Myrtle Beach

This post will mainly be about our recent family vacation to Myrtle Beach but I will also add the recent winter news from around here. Not because I am complaining about how bad it is or because I want people to feel sorry for us; but because I want to remember it when I get caught up on my scrapbooks :) Which right now I am over a year behind.....so it could be a while before I get to this and I forget things easily!

The last time I posted we were living at my parents while they were gone. Well when Tyler came back to check on our house on Tuesday we had no water! We went to my parents on Sunday and no one had been to our house from Sunday to Tuesday. So we were hoping things were OK but couldn't get out on the roads until Tuesday. Our water lines had froze due to the cold weather. I know I'm crazy but I kept track of the temperature while we were there and lowest I recorded was -14 degrees with a -40 windchill!! This was off my parents weather station so I'm sure other people have different recordings but either way it was cold!! So it was no wonder why our pipes froze. Tyler and my grandpa tried thawing out our pipes on Tuesday but couldn't get any water to flow. So they tried putting a heater blowing into our crawl space. Tyler came back to my parents and a little later grandpa called and said he shut the heater off because he was afraid of leaks and if they thawed we would have a muddy mess! If they had to redo all our plumbing they didn't want to work in a mud hole :) So Wednesday morning Tyler and I both went home and we had water!! They thawed out on their own! Tyler crawled under the house and we only had 1 little leak! We were SO thankful!! Grandpa was able to fix it for us and we moved back into our house Wednesday evening before my parents got back! 

So that was Wednesday, fast forward to Tuesday morning and we left at 3:30 AM for Myrtle Beach!! It was a much needed break! We had a 13-14 hour drive down there so we wanted to get an early start so Blake would sleep the first several hours. We bought a portable DVD player for trip and it was a very good thing to have! That was about all he did on the way down and the way back! We got to our hotel and checked in around 5:30 that evening. We didn't do a lot of stuff while we were there but we stayed busy and relaxed a lot. We checked out some state parks that were in the area. We went to a Bass Pro shop and then walked around a mall that was connected to the Bass Pro. We went out to eat about once a day at different places that we found. We went to a Ripley's aquarium that was there. It was a lot like the one in Gatlinburg but smaller if you have been there before. Anywhere we went that had a beach we would walk and look for shells. Blake loved to play in the sand so he did that while Tyler and I looked for shells. We went swimming in our hotels indoor pool a couple different times. We went to a couple flea markets and checked out a Children's Museum but we both agreed that it was a little more like a kids activity center. Blake really enjoyed it though! They had a lot of different things for kids to do and Blake could have spent all day in there doing the different activities. We went bowling one night at our hotel. We had a lot of fun! Blake got fussy and actually fell asleep while I was holding him and bowling at the same time. It was quite challenging to be holding a 30 pound kid and bowl at the same time. Thankfully we were able to lay him on the floor after a little bit and Tyler and I had good evening with just us since he was sleeping :)  That pretty much sums up our vacation! We left our hotel Sunday morning around 8 and drove until 7:30 that evening then stayed in Louisville for the night. Then on Monday morning we went to Cabela's then headed home. We got home around 1 in the afternoon. We were very thankful for the time we were able to spend together!! As you will see in pictures we didn't have just overly warm temperatures :) But it was warmer than what we would have had at home!! I don't know if it got over 60 degrees at any point of our trip but it felt warm compared to the week before though! Now for an overload of pictures :)

The beach right out our hotel was very nice! It was the beach we spent the most time on.

Blake had fun trying to catch the seagulls, he never got one. He would come back to us and say "uh oh".

This is his new face he likes to give us a lot :) 

Blake really enjoyed having Daddy around for a whole week!!

My 2 boys! Blake never let daddy get very far from him.

Swimming at our hotel. Blake started to like swimming a lot on the last day :) He had fun jumping off the side to us in the pool.

Petting the sharks at the aquarium. I missed it on camera but Blake actually did touch one!

He enjoyed sitting in a fish mouth and sliding down the tongue.   

One morning we woke up early to go to a state park and look for shells. It was 33 degrees that morning so Blake and I watched a movie in the envoy while Tyler looked for shells. I got out a couple times though to get pictures of this beautiful sunrise!

They had a train station at the museum! It didn't take Blake long to find it.  

A big bubble maker that Tyler had more fun with than Blake did :)

An example of daddy couldn't go to far. Anytime Tyler would walk down to the water Blake would be running after him yelling "dadda".

Tyler digging a hole as Blake fills it in :)

Blake enjoyed bowling for a little bit before he got fussy!

Then this is how he looked for the rest of the night :)

This is looking off the balcony of our hotel room. We could see the ocean through the trees.

During the warm season Blake would love this place! Our hotel had a big swimming area for kids outside. 

This is our hotel. Our room was on the part that sticks out on the left of the picture.

The last night on the beach before heading home.

That sums up our vacation, now onto this past week. My parents left for Grand Cayman a couple hours after we got home from vacation. They picked pretty good times to be gone didn't they?! :) My sister is home this time though so we get to stay in our own house. But that doesn't mean we didn't have troubles :) We had a pretty normal week until Friday. Yes it has been cold, windy and snowy which isn't always fun but on Friday when Tyler was home for lunch he went to wash his hands at the bathroom sink and there was no water!  Yes our pipes had froze again!! Our house doesn't have the best heater or insulation anyways so we have always had a couple space heaters floating around the house. There is always one upstairs for Blake's bedroom and there is one that stays in the toy room because those windows don't latch and there is a breeze through there when its windy. But we have 3 other ones that we use where ever they are needed. So we turned one on in both bathrooms trying to warm things up. Thankfully the kitchen sink always had water but we put one in the kitchen to try and keep it warm so those didn't freeze too. We have two bathrooms and between the two of them we had one toilet and one sink. Neither shower worked! The sink that worked was in one bathroom and the toilet in the other bathroom :) On Saturday morning nothing more had thawed out. So we washed our hair in my kitchen sink for the day :) But by mid morning everything had thawed out by itself! So since Saturday we have had constant water running out of every faucet and shower that are in the house and I flush the toilets every 20 minutes to keep those from freezing :) It is only supposed to get colder these next couple days so we hope that nothing freezes again but with water running it shouldn't.  On Saturday Tyler and Josh piled snow up along the whole south side of our house trying to insulate the crawl space a little more so hopefully that helps. We are also very thankful that no pipes had leaks this time!! We keep the space heaters on as needed but they aren't always on. Then to top everything off last night we lost power :) Around 9:30 Tyler and I were heading out to do the chickens and the house went dark. We went back in to be with Blake so he wouldn't be scared as much. He doesn't like it when it is dark. Tyler headed back out to do chores while I sat with Blake because it had flickered about 4 more times before going out for good around 9:40. Thankfully our natural gas heaters still worked with no power. So we all stayed warm. Blake ended up sleeping in our bed for the night because he was certain there were bears in the house and wouldn't get too far from one of us. We had 60 mile an hour winds at our house so it was a nasty night to be out of power. Around 1 this morning we got our power back on! I am very thankful for the workers who were working up in a bucket truck in the winds on the telephone poles that were beside our lane!! When I got up to check stuff out once the lights came back on they were just leaving.
I think that is all the interesting stuff we have had this winter so far. I know it is hardly any trouble to most people and a lot have it worse than we do!! I just wanted to get stuff wrote down for the scrapbook so I figured I'd do a blog post about our winter so far and vacation. Off to flushing the toilets again :) Have a good week and stay warm!!

Snowed In

It has been forever since I posted an update. A lot has happened since then and I'm sure I'll forget lots of things. As I am writing this we are snowed in at my parents house. We came over here Sunday afternoon so we would beat the worse of the snow and wind. We came here because they are gone and Tyler is in charge of the hogs/barns since Dad isn't here. If something were to go wrong and Tyler couldn't get here because of the roads it wouldn't be good. So we packed our clothes and headed over :) Blake is enjoying being here and playing with all of his toys over here. I am doing several crafts and just being lazy, I have done our dishes and done some laundry though :) Tyler was in the hog barn all morning doing chores and making sure everything is staying as warm as it can. With it being -12 outside with a -40 windchill he can't do anything outside so he is working in the heated shop now.

 Here is a picture at my parents. I am standing on the porch, this doesn't show much of the snow, but I wasn't going to walk around too much :) I think this is the only day that it felt warm to go in a walk in freezer to get something for lunch :)

My brother and sister-in-law are in Jamaica for a week on a work trip. I think they picked a great time to be someplace warm!! So we are dog sitting there puppy Maggie for them. Blake is loving having a puppy around all the time. Although he likes snuggling a little more than she does :) He likes to lay on her if she allows him to, which isn't often, but he does every once in a while.

Since I am not at our house I don't have our old camera that has most of our pictures on it. And I say old because we got a new one! Well new to us anyways :) My parents got a new camera so we got there old one!! I was super excited! It is my dream camera to have, so I was sure to bring it along to document all this snow :) The old one probably won't get used much. So there won't be many pictures on this update.

My family had our 2nd annual butchering day on New Years Day again. I wasn't there for all of it, we had a little boy with a double ear infection, so we left a little early. But we butchered 2 hogs and 2 deer this year. It was quite a bit more from the 1 deer and 1 hog we did last year :) Tyler has gotten 2 deer this year. He got a little button buck, which counted as anterless in archery season, then he got a doe with his muzzeloader later in the season. So we butchered his doe. The button buck we made mostly into deer jerky. My dad also got a small doe the Sunday before we butchered so that was the other deer we did. Since we planned on doing this since last year it was a little more thought out than the first butchering we did. We did summer sausage, snack sticks, brats and ground meat this year.

 Blake and Maggie's spot for the day- under the work bench.

 Mom, Angie, Laura and Dad getting started for the day.

 Blake brought along a Thomas coloring book so he colored some, and let the woo wa (his word for dog) color in his book :)

 Lunch!! The freshest pork loin you'll ever eat! It was delicious! Along with some deer steaks and dressing.

 The smoker full of snack sticks and more pork loin.

Our 2 lovely hogs for the day :) And Tyler's broken down truck in the back ground :)

That is all the pictures I have to share with me. But in other news, everything is going good around our house. The chickens are still producing their eggs for us. It has slowed down a little with the cold weather but we still get plenty! I think right now I have around 13 dozen in my fridge :) Since we can't get home to check on them we are hoping they are surviving this cold weather we are having. Don't worry, we gave them plenty of food and water and they have a couple heat lamps in the shed with them! We figured on being here without being able to get home so we were prepared.

Blake has been his usual crazy self. He has a few words he says but isn't talking sentences yet. He is getting closer though! He is enjoying all his new toys he got for Christmas very much. He is into Bob the Builder, Thomas the Train and farming right now. He got some of all of this for Christmas so he is set for a while :) He also likes animals a lot. So there is consistently some farm equipment, a train, and an animal in every room. He keeps us busy though and there is never a dull moment with him!!

Tyler has been busy hunting, farming and keeping up with Blake. Hunting season is over now though, but that doesn't mean he has any free time. Blake is very fond of his daddy and doesn't let daddy stand or sit around for more than 20 seconds before he pulls him somewhere. Everything Tyler does Blake would be right beside him if he could!  If Blake knows Daddy is going somewhere he quick runs and gets his boots, coat and his hat so he can go along. We have some rough times when he realizes he can't go along. So Daddy is very popular in our house :)

I have been busy working around the house and at Homestead. Work has been closed since Christmas eve so I have been enjoying my break off. I go back to work on the 21st of January. They open for business this Friday the 10th, but Tyler, Blake and I are going to Myrtle Beach next week :) So I get an extra week off work! My days are numbered there though, I am quitting work at the end of February to stay at home. With baby #2 due April 1st I decided to be off all of March. I do plan to fill in though if they can't find someone else to fill the spot. Speaking of baby #2, we found out its a girl!! So we will be adding some pink things around our house shortly :)

I'm sure I'm missing some news that I could put on here but I am tired of typing :) So that's going to be all for now. Stay warm!!

Fall

It has been a long time since I have updated and I am just sitting in the envoy as Tyler has Blake in the combine right now so I figured I'd better do an update! Grandpa was driving so they went for a ride! The tractor seems to be where we spend most of our time these days! Tyler hauls the corn or beans to the bin so we ride along when ever we can! Usually at least 2 times a day, when I take lunch and supper. Sometimes we ride another time depending what I am doing at home. 

Blake is still growing up way to fast!! He doesn't talk much but he defiantly gets his point across to us! His favorite words are "more" and "Dadda" but Dadda is always a favorite :) He likes to get "more" corn and beans all the time with daddy! And if we aren't in the tractor he is getting "more" at home on his farm in the toy room. There is always corn scattered in every room of the house now. His combine, tractor and auger wagon seem to be his facorite things to play with lately! I wonder why?! :) He doesn't talk to us about what is going on with harvest but he defiantly knows what is going on and where stuff is going! We can drive by 3 other John Deere combines on our way to the field and he doesn't get excited about them but as soon as he can see ours, even if we are a mile away, he gets excited! He already knows our equipment apart from other farmers. He is going to be wanting to farm all the time in a year from now!! He would last all day in the tractor with daddy if I would let him! The first thing he wants when he wakes up every morning is his combine and the thing he is playing with right before bed is his combine! It is all he does anymore :) 

This was the first time Blake was at the field for this year! He was really excited that daily tractor rides were starting back up!

While the wagons are unloading sometimes Blake and mommy sit on the bin pads and watch!

Or he sits with daddy and watches :) 

I snapped this picture as I was getting lunches ready one day!

Tyler got his first deer of the year last night! Blake had fun helping skin it last night! He loves to be right beside his daddy no matter what he is doing! The most common thing he cries about anymore is he misses his Dadda! Most days when we leave the field he has a melt down about Dadda not being able to come with us or because he can't stay with Dadda! When he wakes up and Dadda is already at work he cries, and he usually cries a couple other times during the day because he wants Dadda :) He loves his Dadda!! 

Blake also went on his first hunting trip!! Tyler said he wasn't sure if Blake caught on to everything but they had fun and that's all that matters! Tyler took him one evening while my mom and I were making apple cider. We couldn't watch all our apples go to waste so we are both stalked up on cider for the year!! 

In other news we are adding an addition to our family in early April!! We are excited about it and Blake is when we ask him :) 

I am sure there is stuff I could have put on here that I forgot about. But maybe I should try to update more than once a month so I don't forget stuff :) 

Overdue update!!

I am sitting here in Tyler's shop as he is finishing up mounting his buck he got last season. We have been really busy around here this summer so far! The biggest news is that we painted our house, it isn't green any more!! It is now tan, which makes it look a lot newer. The roof is going to get done hopefully within a couple months! The house is going to be the same colors as Tyler's shop. Light tan siding with a darker tan metal roof. 

I haven't taken many pictures of it with my phone yet. This is the only one I have of it :) Tyler is painting the overhang in this picture. We both really like the way the house looks!

On Monday we went up to Weko beach in Michigan with my family for the day! It was very relaxing. The only negative was the cold water!! There had to be ice floating in there somewhere :)

Blake loved to play in the sand!! He was covered in sand by the end of the day but he had fun :)

It has been fun having fruit trees and a garden this year! I have been able to freeze a lot of cucumber slaw, sweet corn and green beans. Today I made some applesauce with our apples! I also have canned sweet pickles, kosher dill pickles, spicy pickles, bread and butter pickles and polish dill pickles all from cucumbers from our garden! I got some nectarines from my grandma and I canned those. My mom, Laura and I also spent most of a day making salsa and pizza sauce. Tyler was able to help me blanch all the tomatoes before he went to work that morning, it was nice working with him :)

Our 2 bushel of tomatoes washed and ready to be blanched. 

We used my parents 100 quart turkey fryer to make the salsa. It worked really good. That is also what Tyler and I blanched all the tomatoes in. It has came in really handy as we also used it to do the  sweet corn! It goes really quick when we can cook 60 to 70 ears of corn at the same time! It would fit a lot more we just didn't have the muscles to lift more corn out :) It has a basket in the inside so it worked good just to dump the corn in a cooler! 

In other news, our chickens are laying eggs!!! We have been getting between 20 and 22 eggs a day from them recently! It gets to be a lot of eggs :) I consistently have around 10 or 11 dozen in my fridge :) We did have to kill one of our chickens, she has something rupture in side of her and wasn't doing very good. So we are now down to 34 chickens :) 

This is about 3 days worth of eggs :) 

I am sure there is more I could update on but that will have to be it for now :) Hopefully it won't be so long before I update again!! 

I am trying to do an update from my phone, so we will see how this goes :) I take a lot more pictures of what we do every week now that I always have a good camera with me. Now if I forget the actual camera I don't miss out on something that is picture worthy :) 

Things have been going good around here. We are staying really busy! Our garden is doing really good! We had several pickings of radishes off of it, and just today I picked a couple peas!!

We went to the Remington water tower days a couple weeks back, they had a petting zoo there and Blake just loved it!! :) Here he is feeding the goats!

 Blake loves being silly :) He likes grandmas sun glasses, with these being pictures off my phone you will see all sorts of silly ones on this blog now :)

Blake has been my little fix it man this last week! Nothing was wrong with anything he fixed though :) he would carry around his wrench and want to fix stuff, in this picture it is the fridge door.

Here is just a good picture I got of our crazy little man! 

He is starting to slowly say more things each day. Bubbles is one of his favorite words. Dadda is the only word that tops it :) Dadda is involved with everything Blake does. He has even started calling me Dadda :) but he has started to say mamma now, but not near as often :) he has his "b" sounds down pretty good. Some of the words he has said are- hi, bye, lulu (aunt Laura), ang (aunt Angie), grandpa, hello, big buck, bird, bug, broke, yeah, no, dis (diesel), bread and I know there are more but I can't think of them right now. He is really starting to learn what things are and he will copy everything we do! So things are getting interesting around here :)

Have a good week!!

Chicken Shed....

or I should say WAS the chicken shed! On Friday night/early Saturday morning we had some bad winds with a storm that came through. We didn't think about the chicken shed blowing away when we went to bed. We had two and a half foot rods in all the corners inside the shed to help keep it from blowing away. These were not going through any part of the shed but we didn't think it would be able to blow away.  Much to our surprise when Tyler looked out the window on Saturday morning the shed was gone! After we got dressed to go see the damage we were shocked to see all 35 chickens still alive!! We were just sure we would have lost at least 1 chicken with everything that happened! But nope....they were all living and they were all really close to where the shed was when we went to bed. We must have exceptional chickens since they lasted through their shed blowing away and since they didn't go more than 15 feet from their pen :) We had a nesting box in the shed and that just fell over once the shed was gone, and all 4 rods were exactly where they were when we put them into the ground. The wind some how picked the shed up off the ground at least 2 1/2 feet straight up!  We are actually wondering if it went straight up 4 feet. The nesting box is that tall and the legs of it were not moved at all, it just fell straight back wards from where it was. Neither one of us saw the shed blow away but this is what we are guessing happened with how everything looked on Saturday morning.

This is where the shed landed....straight out from the kitchen window of the house.

The shed is a complete loss.

We are thankful it didn't touch this tree! It looks like it hit it but it was a couple inches from this tree and the tree didn't have a single mark on it! It is one of the new trees we just planted a couple months ago.

You can't see where the shed was but it was to the right of Tyler's shop that is in the back ground. The shed blew clear across our drive and only touched down 2 times that we could tell. Once in the landscaping by the shop and once in the drive way. Thankfully it didn't hit anything on its way through!

There was a few pieces that landed in the drive way.

This is where the shed was. You can see our rods that were in the corners. They are not bent over at all! And you can also see the nesting box. It was on the right side of the shed, it just fell straight over once the shed was gone.

This is as far as any of our chickens wondered.

Dad came and helped us get the shed out of the front yard, we pulled it with his truck.

Our 35 wet chickens! Tyler and I caught them all and moved them back into the green tool shed where we had them when they were little. Thankfully we hadn't taken down their pen in there yet!

 Tyler got started right away thinking of a new place to put the chickens. The bin rings that we had them in would not work for very long. After we got the shed out of the yard we talked with dad and came up with a plan to build a pen inside the green tool shed and to make an outside pen on some concrete that was beside the shed. I didn't get many pictures of the process but I got a few.

Dad and Tyler putting a door on the outside pen.

I couldn't get this picture to turn but here is the inside pen.

Putting chickens into the new pen!

Tyler moving chickens over to the new pen.

Blake making sure the chickens know they can go outside by shoving them out :)

And there they are once they were out.

He really likes the chickens :) He gives them hugs!

Here is Blake helping with the new pen by putting a screw in a board :)

We got the new pen built in just an afternoon with some help from Dad and Laura. We were very thankful for their help! We wouldn't have gotten both the inside and outside pens done without their help! We are pretty sure the green tool shed won't blow away with some strong winds so hopefully our chickens are safe now! We don't want to have to build them a third pen! :)