Gatlingburg!

Tyler, Blake and I took our family vacation and went to Gatlinburg. We left on February 27th and got back on March 4th. I know...I'm a little behind!! It was a lot of fun!! We had a very nice relaxing time. We were very thankful that Blake was very good the whole time we were down there. He loved being busy and seeing all the wildlife.

During the trip we drove Cades Cove 4 times. Between the 4 times we saw 121 turkeys and 247 deer. I would never remember this if I didn't keep a tally as we saw the deer and turkeys :)

Blake and I walking to get a closer look at some deer.

We saw this white turkey a couple different times while we were in the park.

Our little goof ball!!

 

One of the things we did was go to the aquarium, Blake liked all the fish. 

We saw a tractor at a petting farm....so we had to stop!

Blake loved feeding the sheep bread pieces!

He thought this little goat was hilarious!! It was out of the pen and Blake liked to chase it around the sidewalk.

While we were down there Gatlinburg got a couple inches of snow. It was very pretty!!

A pretty buck!!

Blake wasn't scared of the deer at all!!! He walked right up to them....

You can't really tell in this picture because I am in the way, but Blake is less than 5 feet from this deer!! He threw a screaming fit when I wouldn't let him go any farther. He wanted to pet the deer.

Not a very long post but hopefully it describes a little of our vacation. We had a lot of fun and enjoyed spending time with just each other.

Uninvited Guests!!!!!

Here is a little background on this story: Right after Tyler and I moved into this house we were unpacking some things and I was looking at some curtains and I said to Tyler, "Doesn't that look like bird poop on the curtains?" I didn't really think it was bird poop. But as he looked closer he was finding more of it and it was flaking off of them just like bird poop. We began to wonder how in the world was there bird poop in our house! So kinda joking we text Josh and asked why there was bird poop on the curtains. His response, "Yeah sometimes birds get in the house. The last time it happened was about 6 months ago." What?! He said they didn't really know how they got in but they do. Fast forward about a month. I'm sitting in the toy room with Blake as he is playing and I hear loud thumping/banging in the kitchen. My first thought, someone broke into the house. So I very cautiously walk out to the kitchen. What do I see: A BIRD flying around the kitchen hitting the windows!! So I call Tyler and ask him what to do as this bird is flying over my head around our house! I got him into the play room and opened a window and he flew right out. It scared me but thankfully only one thing was damaged and there was no poop in the house! I told Josh that it happened and we got it figured out how they are getting in. Our furnace has a pipe going out the roof that doesn't have netting around it so they can get in the pipe and fall right into our furnace and they can walk right out the back.Here is the culprit. They can walk out the back onto the brick and be in the house. The pipe in the back is the one that goes out the roof.

Now, fast forward to yesterday. I'm at work all day at Homestead. Blake is at Aunt Jenn's. Tyler is at work in the morning, goes to a planter clinic over lunch then goes back and works all afternoon. We both get home from work at the same exact time. We get in the house and go straight to our bedroom to change because we were going to go to Lafayette and we wanted to get left in good time. We got changed and were walking through the house to leave and I hear an all too familiar thump! So I turn to look and see NOT ONE, BUT TWO BIRDS flying around in the toy room!!! Tyler got them out the same window I did the first time one was in the house. But how did we not hear these things the whole time we were changing?! We figured it must have been because we were talking and laughing with Blake and we were not disturbing them since we were not in the same room. Then we wondered how long they had been in here!? Neither of us came home all day! They could have gotten in right after we both left and had been flying around our house all day! We started looking for clues.....it did not take us long to figure out they poop A LOT and they must have been in here all day!! This morning as I am cleaning it up I am finding more and more poop!! I did not think to take pictures of most of it before I wiped it up but here is a few places I've found it.

Blake's high chair tray, a lot of it does not show up because it is the same color as the tray. The cup holder was solid poop!

The kitchen chairs. This is just one chair, I found poop on all 4 chairs :(

The kitchen table.

The back of Blake's high chair. Its on the green house, the elephants and on the seat part also.

They made sure it was multiple places on the kitchen table.

My kitchen window, right above my sink. I already had the sink cleaned up when I took pictures, but it was all over in that!!

The living room wall.

The couch. Last night before we went to Lafayette Tyler and I walked around the house cleaning it up off the floor and furniture. We missed some that I found this morning :)

A lamp. They must have sat on it somewhere to be in both of these places.

The candles on the lamp in the picture above.

On a heater in the toy room.

A shelf in the toy room.

The floor in front of the fridge.

On top the fridge. (Sorry about the dust, I now have a reason to clean it :)

The biggest mess was on the kitchen counter top. I cleaned all that off before I took pictures. There was a spot of poop about every 6 inches. I did not think it was too bad until I started cleaning it. Most of the poop blended in with the counter so I just could not see it until I started looking hard. We have 8 rooms on our main floor and I found evidence of the two very uninvited guests in 5 of those rooms. There was not poop in all of the rooms but there was knocked over or messed up decorations. Tyler and I both agreed we need to get the pipe fixed ASAP :) And until we do we are going to keep a tennis racket in the house somewhere. I am going to do my best and try to not let the next bird that comes in get out alive :) It has been starlings that have gotten in each time and I am going to start thinning their population one at a time! But hopefully we don't have any more uninvited guest before we get the pipe fixed! 

Anyone want to guess what I have been doing this morning other than updating the blog?! :)

1st Haircut!!

On January 30th we gave Blake his first haircut. His hair has always been really blonde and never really seemed like he had very much because it was hard to see. It was thin to start out with but by the time we cut it, it was pretty think and a couple inches long :) He had a curl in the back that we didn't want to cut because we thought it was really cute :) But now that we cut it off....looking back it wasn't so cute :)
Here are some pictures of his hair before we cut it!

This is what he would look like after waking up in the morning :)

The curl that was thought was so cute.

Some of the hair was down to his eyebrows, you just can't see it :)

nap head, as you can see....he needed a hair cut about a month before we gave him one :)

Close up of the curl

I spiked his hair this way on purpose to show its length :) It was getting pretty long!!

He was excited to get his hair cut, he even helped daddy get the clippers ready.

The first "path" through :) He sat really good for a while....

Not looking too happy about getting his hair cut :)

.....then he wanted on the floor and I had to hold him to get it cut :)

After we were all done :) It looks SO much better! :)

His hat head after it was cut :) A lot better than before it was cut!!

It took us a little while to get used to the short haired Blakey but we like it now. He looks much older than he did before. The curl hasn't came back but that's ok :) I saved it for the scrapbook so if I am ever wanting it back I can look at it remember why we took it off :) 

New Year's Day

On December 26th Tyler shot his 4th deer of the season! It was a really big doe! We decided that we were going to keep her and butcher her ourselves. Once we got her hanging up in the tool shed Tyler came to me and said "It be really cool to butcher a pig when we butchered our doe." Yeah it would be cool but that is a lot of work for 2 people to do!! So we decided to just butcher the doe and keep the pig option open for another year. :)  Tyler and I really like to butcher his deer and make different meat out of them. Last year we made our own patties and each year we thought it would be cool to make a little more. Butchering a pig at the same time would make a lot more options of meat because deer is really lean and adding pig meat/fat to it would make it a lot better. But next year we would try it! :)

Blake gets SO excited when daddy brings home a deer! :)

        

Daddy and his deer loving buddy :)

He loves to pet the deer. When Tyler gutted the doe Blake wanted to stick his hands right in and help...we told him to wait until next year :)

So fast forward to New Years Eve....the doe was still hanging in our tool shed and we were going to butcher her the next day.

Tyler calls me to say he is off of work but going to drive by the woods so see if there is any deer out :) This was an almost every day occurrence :) While we were on the phone I get a phone call from my dad. So I told Tyler I would see him when he got home and answered the call from dad. It went something like this:
Dad: "Hi, how are you doing?"
Me: "Good, how are you?"
Dad: "I'm doing good. Um, what would you and Tyler think about butchering a pig tomorrow when you butcher the doe?"
Me:" Uh, yeah that would be cool!"
Dad: "I figured it would be fun and it would be better to mix the deer and pig meat together."
Me:"Yeah Tyler mentioned that last week but we thought it would be too much work for the 2 of us."
Dad:"We would all come over and help you guys and we could just get the pig out of the barn in the morning and do everything at the same time."
Me:"Yeah that sounds good to us!"
Dad:"Do you want to talk to Tyler when he gets home and get back with me?"
Me:"No, he will want to do it, he has been wanting to."
Dad:"Ok sounds good! Thanks!"
Me:"Yep!"
 
So Tyler gets home and asked what dad wanted. So I tell him and his reaction "Are you serious?!"  He was really excited! :) So we start looking around for supplies and getting out all our big bowls, meat grinder and slicer, sausage stuffer, knifes, seasoning...oh wait, we don't have any! :( Or any meat casings :( Thankfully mom was heading to Lafayette in the morning! She stopped at Gander Mtn and got a bunch of supplies! :)
So New Year's Day rolls around and the hired hand in the barn had the day off so Dad, Josh and Tyler were all going in to do his work in the morning and the plan was to butcher in the afternoon. So while we were eating lunch grandpa pulled in but we just figured he was getting stuff around to haul out corn the next day. Which he was, but what we didn't know was that grandma had came too and that they were planning on helping us butcher :) So when Tyler went out to start butchering the deer grandpa came and helped then everyone else started showing up around 2.

We decided to quarter the deer then take the quarters to the shop (where it was warmer) to take the meat off. So here Tyler and I are holding the deer apart while dad cuts it in half.

Holding part of the deer so dad can cut the leg off.

 And here is our pig :) I didn't get too many pictures of this part because for most of it I was in the tool shed cutting the deer up :) But they did it the same way and quartered it to bring it to the shop.

 Blakey was in the shop walking around and playing most of the time. He did take a couple naps during the day which was really nice! :) He liked being involved and trying to help :)

Here is everyone cutting up the meat. Once the guys were done with the pig they came in to help us cutting up the meat :)

 Once we had enough meat cut up we started grinding it. Tyler and I got a grinder for Christmas so it was already being put to good use! Angie is grinding the meat while Tyler and Blake give her the meat chunks to grind.

 The grinder that Tyler and I got was not keeping up very good at all with how much meat we had. It was going to take us forever to get everything ground then we had to season all the meat and get it made into brats and patties! We were in for a long night! Then dad called a family friend (who happened to be in a tree stand at the time) who had a grinder and he said we could barrow it for the night if we gave him some meat! :) His was much bigger and a lot faster! It really sped up the process :) Once we had enough ground to make a batch of meat we would measure it out and season it then start making patties or brats.

Since no body really planned anything since we didn't have much time to plan :) For supper I said something to Tyler about ordering pizza. Silly me!! We are butchering 2 animals.... we are going to have fresh pork chops on the grill!! :) So I went in the house got some seasoning, cleaned out the fridge and pantry and took stuff out for supper :) They were some of the best chops I have ever had! :)

Grandpa and Grandma brought some of their meat processing supplies with them from when they used to butcher animals. It came in really handy! After I took Blake to bed I came back out to the shop to find this.....a really long strand of brat! :)

This picture was taken about 10:00 pm!

 

Here is just some of the meat we got :) We made about 6 different kinds of patties and maybe 3 different kinds of brats. We also got a bunch of ground pork! And there is still some in the freezer that we still have to make into snack sticks! We had a ton of fun doing everything and are already planning for next year! :) When walmart was having their after Christmas sales they had their plastic bowls for $.24!! So we got about 20 of them for next year to put meat in! :) We are also going to get a bigger meat grinder and be more prepared with everything :) But overall we did pretty good for getting a deer and a pig butchered and made into meat in 8 hours with hardly any preparation! :) A big thank you to Mom, Dad (also for donating the pig:)), Laura, Angie, Josh, Jenn, Grandpa and Grandma for helping and making the day so fun!!   We are looking forward to next year already! :)

Oh....stay tuned for a blog update on Blake's first haircut!!

A day in the barn with Daddy

I wrote this post a couple weeks ago but for some reason it wouldn't let me upload any pictures...... so, tonight I tried it again and it let me!! :)

On December 10th Blake and I went into the barn with Tyler. He was in there learning how to do all the work the hired hand does for the week. I didn't think Blake would like it because every time he saw a little pig before this day he didn't like it when it made noise. So I thought we would get in there and need to go back out in a little bit. But Blake surprised me and loved being in the barn! He wasn't so sure about the sows but he loved all the little pigs! While we were in there we moved pigs from the grower to the finisher and Blakey had fun making noise to get the pigs moving. He liked to run around the pen and make all the pigs go crazy :) After we got all the pigs moved we went and sat in a nursery pen (which is little pigs) for a while. He would chase one pig around until he "caught" it so he pet it. We stayed in the barn for several hours before we went home. After we got out I told Tyler I have a feeling we will be going in the barn more often :) We haven't went in again yet but we probably will in a few weeks when Tyler does weekend chores.

Trying to figure out which pig to chase after.

I got him.....for a second before he runs off again :)

Let try a different barn to see if these pigs will come to me :) Nope.....they still run from me mommy :(

He stopped trying to catch the pigs so I could take a picture of him and daddy together, then it was all about the pigs again :)

Oh, and if you were wonder no Blake was not wearing shoes in the barn :) He was just wearing his socks because I didn't think to get the boots that mom and dad have for him :) But I didn't have to do the laundry so it was ok :)

We will have to go in the barn again sometime soon :) I went in yesterday and helped Tyler but my mom watched Blakey for me.

Have a good week! :)