Christmas 2001

 

Playing with gifts.

 

This was a dancing tree with a face in it and it sang some Christmas song in a crazy voice.  I remember Spark couldn't watch it enough.

 

Spark (14 months), Cousin Kyle (9) and Dancer (4).

 

Playing 6-5-4.  She loved shaken' those dice then and still does!

Daycare Reunion

When Dancer was born I decided that I just couldn't leave her at a daycare and let someone else have fun with her all day while I was working.  I also worked a job that had a lot of evening obligations and I was out of town 90% of my work time which didn't work the best with a baby and nursing.  Since I needed to have an income, I opened an in-home daycare and had fun with other peoples kids while they were at work. 

I liked to have kids in sets of two that were the same age, so I would have two four year olds, two three year olds, etc.  That way they had a playmate that was at the same development level as they were.  This is the girl that was the same age as Dancer.  She came to us when she was just about two and stayed until she went to kindergarten.  I actually had three kids Dancer's age because I started a boy, Alex, when they were a babies.  He and Dancer were inseparable, even spending a lot time outside of daycare hours playing but, I wanted a girl for her to play with too.

Alex, was a shy little thing and Dancer was a bossy little thing and she had no trouble bossing Alex.  She use to tell him, "Alex, I am going to marry you." and in his tiny voice he would say "okay."  

When we moved we lost touch with Alex but a few years ago we found that this girl also moved out to our town.  Today we finally had schedules that worked and we got together at the beach.  She's not so little anymore, she's taller than I am but, she is still as cute and sweet as ever.  They did live on the road behind us and so once in a while she would still come over and play until we moved but we didn't see her very often.

Spark was only two when she started kindergarten so he doesn't remember her from daycare, just from stories and now when we see her around town.

The noodles were no sooner set down on the sand and they started playing Ninja warrior with them.

You would never know they hadn't played together for over seven years.

They lounged in the lake.

Built a sand castle for princesses.

Played in the lake some more.

Worked on their suntans.  This is what suntanning looks like when it is 65 degrees and cloudy.  It was a fun day, hope we can do it again.

As we were leaving we checked out this sign.  The beach was just totally redone and the town took donations to help pay for it.  To thank everyone they put up a big sign with the donors names on it.  We had to wonder if the anonymous donors wanted to be so anonymous that they didn't even spell anonymous right.  That is the problem with signs, no spell check.

A Tisket, A Tasket

Kacheekers is in the basket.  Happy May Day!

He was sitting in there so cute but, like all animals you want to take a picture of, by the time we went in the house and came back out with the camera he had gotten comfy and he wasn't interested in resuming his previous pose.   Spark's pose, I don't know.  I think it must have been one of those moves that you catch split second that look strange in the shot. 

This is the extent of our May Day celebrations, a cat in a basket.  When the kids were little we lived in a neighborhood with lots of retired people.  We would bake cookies, wrap them up in little bundles and I would load all the kids, we had child care at our house then, in the wagon and we would go around to all the houses to deliver cookies. 

She Is A Lot Like Grandma Shirley

There are things my mother did that when I got older I swore I would never do.  One of her pet peeves was when I would wash dishes and leave the water on to rinse the whole time.  My mom would insist that I turn the water on and off between each and every dish.  I thought that was a dumb, time consuming thing to do and now when I do dishes I leave it running the whole time.  Does that still make me a strong willed child? 

Dancer and I were doing the dishes today, I was washing and she was drying, and I told her about Grandma Shirley's crazy rule about turning the water on and off.  She surprised me by say quite passionately, "Yes, that is the way you should wash dishes.  It drives me nuts when you leave it on the whole time and you and Dad and Spark all do it!"  Since I now have my own sink, in my own house, and leave it run the whole time, she has never seen dishes washed the other way.  Makes me think it must be something that skips to every other generation.  I know Dancer didn't learn that from my mom because she has had severe dementia since Dancer was about a year old and, while she knows Grandma Shirley, she doesn't know the real Grandma Shirley.  If Dancer has a daughter, or a son for that matter, I just might teach her to leave the water on all the time.  Oh wait, it will skip that generation.

Chicken With Rice

When I was a kid, most Sundays we would have my grandma over for dinner and my mom would always make chicken with rice.  On our birthdays we got to pick supper and every year I would pick chicken with rice, it is that good.  Some how, over the years, I have forgotten about good old chicken with rice and haven't made it very often. 

My dad was having surgery today so I made a pan of it last night to take them a meal of it.  Dancer had some and she loved it so much she said that is what she wants served at her wedding.  The rest of the pan got split into two meals and put in the refrigerator so I could grab one quick this morning.  I thought I grabbed one of them and a pack of squash but instead I grabbed both chicken containers.  When I got home this afternoon Dancer met me at the garage and asked where the chicken with rice was.  To make up for my blunder, when Dad and I were in town shopping for Spark's birthday gift, I got more ingredients to make her another pan tonight.    

I showed her how to put this simple dish together.  I told her the first rule is that you don't change the recipe.  This comfort food, not a gourmet dish.  Kind of like homemade mac and cheese, also major comfort food, don't go adding fancy stuff to it, it is meant to be pasta and cheese, no more no less.   There is no picture to go with the recipe because it is pretty much yellow and white, not the stuff that makes good pictures.

Chicken With Rice

Grease the bottom of a baking dish with butter, I use the 9X13.  Sprinkle on rice, whatever looks like a good amount, to make a thin layer.  On top of this lay chicken pieces.  Any kind of chicken, doesn't matter if it is a whole one you cut up or pieces you take out of a bag.  I used frozen chicken breast because they are the easiest.  If you use frozen thaw them a bit in the microwave or it takes a long time for them to bake.  Mix together two cans of Cream of Chicken soup and two cans of milk until smooth.  Pour over the top of the chicken making sure it gets down to all the rice or the rice won't cook it will just be hard, hot rice.  Bake at 350 degrees until chicken reaches 170 degrees.  If need be, cover with foil to get the chicken to the right temperature.

Sunday At A Glance

Dancer's breakfast.  The kids love Raisin Brand, it's the only kind they eat, going through at least a couple boxes a week.  Good thing Sam's has the two pack boxes.  Dancer puts milk on hers, drinks it off and then eats the cereal wet.  Spark drowns his and slurps while eating.  While Spark has bad manners, I think his would taste better.

Dancer had a Jr. Leader 4-H meeting this afternoon so we were off in the car yet again.  I am starting to think we should have bought a much more expensive car and less expensive house since it seems we spend more time in the car.  The meeting was in a small town where most of the stores are closed on Sundays so Spark and I ended up browsing an unclaimed freight store and a farm supply store.  Both reminded me of permanent garage sales.  The farm supply store does have a regular store part but then the whole back is consignment stuff which means junk with a few antiques thrown in.

The corn is starting to turn brown.  That means soon the roads will be full of tractors and the sound of corn dryers humming all day and night will carry across the county.

The car had so much mud on it it looked like we had been 4-wheeling, well I guess we have been on a lot of minimum maintenance roads lately.  Two kids with a hose and neither of them got wet, what are the odds of that? 

Corn for supper complements of Grandma Pat.  Have to savor every ear now since the season is all but over.

Green beans for supper, also from Grandma Pat.  Glad their garden did better than ours, which basically was a huge flop, and that they share with us.

As always, there are chores to do.  The goats have been out grazing all day and as soon as they get in the barn they are baaing for hay.  They are such Sallys, they would starve in the wild.

We are enjoying the new motion detector light Dad put up in the garage to turn on when we open the garage door.  Now with the days getting shorter we already have had a few times where we came home in the dark.  I think leaving the porch light on just screams that we aren't home so I don't like to have it on.  We also have to get out of the car and walk around outside of the garage to turn the inside garage light on, this fixes that problem as well.

Dancer and I play a few games of Racko each and every day.  Love that game.  When I was a kid a friend had it and I always wanted the game for my own but never got it.  Now that I am the parent we have the game, we even have a back up game for when this one wears out which it is close to doing.  And no, having a 57 in the first spot is not good. 

Every thing I have seen today is asking what you were doing when the attacks of 9/11 happened.  I had a house full of daycare kids, I had in home daycare from when Dancer was eight months old until she was seven.  We didn't watch t.v. or listen to the radio during the day because we were busy with playing and preschool type things.  In the afternoon Dad went to check his fantasy football stats and saw a blurb about it on the Internet.  It was several hours after it happened before we even heard it had happened.  I am surprised none of my daycare parents didn't call.  Of course, after we found out I was glued to the t.v. I remember it being such a time of unrest in the days and weeks that followed wondering if there were going to be anymore attacks.  Such a monumental event and our kids have no recollection of a pre 9/11 world, as far as they know tight security is how it has always been.

Her Maiden Voyage

All summer Dad has been watching Craig's List for a canoe and there haven't been any to be found.  Lately though there are just scads of them and we able to buy one.

Dancer and I took her on her maiden voyage and came back dry.

Spark, our self professed non canoer, and Dad went out next.

As an aside, Spark's first canoe ride was his 6th birthday.  We were up in northern Minnesota at an environmental learning center.  One of the classes we took was about voyagers and about 20 of us were in this huge canoe.  It was so big we sat, I think, four people across.  There was ice we were trying to go through so the people who were paddling would ram the canoe up on the ice, chop at it with the paddles, we would fall through and they would start all over again until we could get through this ice patch.  Spark started to panic and yell, "We are all going to die" over and over and over.  Not only was he yelling at the top of his lungs but there were cliffs on each side of the lake that his voice was echoing off of.  Since we were in absolutely no danger what so ever, and a lot of the people we were with we had just met a couple of days prior, I was frantically trying to get him to stop yelling.  No go.  We got to where we were going, did our voyager activities and Spark refused to get back into the canoe.  Dad, being the fabulous dad that he is, walked all the way back around the lake with Spark so he wouldn't have to get in the canoe.

They came back not only dry but smiling as well.

Dancer did a little fishing and, although she only caught one little, tiny hors d'oveur sized fish, she did catch a good sized salad.

Veggie Tales Apron

Made with pattern Simplicity 2319 and Bob and Larry Veggie Tale fabric.  I smile just looking at those little guys.  We have such good memories of watching the videos and sing silly songs in the car when the kids were little.   Actually we still watch them once in a while, Spark just had one out of the library last week.  The silly song on the new one wasn't as good as the old ones but it is hard to beat the Cheeseburger song, Cebu or Everybodies Got a Water Buffalo. 

This pattern has the adjustable straps where the neck strap is connected to the back ties and can be made longer or shorter.  I always think aprons have too long neck straps on them and end up putting a knot in the strap to make it shorter.  Also, since I am wearing shorts in the picture it looks like a jumper.  But we homeschool and isn't that the stereotype for homeschool moms, that we are jumper wearers?  For the record, none of my friends or I wear jumpers. 

I am going to put it in the fair next week so hope it wins a prize!  

What is left will have to wait until next year

The last week or so we have been cleaning out things that are clogging up our house to get ready for the 4-H garage sale.  Today was the garage sale so we can quit cleaning - yeah!  Every year when we have the sale I have big plans to totally go through the house and get rid of everything we don't use anymore, you know how they, the organizing zealots, say that if you haven't used in a year to get rid of it.  That is a great rule, but not very realistic for sentimental mothers.  I did do better this year and let a few more things go, all the board books, the purple rocking dinosaur, the push bike, Spark's first Halloween costume and other items that are near and dear to my heart but aren't going to make my kids little again and will just get icky and smelly with time.  We made about five trips with the van over to the garage sale sight and our house looks like we didn't get rid of anything.  Now I can start making big plans about how next year for the garage sale I am going to go through the entire house and get rid of everything we don't use anymore.

Family Ties

Dancer has this new obsession with the t.v. show Family Ties.  We get it on the Hub channel four nights a week and she rarely misses it.  Just in case she does miss one she gets the DVDs from the library to watch each season. 

Tonight she asks if I thought Dad watched Family Ties. 

I said I didn't know, what year was it from?

It was from 1984, so I told her no he wouldn't have watched it because he had stars in his eyes.

Spark pipes in quick as can be, "He had stars in his eyes because that is the year the Nintendo Entertainment System came out!"

Um, no, he was dating me.  I think ten year old boys have different priorities than 17 year old boys.  At least I hope that Dad had stars in his eyes because of me.

Excuse me???

We were all enjoying a nice dinner this past Saturday, it had been a day of hard work in the barn and then some time spent with grandma.  Spark jumped up, very abruptly and announced "Excuse me, I need to change my pants."  We all looked at each other wondering to ourselves what calamity would warrant a mid-meal change of one's drawers.

When he returned we asked what happened.  "Nothing," he replied, "my pants aren't as comfortable as my other pants."

Whew!!  Considering the thoughts racing through our heads that was a great reason to change pants.

New Year's Celebrations

Every New Year's Eve we have crab legs and frozen corn.  I don't know why the frozen corn except we did it once and now we just pull it out every year.  This year, since Dad had to work, we had them for lunch.  Oh, they are so good I wish we could afford them more than once a year.

When we were at the store picking up the crab legs I told the kids to pick out what snacks they wanted and ice cream and Reese's shell made it into the cart.  It is cool how the topping freezes solid and you can pick it up.  We also had chips, crackers, puffcorn and dip. 

We watched four movies.  Started out with Sword and the Stone and Little Mermaid, both of which we hadn't watched for a few years.  I kept looking over and expecting Dancer to be about eight years old when Little Mermaid was on.  It was a joy to watch it again.  We also got Despicable Me, bought by Spark with his Christmas money, in before midnight.  That is one funny movie.  I was surprised, I thought it looked kinda lame from the commercials. 

At midnight we took a break and watched the count down with Dick Clark.  Not the most flattering picture of Dick Clark.

We celebrated with some bubbly, Ginger Ale that is.  I love Ginger Ale, we should buy it more often.

The last movie was Hercules that end about 2:30 in the morning.  Spark didn't make it that long.  As is our tradition, he made a little camp in the living room and fell asleep.  Here are the kids on New Year's Eve I think when they must have been three and six years old.  When Spark was little, every time we were going to take his picture he would stick his tongue out like that.  We would have to take a couple to get him to keep it in. 

Today, New Year's Day, Dad slept, Spark and I played some Wii, did chores and listened to music.  Dancer, not feeling well, sat with a bucket most of the day.  She didn't need to use it thankfully and tonight she is feeling better.  Spark wanted spaghetti hotdish for supper so we made that and had it in the crock pot ready for supper when Dad got up for work.  No big excitement here. 

Sparkly Walnut Christmas Ornaments

My title of the post pretty much wrapped up the project. 

If you crack nuts during the holidays, this is a nice thing to do with the shells.  I remember as a kid we had a coffee can decorated with felt to look like Santa's boot on the coffee table and every night we would crack some nuts.  Over the years we could have made enough of these to cover several trees. 

With our kids, when they were younger, I would give them a bag of nuts and a nut cracker and they would sit and crack them for an activity to keep them busy.  There seems to be something satisfying about cracking nuts and digging out the meats, especially if you get one out whole.  We seem to be easily entertained here. 

Well, on to the ornament.  First, we cracked the walnuts open and took out the meat.  This was the hardest part as we had trouble getting the shells to crack perfectly in half, they kept wanting to break on the sides.  We had the best luck when we took a butter knife, slid it down the middle of a nut and then twisted it.

The kids spread glitter glue on the outside of the nut and then dipped them in glitter.  I thought they could paint them but they brought out the glitter instead so we went with that. 

After the glue dried we ran a line of Tacky glue along the rim of the nut, put the hanger (curling ribbon in our case) between the two halves and stuck them together.

As I was writing this, I thought that it would be cool to leave the materials out all season and have everyone assigned a color and tally them up after Christmas to see who had the most walnuts perfectly cracked.   I think we would paint them if we had this out all season or there would probably we glitter around until July. 

I have a maid!

Dancer and I were having a little chat/pep talk last night and some how this story came to mind. 

When Dancer was about three years old she was suppose to pick up toys or some other little task.  Apparently, she thought that she was way over worked and way under paid because she came out of her bedroom, stood before Dad and I who were sitting in the living room, and with her hands on her hips loudly declared that we only had her so that she would be the maid.  I remember Dad and I laughing, which turned into laughing at her and not with her, because I remember her getting even madder.  She could pitch quite the fit back then.

Talking with her now she was laughing, it just took a few years for her to join us on how funny that was.  I told her to think of three year olds she knows now and how they can't even reach the sink or run a vacuum decently.  Certainly not maid material. 

Move ahead ten years and it still would have been way cheaper, and much easier, to hire a maid compared to raising our own.  I think she got the message that her chores are to teach her how to run her own house someday and be responsible.  Even with all the chores my kids "think" they do, I could still use a maid.   For the record, everything usually expected of them can easily be done in less than 20 minutes a day.

Dad's House

This is the house that Dad lived in up until the 6th grade.

After 6th grade he moved to the area where I lived.  We lived in different towns but went to the same high school.

His parents bought this house for $17,000 40 years ago.  They sold it for $36,000 some 30 years ago.

It is for sale today for $450,000.  If the market was better I am sure it would be worth more as it started at $475,000.  Even at $400,000 more than what his parents sold it for it would be a profit of over $1,000 a month just for living in the house for 30 years.  Dancer said that Grandma and Grandpa should never have sold that house.  Spark quickly reminded her that if they hadn't he and Dancer wouldn't exist.  Isn't it amazing how someones decision to sell a house so long ago could make such a difference in what our lives are today? 

You're my little potato

When I was pregnant with Dancer, Dad would sing this song to my stomach.

You're my little potato, you're my little potato
You come from underground, you come from underground.

The world is big, so very big,
It's so new, so new to you.

You're my little potato, you're my little potato,
You come from underground.

After Dancer was born and she would cry, one of us would comfort her and sing this song which often helped to calm her down.  Dancer cried a lot when she was just a wee thing.  Looking back now I wonder if she had colic, as we would often sit up all night rocking and singing until early morning.  Early morning like 5:00 a.m. when she would sleep for a while and then I would drag myself back out of bed and start again.  Thankfully this only lasted about four months and I don't mind crying babies.  Actually I loved sitting up in the dark alone with her.  We lived in a town then and our house was part way up on a hill so I could look out the living room window at all the lights of the town and wonder who else was sitting up comforting a baby.   I had also just finished six weeks of bed rest where we worried our baby might not make it to the point where we would be up all night with her so it was a welcomed relief to have her in my arm and not my stomach anymore.

When I was pregnant with Spark I would like to say that Dad did the same thing.  He did, just not to the extent he did with Dancer.  When I was pregnant with Spark I ran a child care and by the time Dad got home at night he would take Dancer out to play and I would collapse on the couch.  Spark was also a different baby, he slept soundly and usually early in the evening.  I would get him back up to nurse again before I would go to bed.  When he got up in the middle of the night to eat, he was all business and then back to bed.  I remember sitting and rocking him after he was asleep just so I would have those memories of dark, quiet nights with my second little potato.

The Mysterious Mercury Dime

The side of our garage had gotten a bit messy and out of control this summer and so it was high time we cleaned it up.  A lot of things we just wanted to deal with later got stashed there and then the grass started to grow, which of course we couldn't mow because of all the stuff piled there. 

When Dad needed the trailer to haul hay he stacked up a bunch of boxes of glass jars on the part that is a cement slab.   A couple of the jars had broken on the cement so I had a box out there and was going to pick up the shards before we mowed and transferred them out into the yard.  As I bent over to pick up a piece, right on top of the ground was a tarnished dime.  Excellent, I thought, if I have to do this undesirable job at least I will be a dime richer for doing so.  Just as I was about to slip the dime into my pocket before the kids coveted it, I saw it looked a little different.  I said to Dad, "Isn't this one of those Mercury dimes?"  

As an aside I found this bit of information: Technically they're called Liberty Head dimes but they almost immediately got the nickname "Mercury" dimes because Miss Liberty's winged cap looks similar to the one worn by the Greek god Mercury.  One of those learn something new every day facts.

I remembered as a kid my dad had a whole bunch of them and he kept them in slender, white, metal cigar tubes.  It was always exciting when we would get one in our change because he would get out the cigar tube and either my brother or I would get to put the dime in.  I don't think I have seen a Mercury dime since then. 

Dad said that he had one as a kid he used as a ball marker for golf.   When he got up the green, if his ball was in the way of other players putting, he would put the dime down to mark where his ball was. Some how there was suppose to be luck in the dime and that would make you golf better, or at the least make your golfing partners golf worse.  He doesn't have his lucky thin dime anymore and hasn't had one since he was a kid. 

I took the dime in the house and rubbed a little baking soda on it and sure enough, it was a 1943 Mercury dime. 

Now where it came from, we have no idea.  I found it laying right on top of the cement slab.  Not covered with dirt, or grass, or any other debris. We use to have our duck pen on the slab so it has been hosed off several times so it couldn't have been laying there for years and we just didn't notice it.  However it got there, and I assume we will never know, it was worth picking up.  I looked up the value and it probably worth about $2.00 - $3.00 since it has a little nick on the bottom rim.  With no mint mark and uncirculated it could have been worth up to an exciting $475. 

Peanut butter tomato toast

Peanut butter tomato toast is one of our favorite ways to eat tomatoes.  The moistness of the tomato blends perfectly with the melty peanut butter.  Mmmmm, summer at it's finest. 

This was a regular breakfast at my house growing up and I thought the whole world ate tomatoes and toast this way.  I was surprised to find out they didn't.  After all, I grew up in a neighborhood where one of the old guys ate radish sandwiches and drank thick buttermilk by the glassful (ewww), so we were the normal eaters in the neighborhood.  Now when I mention it though people give me the sideways look......that is until they try it.

Pictures we have lost or never gotten

When I graduated from high school my parents gave me a 35mm Cannon camera.  I love taking pictures, even taking a photography course in college.  It wasn't part of my major and I don't even think it counted as a needed general ed.  The camera took awesome pictures.  I miss playing with film speeds, f-stops etc. with the new digital cameras.  We have a great camera now but taking a good picture with it really isn't such a great feat, just point and shoot if you switch the buttons to automatic.  However, the new digital cameras pretty much are fool proof when it comes to getting your picture captured.

When Dad and I got married we took a trip up the north shore of Lake Superior.  We snapped pictures all the way up.  We went into Canada for the day to a place called Old Fort William and took scads of pictures.  At some national park we walked an insanely long and slanted trail to a place called the "Devil's Kettle" where water ran into the ground and disappeared.  I don't know why they called the Devil's Kettle, perhaps it was believed that the water ran into the river Styx or somewhere just as evil.  I remember saying to Dad that I sure glad that we had the camera with so that we wouldn't have to walk the long trail ever again.  We got back down to Gooseberry Falls and kept snapping away.  Then it dawned on me that we sure had taken a lot of pictures and still hadn't run out of film.  A quick once over of the camera told us that we hadn't put any film in it.  We were newlyweds in love, I guess checking for film wasn't on our radar.  We did learn our lesson though and always checked to make sure we film in the camera.

The next time we lost pictures was Dancer's first Christmas.  I took all these great photos of her opening her presents.  She was just the cutest little thing and since her birthday is early January she was walking by Christmas and had a good idea that ripping off the wrapping paper was fun and it made her parents giddy.  She hammed it up for the camera and we were excited to capture her every move on film.  I was quickly snapping away and soon needed new film.  I rewound the film in the camera and opened the back to take the old film out and put a new one in.  There wasn't a new film by me, we kept them in the fridge, did everyone do that?  Remember how the film had that little tail that stuck out the end so when they went to develop it in the dark room they would just pull the tail and out it would come.  Not opening the film in a dark room meant that the film would be exposed to light and be forever ruined.  I set the film down on the floor and got up to get the new film.  Quick as a wink Dancer snatched up that film roll, her little fingers grabbed the protruding tail and she pulled like she was opening a present.  Grinning she sat among the twisted film.  I was so devastated.  It wasn't like we could do it all over again, the memories were lost forever.  I can, however, still see her sitting there beaming up at me. 

The new era of digital has made both of these scenarios highly unlikely.  Now the worst that can happen is we can misplace the memory stick or technology will make them obsolete to where we can't retrieve the images.

As I reread this I see that I put the new era of digital.  It isn't all that new anymore.  This was made obviously to me a few years ago when Spark and I took Grandma to the little airport by our house so she could fly home to Arkansas.  The airport is small enough that you can walk right up the security check point and see into the living room size gate before passengers board the plane.  If you want to see the plane take off you can watch from the parking lot.  Post 9-11 though they have all the security screening equipment.  There was a sign just before the screening part where they run your carry on bag through that said to hand your camera to the security person so that pictures weren't erased from your camera.  Spark reads the sign and asks, "what is film?"

Downsizing

I hate clutter and I hate junk, however, we seem to have a plethora of stuff. When we moved to our current house, we thought that we may still have a few more kids. That, obviously, didn't happen. I saved, or so it sure seems now, everything baby and toddler. Another problem we have encountered was when we moved into our house it was very busy time in our lives. We only moved 25 minutes from our last home so we didn't start over with a new life here, we just drove a lot. Dad was also working extra hours then and things got pushed aside. Our old house sold really fast, 12 days from putting the for sale sign up and us having a signed purchase agreement in hand. We thought we were going to have more time to get rid of things before we moved but since that didn't happen we moved a lot of mess with us. All the boxes were put into the garages and sheds and we slowly brought in what we thought we needed for the short term. I liked the house rather empty so we never got around to unpacking a lot of those boxes. Over the years the house has been filling in little by little to where it is full and we still have garages full of boxes. What we have ended up with is a huge storage unit with a mortgage.

Next weekend our 4-H club is having a garage sale that is the same weekend of the city wide garage sales. People come to our little corner of the world from near and far to see if they can't snap up a good deal. To prepare for this, we spent the afternoon in one of the garages and went through a good portion of the boxes and either boxed it back up for the sale or threw it away. Actually with the size garbage can we have it is going to take a few weeks to throw it all away. We did take two van loads and a truck load of treasures over to the peoples house who are hosting the garage sale. We are not done yet, I hope to do some more purging during the week and getting that on the sale as well.

The barn was also downsized today. We went from 15 goats to eight! It sure seemed quiet out there tonight when we were doing chores.