Earney Family Randoms

 Life has been getting really busy around here. This warmer weather has been really nice!! Several weeks ago we got a bunch of trees and bushes for our house off of a couple auctions. So we had been working on getting them all in the ground slowly until this past weekend. The rain kind of had us delayed for a while.  Tyler's family was out for the weekend and we got everything all done!! It feels so nice to not have them all sitting in pots any more! A big thanks to Todd and Trent for all their hard work this past Saturday!! Maybe the next post I do will have to be of the house to show all the new landscaping and trees. We also got a deck finished on our house on Saturday. Josh had started it last year and didn't get it finished, so it will be nice to have that done. It still needs a railing around the edge but at least it has a floor now. Blake has really been enjoying being able to go outside and play! With Blake loving being outside it will come in handy when we get around to planting our garden. The garden is in the low spot of our yard so it has had water sitting around it until a couple days ago. We hope to get it started soon!

We also have chickens!! On April 10th I went and got 25 baby chicks! They all are doing great and still living! This last weekend my grandparents were at an auction and came home with 10 more baby chicks! So now we have 35 chicks/chickens! The 25 we got first are quite a bit bigger than the new ones but they are all doing great in the same pen. It has been fun to see them change and get their new feathers in.

They just started spraying in the fields this week. Hopefully we can get started planting soon. Tyler has hauled some manure this week also. I'm sure tractor ride pictures will come eventually! We have a little boy who loves riding in tractors! He is a true farm boy! As more tractors get in the fields it is fun to watch him look out the window as we drive some where. He doesn't miss any tractor or sprayer!!

Now on to pictures-

Blake likes to play the piano! He climbs up and down the bench many times a day.

 I can not figure out how to get my pictures turned. Some of them will turn but not all of them :( If any one knows how to do it I would love some help! :)

With the warmer weather comes more 4-wheeler rides! You can't start up the 4-wheeler without Blake being on it or he gets mad :)

Corn!! Any time we got outside we have to go by the auger to get some corn!

 

Blake loves feeding Diesel dog bones!! When we go outside Diesel knows he is going to at least get 2 dog bones (if not more).

Blake loved the baby chicks right after we got them. He thought they were fun to hold.

Helping daddy feed and water the chicks on day. He always wants in the pen with daddy to check on them.

A close up of the cute little things! I'll have to post a more recent picture of them soon, they aren't so cute anymore :)

During his bath right after he found the tub of Vaseline. It was a tub that hadn't been used much at all, it now is about half full. When I found him he had both hands stuffed into the tub, a big pile of Vaseline in between his legs on the futon, Vaseline in his hair, Vaseline all over his clothes, and all over the back of the futon. There was Vaseline all over!!! And of course he thought it was funny :)

That's all for now! Enjoy this warm weather!!

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 :)