Saturday morning was very busy, we had the Tesar farriers at our place doing 5 trims.  I am happy to report that Siera's frog issues are almost resolved and she is nearly back to 100%. 

Of course Dan's recommendation is that she get more exercise.  I am very happy with that!  I even planned on riding her in a One Mule Parade on Memorial Day but that didn't happen.

I nabbed this shot of Danny trimming Sundance.  She gave him a bit of grief but I think some of her irritation was due to the fact that she was in heat.

Girls!

I'll be making an 8X10 for Danny out of this shot.  He liked it and so did his father, Dan.

After the trimming was done, I showered and decided to sit on the new 'porch'  and relax by sanding some blocks I'd picked up from the construction crew.

I had finished gluing the scrap table and it was drying.
I had a small box of blocks already hand sanded and thought I'd just sit and watch the animals and listen to the birds and do some more.

A van pulled down into our hollow and stopped far back where we had parked our vehicles to stay out of the mud and construction mess.

I stood up and tried to see if it was just a wrong turn or someone lost. That does occasionally happen around here. 
I thought I recognized the woman getting out of the van, but still...

Then Morris saw people and off he went at a dead run.  It dawned on me who was in the van and I couldn't believe it.
For them to come visit, they would have had to drive at least 8 hrs from the northwest corner of Missouri.

I kicked off my flip flops and began to run like Morris to greet our long time non-biological 'daughter' and son in law. [We sort of like to think we adopted each other over the past 20 years.]

Jesse said he heard me let out a soft curse and then saw me run like the dickens.  I ran up to Kristi and Jesse and threw my arms around them.

Kristi held Gunner and said, "Good, I hoped you guys were home, we wanted to surprise you!"
Oh they did!

When we got to the house, I took Gannon's hand and asked if he'd like to go wake up Rich.  He did.
Rich had laid down for his afternoon nap and talk about not believing his eyes when he opened them and found Gannon in the bedroom.

When we sat down in the living room after a construction tour, I brought out the newly sanded blocks and gave them to the boys.

Wooden blocks and tiny cars = happy little boys.  I sat back rather proudly and proclaimed, "Hey, my blocks work!"

Everyone got a pretty good laugh out of that.
We eventually moved outside and let the kids play.

I think Rich's face shows how much he enjoyed the visit.

Jesse and Kristi had rented a motel room so they wouldn't impose on our house that was in upheaval. They promised to come back Sunday.

When I got home from work on Sunday they were there, the kids were playing under the Hickory tree and the adults were visiting and supervising.

I think the 4 wheeler parked in the yard was the main attraction.

We visited and did the evening chores, Gannon helped Rich throw flakes of hay to the mules and we decided to go out to eat.

We ended up eating at Culver's in Viroqua. We had hugs and hugs all around in the parking lot before they went back to their motel.

They stopped by in the morning to say goodbye.

I sure do enjoy it when company comes and so does Rich.  It didn't matter that our house was torn apart or that our yard was in need of a mowing. 
We stopped what we were doing [well, I still had to go to work] and enjoyed the visit.

Jesse and Kristi also had the forethought to get a room in town. Last year they stayed with us for a few days and that was pre-construction and Gunner was only a week old.

What a difference a year makes!

What can I say? Rich loves company, he loves it when we get visitors.
Of course I do too.

Let it go...

This week has been one of a bit of stress.  

Monday was busy with deliveries for the remodel and I had to go re-qualify at the Range for the year. 
Re-quals are very stressful.  You have so many seconds to shoot a silhouette target at different ranges.

Firing a Glock and a Shotgun while being timed is...well, let's just call it what it is.  A real brain drain.

So Tuesday I woke up and decided that after all that was going on, I was going to de-stress myself.  I decided to pick a project and attack it with some gusto.

So I talked with our neighbor and asked if I could dig things up around our mailboxes and see if we could have a small flower garden there.  She liked the idea.  I drove to the ridge and proceeded to spend most of the afternoon cleaning up an area and planting seeds.

I'll know in about 14 days how well the older seeds did and if the garden is a flop because of the shade, I'll get a flat of begonias which would do very well there.

I put the red mulch around the area to mark it.  Both of our husbands have just mowed through here so I wanted to make it clear that there was something besides roadside weeds around the mailboxes.

I pulled poison ivy and dug up as much wild parsnip as possible.  I showed our neighbor what the poison ivy looked like and will walk her wood trails with her to see if any is growing where the kids can get into it.  
I found this little plant in the mailbox garden and have not figured out what it is yet?

Anyone with any idea?

That is my gloved hand next to the plant.  I have seen this before but cannot for the life of me figure out where!

Anyway after working on the garden area I went back home and put my tools away.  

My old house is fading away.  It was nice though to have the basement covered now and be able to come through the old entrance.

Still feeling restless, I decided to take a small walk through the woods.  I found one trillium that was already blossoming.  

Mental note, ... I would love to hike to the 'back valley' and see the hillside of Trillium!

I stopped by the Hawthorne Tree and admired its leaves and flowers. It seems it is nearly done flowering, as the blossoms are fading.

Yesterday was another day full of activity.  
The crew came and worked on the house.  Rich and I went to town so he could get his 'annual' haircut and then I took him out for ice cream.

It was nice to get away from the sawdust and the pounding.  

After the crew left I went to sort out blocks of wood.  I had asked the contractor not to toss the chunks in the dumpster.  I'd sort through the wood and give some to my neighbor who has a wood cook stove.

I had ideas for some of the other chunks.
When I was a child we had a box of wooden blocks that my Grandmother had carefully sanded.  It was left over wood chunks that had come from her house when it was built.
I have fond memories of playing with those blocks for hours on end.

My mother did the same thing for her grand children when she built her house.

And...

Well, not all my grand children are small nor would they find blocks fun to play with.  But I've also thought of some other fun things I can do with the blocks.

Paint, stain, stencils...I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do, but sanding and listening to the the orioles sing in the trees above me last night was very relaxing.

I know this is kind of 'kitschy' but I thought it might make a cute project to do.

I am thinking more of something along the line of using each block to make a letter of our last name...or something else neat.

I really like this idea from 'diddle dumpling', on how to make a wooden 'vintage' sign using an ink jet printer!