Red Neck Sleddin'

So, I mentioned in the last post that a storm was approaching and we had lots of work to do to prepare. Well, the storm hit late Jan 31 and by the morning of Tuesday Feb 1, we had cold and snow. We got lucky that the ice went south of us. The wind made some drifts of 18" - 24" during the storm that dropped nearly 8" on us. School has been out since Tuesday. We managed to stay nice and toasty inside with no loss of power. The prep work we did has payed off but we did slightly under estimate the amount of hay the horses would go through - evidently the colder it gets, the more they eat.  I did not know this so perhaps I should say, "I" underestimated the amount of hay.  LOL

We needed to move some hay bales today and we decided on a method other than human power.  :-)  I ran a piece of rebar through the middle of the bale and we hooked the chain to it and then to the truck. MUCH easier than pushing it myself! :-)  While outside working, we decided to have some fun as well - we did some red neck sleddin'  - With no hills accessible, we hitched the sled to the truck and ran through the field.

Enjoy the pics of the snow and the fun! :-) OH - do you know what a red necks last words usually are?? Hey y'all, watch this!!  LOL

Brittney is ready to go sledding

Carissa checks out the trampoline

Tattoo the horse

The orchard

Working smarter, not harder

Brittney and Carissa getting ready for the ride

Brittney, Carissa and Cherilyn

Brittney, Carissa and Cherilyn

Brittney, Carissa and Cherilyn

Brittney and Scott as Cherilyn drives fast!

The snow flew up in our faces

Me, after the sled ride

4 wheeling in the snow is fun!

So, all in all it was a pretty fun day and while we were out having fun, it snowed another inch!!

January 2011

So, January was an interesting month with bouts of spring and winter. The following pics are from the storm we had during week 2 of the month.

where our drive meets the road

The back deck

looking across the pond toward the barn

Shortly after the snow from this storm began to melt, I had to put more hay in the barn -

the hay bales that need to get into the barn

Note the distance from the bale to the barn

it's on the way ....

Finally there :)

Note, these bales of hay are 800 + lbs and I roll them by myself

By the third and fourth weeks, it became much nicer, more like spring.  In fact, January 29th it hit 68 degrees! :)  Unfortunately behind the warm weather was a storm system of epic proportion. (more on that in a later post)

Storm Prep

Cherilyn and I went out to cut wood for the wood furnace.  We also picked up 2 loads of slab wood from the local mill.  I had to cut down all this wood to sizes that would work in the furnace.  In addition to gathering wood, we had to put hay out for the horses and fill up the watering barrels and make sure all the water heaters were working. We also had to prepare extra water for us and the animals in case we lost power. We had lots of work to do.


The kids did help, about as much as they were capable of but they had more fun enjoying the nice weather before the storm.

Brittney and the dogs

the kids had friends over to enjoy the afternoon

January also brought Krystene's 20th birthday - wow I can still remember that joyous day 20 years ago! :) I decided I wanted to make part of her gift a little more personal. Last year she gave me a 6 pack of Jones soda with a personalized label on each bottle for Father's Day.  I decided that I wanted to do something with one of the bottles so it could be saved as more than just an empty bottle.  I still have a sand art bottle Krystene made for me when she was about 7 years old and I thought it would be neat to do some sand art in the soda bottle.  I made 2, one was kind of a practice bottle.

 

So, I tried my hand at sand art.  It was kind of fun, I just might have to do this again sometime. Check out this neat site I found when looking for ideas on what and how to do sand art. SAND ART


At church, Cherilyn and I both had to speak.  Interestingly enough, we did not speak on the same Sunday.  We spoke a week apart.  I think we both enjoyed speaking.  We also had our monthly temple trip, we went to St. Louis. In February we are going to go to Albuquerque. Finally, we were asked to teach the local Institute class. For those of you not familiar with what that is, it's a class for those single and married who are between the ages of 18 and 30.  We will teach a class one night a week beginning in February.

All in all it was a pretty productive month.

Peaceful Living???

So, you think it is suppose to be peaceful out in the country??  For the most part, living on 9 acres in the middle of nowhere [ok, so it's not exactly nowhere, I am ACTUALLY closer to a Walmart now than I was when living in Concord NC LOL but does that really say much when you live 2 hours from Walmart HQ? ;-) ] is pretty nice and peaceful, however, there are moments when it is just not so.  For the past several weeks the coyotes have been stirring up a storm at night - they are quite noisy. The coyotes cause the good neighbors dog, a  Great Pyrenees, (a dog that can weigh up to 120lbs and this one is very close) to get a little restless and he goes into protective mode, which is good but that mode causes a lot of barking while patrolling his and our property. Added to this were our dogs deciding they needed to go on a non stop bark fest along with one of our horses constantly neighing for her colt which was taken to his new home.

The other thing to consider are the neighbors next to us.  I know, "next to" is relative.  There is enough property to build 4 or 5 houses, in a typical neighborhood, between us.  For the past week or so they have been in need of some cash, (beer fund is running low) so they have been trying to take down by hand a wood framed metal building.  This has caused a great deal of hammering on their part which has been quite noisy. Now I have to say this - after meeting the 2 sons (probably in their 20's, mid to late) who live there, I do not think a GED exists between them.  In their quest to get the metal from the building to recycle and turn into beer money, they came up with what they thought would be a great idea.  Since nearly a week had gone by without much success, they needed an easier and quicker way. Remember I said the building had a wood frame?  Yep, the great idea was to burn it down.  How did that turn out you ask, NOT TO GOOD! LOL. So, the fire interrupted the "peace" of the country.  OK, you need to also remember we live out in the country so it takes a while for a fire truck to arrive.  They did, in time to save the house but the siding did melt on the back corner closest to the fire and the building. The sad part, the building is still standing LOL  the roof did collapse but the sides are still up.  Now for the big kicker - the house that now has melted siding - brand new as of last April. Brand new because in November of 2009, the old house burned down.  Seems the 6 year old decided to play with matches while the adults were napping. Now one last thing to give you some insight to them, evidently in August of 2009 one of the guys shot himself and had to have the rescue helicopter dispatched.

Melted Siding - NOTE - when building a large fire, do it WELL away from your vinyl sided house

House Fire Nov '09 - Note the metal building AND the fact that the fire department is NOT present

Life Flight Rescue

So, while most days are quite peaceful, there are days when the city might be more so.

I need to say this - our other neighbors are fantastic!  Great people, very nice and always willing to help out. She even has the kids over every Thursday evening for craft night and the kids get to make something fun! And for and hour or so - it's very peaceful in our house. LOL ;-)