OTD and the fish tank...

OTD, 18 months, is at a very fun age. This is probably my favorite age. With that said, he sure gets into a lot! i have found him 3 shelves up on the book case and last week while i was helping ATD with some summer school work, OTD discovered that the fish tank had a small hole where the filter went into the top. Next thing I knew, he had about 20 toys in the fish tank. I didn't think it was real funny at the time...just more work for mommy. After cleaning out all the toys and empiting the fish tank (the last fish had died eariler in the week), I wish I had taken a picture. I asked Tom why he didn't remind me, and he said there was no talking to me at the time. I think it might be the hormones!!

i think we will wait a while to get more fish.....

Haaaaay!

Seems that summer has arrived here on the prairie. Our garden is on cruise, we're just watching it grow. Each evening for the last week our family has has marched out back and checked out the baby squash, cucumber and egg plants. We haven't had anything quite mature enough to harvest, yet. We're waiting... not so patiently
The hay in our front field was baled today. All the rain we've had this spring made for some good looking bales.
Now, what am I going to do with several tons of hay? I guess I have plenty of mulch for the next couple years.

Weekend war against weeds

8am Saturday me and the oldest son drove just up the highway to a chicken swap. Unfortunately we came home empty handed. I was went hoping to find some green egg layers to add to the flock, but no such luck this time. The trip was far from a waste of time. Turkeys and goats were popular items at this particular sale. I hope to get a couple of each in the near future (shhhh! don't tell Jenn), so I was able to talk to several people about the different breeds they raise. Its hard to beat the fun of a good chicken swap.

The weather this weekend was fabulous in our little part of Kansas. So far this spring it has been a rare thing to get two consecutive days without rain. The garden plants seem to be in shock and the weeds were close to taking over. By lunch time on Saturday it was dry enough to break out the heavy artillery. So, with my hoe in hand I went to war, I even enlisted help.
Five hours of chopping and pulling, along with several bales of hay for mulch I think we finally have the upper hand. But if there's one thing I've learned about weeds... they'll be back.

Here's a little surprise we found under one of those bales of mulch hay.
Mommy mouse scurried away and didn't look back. Just so you know, I actually relocated the the nest along with a shovels full of dirt to some tall grass in the general direction that mama ran. Maybe she found them... hopefully a the cat will.

And lets not forget. Today is fathers day. There are traditions to upold.
Ahhh, its a wonderful life.

Our fun last night....

It has been a crazy spring and beginning of summer. When we told people we were moving to Kansas, there first response was "why? they have tornadoes there." Until this spring, there had been more tornadoes in Georgia then near us in Kansas. Then this spring/summer came and we have been under more tornado warnings then I care to think about. So last night, Tom was working until 11pm and I was here with the boys with tornadoes getting close. I have to admitted I was getting a little freaked out...and it doesn't help that ATD was totally freaked out. ( let me back up a little. when we started looking for house I wanted one with a basement and that was final...I was not carrying kids across the yard to get in a shelter...well guess what, we couldn't find a house we liked with a basement. So the VERY first thing we did when we moved here was put in a tornado shelter.)

So ATD is freaking out and would just get in the shelter as soon as the weather radio goes off. We waited and watched the news and things were getting a lot closer. I emailed a friend and asked her to start praying things would miss us. I started getting things ready..just in case. I got shoes out (we forgot those last time), flashlight ready, my purse (with an extra diaper for OTD) and of course the camra. ATD gathered up a few things to take for him and OTD to play with...and we waited. It looked like things were going to hit just north of us..by about 7 miles. But the weather people said the magic words...they said our little town needed to take cover NOW. So out we went. I got a few pictures before getting in the shelter. By now the sirins were sounding. We stayed in the shelter about 30min...I'm sure longer then we needed, but I wasn't taking any chances with both boys by myself. Thank goodness no damage. It didn't even start raining until we were in the all clear.

Here are a few pictures
After it was all over, the boys slept well....

About the "Great Adventure"

Welcome to our little piece of the world. Both of us grew up in Atlanta area. About 3 years ago we decided we needed out of the hussel and bussel of a big town...so we up and moved to Kansas...thats right, Kansas. We have been asked MANY times why we choose Kansas. When we started looking at new places to live, we had a list of things we wanted in our new place. We wanted our new place to have seasons other than HOT and chilly, there had to be a NICU for Jenn to work at, and the cost of living had to be cheaper than Atlanta because we knew we wanted to buy some land to settle down on. We also wanted to be able to fly "home" easily..and cheaply.

After looking a few places on line, we took a long weekend trip to Topeka, Ks to scout things out. We loved it the first visit. We came in the spring and everything was in bloom. The temps were in the low 70's...it was just a great first visit. We probably drove 500 miles on that first trip. Jenn got to interview at the hospital and we met with a realtor. It was pretty clear after the first visit that we had found a place that we could call home. On our way back to Atlanta, we decided that if Jenn could get a job at the hospital in the NICU (which they were not hiring in at the time) we would take this as a sign to move forward with our plans to move. A couple of months after our visit, we got the call we had been waiting for. The hospital had opened a brand new 50 bed NICU and was now hiring. Jenn flew out, by herself, interviewed again and looked for apartments. Before Jenn even got on the plane to fly home, the hospital called to offer her a position! At that point, we knew we were going to move.

At the time of our move, ATD was almost 4 years old. To help him understand why we were moving, we called this Our Great Adventure. He loved the idea of going on an adventure. He did really well with the move considering we were taking him away from grandparents that spoiled him rotten! When we got to Topeka, Jenn started working at the hospital right away and Tom got to stay home and play Mr. Mom for 12 weeks. He did a great job. HE and ATD had a great time together. After Jenn was settled into her job, Tom started looking for a job. Once Tom had a job, we started looking for places to live. After a few months of looking, we found the perfect house on 20 acres for us. It is in a little town with then a thousand people. The school is small but has a good reputation.

Our house is 100+ years old. The people we bought if from raised 6 boys and one girl in this house..with only one (extremely small) bathroom! They lived here 50years and we got to meet all the 'kids' at an auction they held before they moved their dad out. The house needed a lot of love, but it had good bones. It had 3 bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom downstairs and the only bathroom was downstairs. Jenn, Tom and ATD shared the bedroom downstairs while the upstairs was being refinished. After moving in, we started remodeling the upstairs right away. That turned out to be a good thing because we had number 2 on the way. Tom did most of the work himself. We added a bathroom, and were still able to keep 3 bedrooms upstairs. Jenn's mom and dad came to help with some projects. After about 8 months...the week OTD came home from the hospital, we started moving things upstairs. After that big remodel we took a break and are about to get started on the downstairs. That brings us up to where we are now....as far as the house goes.
We hope to use this WebLog to chronicle the goings on in our Home / Farm. We may even back track and detail some events from the past just for posterity sake. I wouldn't count on finding anything profound here, but to those who may read, we hope you enjoy.