After the storm and cleaning up

The Deters Dairy had some interesting weather on Sunday evening. 

As we were eating dinner all of a sudden the wind came up fast and I saw cardboard flying past the windows.  John saw a calf hut go flying and we all ran for the basement.  As we were heading downstairs the wind threw something against the window hard enough to break it. We stayed downstairs for a few minutes until it was decided that the event was over and we headed upstairs to check out the damage.

This is the only real damage the house received.

Calf huts were scattered hither and yon along with other bits and pieces.

This door is supposed to be hanging up covering that opening you see in the background.

A calf shed used to be here but is completely gone.

So was it a tornado? It seems likely since they were in the area.  I don’t thing a determination will ever officially happen.  Next however is the fun of clean up.

We have 50 calf huts and they all have to been hauled home.  I believe 1 or 2 are still missing.  One was retrieved from 1.5 miles away.

The window had been boarded up.  This makes my kitchen seem very dark.

Getting the doors out of the way under the watchful eye of Brownie the dog.

All in all it has been quite the adventure.

Creativity

Malissa suffers from that Thornton syndrome of being unable to do nothing.  She absolutely must be up to something or else she is sleeping.  There is no in between.
She expresses this by being very creative.  She’s always making something.  These are a couple of the projects she made in the last few weeks.
Finger Knitting

Malissa saw the other 4th grade class up to this and decided she had to figure it out so we looked it up online.  By the end of the day, she was turning out quite the impressive piece.
Volcano

She made a volcano previously in school but we still looked up instructions.

Once the cinder cone was made it was on to the ingredients which I conveniently had in the kitchen.

Success! The picture looks more yellow but our lava actually looked orange.
This was also a project of Malissa’s.  Her teacher had made some pom-poms out of tissue paper so Malissa tried her hand at it.  She made one giant pom-pom and it turns out it was a great decoration for her party.

We’ve been trying to decide…a bird?…a butterfly…its pretty fun anyway!

Happy Birthday Malissa!

What happened on May 22nd in history?

Johnny Carson makes his final The Tonight Show appearance in 1992.

"Super-cali-fragil-istic-expi-ali-docious" hits #66 in 1965.

The Great Train Robbery takes place in 1868 wherein 7 men make off with $98,000 in cash.

The first wagon train departs Independence Missouri in 1843 bound for Oregon.

First public library opens in Connecticut in 1803.

 

BUT…

None of these can hold a candle to May 22, 2003…

Happy 10th Birthday Malissa!

Early Birthday Presents

On Thursday (May 18) Malissa came home from school to a surprise…a box of birthday presents in the mail from Grandma Sharman and Grandpa Bill.

She lost no time in diving right in with her sisters crowding around excitedly.

All sorts of goodies including headbands

a sunvisor

and a pink sparkly shirt.

Thanks grandma and grandpa!

A week in the life…(vol. 2)

Guess What!

I’m so excited to tell you that the final touching up had been done to our kitchen.  As you can see in this picture the false doors on the front of the island have been installed.

Also our backsplash around the kitchen countertop was installed so I think we are now officially done with the kitchen remodel.

Since I began this narrative with today I will continue it in reverse.

Today was full ups and downs. Megan went to Sycamore springs with the other junior high students for roller skating, miniature golf and close encounters with poison ivy. I’m going to go out on a limb and say this one was an up.

Laura and Gabe will undeniably tell you that today was a down.  This morning I took them to get their kindergarten and 6 month shots respectively. 

Because I felt sorry for Laura I let her and Karla have ice cream and cookies for snacks. Laura has been wanting a picnic ever since it got warm so today was the first one. I’m pretty sure there must be more ice cream on their faces than in their tummies.

Last night Megan’s school had their open house.  They opened with a vocal/band concert.

 

Megan had a chance to sing 2 short solos.  I’m so proud of her for having the courage to stand up and sing in front of everyone.  It’s not something her mother could do at her age.

Megan had several displays from art, science, social studies and English. In the interest of having this post load in a reasonable amount of time I won’t post them right now.

On Mother’s Day our 4-H club had a bake sale after mass.

Malissa making change.

Finally we wrap up with Malissa having a field trip last Friday to St. Joe. She came back with a cute beaded bracelet she bought for me as an early Mother’s Day gift.  What a sweetheart!

School will be getting out next week on Wednesday and then on Thursday ball games start.  The girls have been practicing hard so looking forward to watching them play!

Mother’s Day

I hope all of you had a fabulous Mother’s Day. My amazing girls (and awesome husband!) gave me some wonderful little tidbits to show their love.

I love these kinds of picture frames and occasionally I can actually take (or more likely crop) a picture into the kind of shape that help me show off my beautiful children to everyone.

John told me all three of the older girls thought of something on their own.  They also gave me a yellow rose, a bracelet and chocolate.  This is the first year I actually figured out that I have to admit to wanting a present.  How many of you are guilty of saying “Oh, don’t worry about it…” when secretly we want them to go buy us the biggest most gaudy card they can find and some pretty flowers.  So this year I fessed up and they came up with all these wonderful ideas.

For dinner it was to Grandma Deters’ house.

These three lovely mothers are caught in the act.

Karla is such a cutie.

I spent very little time holding my little boy while at Grandma Deters’ house. All the cousins kept swiping him! Here, Gabe practices his playing-while-sitting skills with Ves and Scott. He’s getting steadier everyday but he isn’t quite ready to sit unassisted.

Wishing all of you a Happy Mother’s Day!

A week in the life…(vol. 1)

As a quick housekeeping comment: I’m only going to occasionally post a link to facebook so anyone wanting to catch every post needs to sign up for the email.

It’s been a busy week and this post is going to stretch it back all the way to last Friday.

May 3rd Malissa and I went to Muffins for Moms.  I had the same chocolate muffin from the Miller’s Daughter as Malissa and it was very yummy.

John & I (taking Gabe with us) went to the Knights of Columbus convention in Overland Park over the weekend and I took not one single picture.  While we were gone Megan & Malissa attended their first softball practices of the year.

On Tuesday Megan had her OTL track meet that had been postponed from earlier (because…you know…it was doing that sleeting/snowing/raining thing).  No PRs this time around but a fun time anyway.

Tuesday and Wednesday Laura had her first taste of school by attending the preschool put on by the Family Studies class at B&B. Since Megan had a track meet on Tuesday I picked her up on the first day but on Wednesday she came home on the bus with her sisters.

One very excited little girl!

Wednesday was also the day that Gabe had his 6 month appointment.  So the statistics are…

Weight 19lbs7oz – This puts him at 75th percentile. I was actually a bit surprised. I was sure he was 20lbs.

Height/length 28 inches – This is 90th percentile.

He’s not crawling yet but seems very determined to get places. He rolls all over the place and can get anywhere he wants to go.

Here is a cute one of Gabe and Laura that I just love.

Mary, Mary quite contrary

So I spent the entire month of April wishing I could get my garden started.

When you can’t actually do your garden this little planner is fun to mess with.

We added fruit trees this year.  There are 2 peach, 2 apple and a cherry.  We’ve been wanting to do this for a while and finally just went to Hiawatha and picked them out.

The weather gets warm, you think your going to get some real work done and then…

This is a picture of the April snow but May had some flakes as well.

We are finally getting some good weather for planting the garden. Laura has become my garden helper.

She really has this down.

Right now the garden is about 2/3 planted.  I’m hoping that we’ll be able to finish up within the next few days.

Best of luck with your gardens!

Because you have to do it at least once…

So I went to the grocery store and there was this pile of coconuts.

You must understand that there are never coconuts at the grocery store in Seneca. Except this time. Right next to the bananas.

Therefore a Family Education Moment was born.

Plus it was kind of fun.

I’m just lucky it came with instructions on how to get into that thing or we would still be at it.

I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed there was only about 1/4 cup of coconut water? (milk?).

Success!

Myself and the older kids actually tried it all and it turns out that none of us actually likes coconut all that much.  Which is kind of strange when you consider how much coconut oil I use to cook with right now.

The shell of the coconut is now enjoying a new life as bowls for the little ones.

(PSST… Did anyone see the tulips the girls picked for me? I have had to put limits on what the girls could pick because they would bring all the flowers into the house.  But its so sweet that they love to bring me flowers.)