It's Melting

I am a little sad about this. I am letting the garden go. It's free to go find a new home where it's about 25 degrees cooler and rains every once in a while. Unlike here where it's 99 or 100 every day (this isn't supposed to be happening yet!) and only drizzles once a month. All I had left were the tomato plants and peppers. The grasshoppers eventually did find my garden and, wouldn't you know it, they love the peppers this year. Last year they left the peppers and basil alone. This year... not so much. They aren't too bad on the tomatoes. However, the tomatoes are producing miniature red blobs (roma & early girl). The Roma's are like grape tomatoes and the early girls are about the size of golf balls. My brother gave us some tomatoes and they look normal. I'm a little depressed, but hopefully in September we will plant some different things that will actually do something. It's too dry and hot here. I'm tired of wasting water on them.

In other news, my sister in law is coming over with her little girl and we are going to hang out while it's only 89 outside this morning. I've got to go fill up the pool. I hear Rose waking up so I better get things going around here.

See ya Manana,
Mama

He Brought Home Dinner

Gather 'round ye peoples of the Internet for I've a got a little story.
Monday night T walked in while I was in the bedroom folding clothes (huge surprise!) and asked the kids why Mama doesn't answer her phone. I cringed. I walked into the kitchen and found T covered from head to toe in mud. I'm serious. I wasn't even sure this man was in the right house. He had his shirt bundled up, obviously holding a treasure. Luckily this was all a total surprise to me since I had abandoned my phone about 15 minutes before he came in. He only tried warning me five times. Oh, but what did he have in that shirt? It was not the heart of a grizzly bear. It wasn't a cute puppy. It wasn't even gold that he found buried under a ton of silt. It was seven bass. (Fish, not like bass guitars.) I scrambled around and found them a slightly better home than that blue plaid shirt (that may never come clean).

They all jumped in my stock pot and I tried to rinse them as best I could. They were covered in mud, too.

(Side note: I had shined up the sink, cleared the counters and mopped  swiffered the floors in the previous two hours. Then came the mud. And fish. Happy-happy-joy-joy!)

Then I got the question I dread. "Do you have a sharp knife?" Yeah.... No. I would actually love to have one but I'm incredibly cheap and refuse to purchase a really good knife. So I get out this gigantic knife that is a piece of crap and hand it to T. "No! I hate that knife. Anything but that one. Do you have a fillet knife?" Yeah.... sorta. Only this fillet knife is from the same set that the gigantic crap knife is from. Worthless. I suggest he try using his hunting knife that my Opa gave him. He tries, but it needs to be sharpened. I form a brilliant plan.

"How about I call L? He might have something we can borrow." L is my brother-in-law. He and my sister live about five minutes away. I give him a call and ask if he's busy. He answers no, but sort of hesitantly. I ask my questions. He says they'll be over in a few minutes. We don't usually call anyone on the spur of the moment to come over and really I was just asking "oh-my-gosh-there's-7-fish-in-my-sink! I-don't-have-a-knife-that's-worth-a-darn-What-do-I-do?" They offered. I accepted.

Thankfully, I have a pretty awesome brother-in-law and my sister's not too bad either. They brought over their electric knife (I know, it's not how the old folks taught us) and it was so easy. Looking. I didn't attempt anything, but they sure made it look easy! 
      
Apparently we need an electric knife, larger cutting board, a decent set of knives and L on speed dial. He always shows up when we need assistance in "wild life cleaning". Like when T shot a deer, then a hog and now the fish. (L has all the awesome cleaning stuff.) Some day I will be prepared with a sharp knife, super-sized pans, zippered bags and, of course, food. Because all that work makes for a hungry crew.
So, now I have three zippered bags of fish in my freezer. I fed my guests some enchiladas for their help. They had just finished a two mile bike ride before I called them (are they crazy? It's hot out there). I also served up some ice cold lemonade. (Thrilling details.)

Another side note: T caught the bass with his bare hands. His friend was draining his stock tank to clean it up (he's doing lot's of clearing/cleaning) and a bunch of fish were just waiting to live in my freezer. I have a celebratory photo (currently my desktop background) of him standing in the middle of the tank, a fish in each hand doing sort of a double fist pump. It's pretty cool. Believe me. 

That was Monday night. Tuesday night... not nearly as eventful.
Mama

A New Baby

This weekend one of our cows had her first baby. 

My goodness, isn't he adorable?

Here they are resting in the shade.

I think I'll go find some shade, too.
Mama

Monday

The weekend is over. I've held back on all kinds of cleaning and now it's an ugly Monday. So, I have 347 loads of laundry to do (that's a rough estimate). I guess I'm used to that though. Saturday we had our pictures done. We drove over to my family's land (a whole 6 minutes away) and put on our smiles. The kids did great (we totally bribed them with promises of ice cream) until about half way through. Ry decided he was done taking orders about where to stand or who to look at. So while the rest of us sat on a rusty old wagon wheel thing he stood five feet in front of us, crossed his arms and glared at Jason. He and his wife were amused. (Thank goodness!) We worked through it and got a few more good pictures. In Ry's defense, it was 100 degrees, Mama forgot to bring any water to drink and we kept walking in circles. Luckily, my brother came down with his daughter (who is the same age as Rose) and he had a drink! The kids smiles morphed from huge exaggerated grins to barely turning the corners of their lips up. Rose constantly had her thumb in her mouth and I kept pulling it out and tickling her. My hair was everywhere! At some point I just threw it into a ponytail and said to heck with it. We had a really good time. I felt like we had a personal paparazzi entourage following us around. Jason is a great guy, very nice and very patient!

our first photo shoot, 2 years ago

If you are in Texas (specifically central Texas) I would highly suggest him. The great thing about using Jason is he gives you a CD of all the pictures so you can do whatever you want with them. He will even print packages for you. I really love the fact that we get to choose where we get our pictures done. No studio with a fake background. We literally had cows in the background in some of our shots. I'll post some pictures when I get the CD in the mail. I'm so excited to see how they turned out.

Me and D. 2 years ago.

Let's all have an awesome Monday,
Mama

Friday Randomness

Our family portraits are tomorrow evening. I am still unsure of what I am wearing, although I do have something in mind. I have no clue as to what I'm going to dress Rose in, D and Ry have what they need. I would have like to find Ry a new shirt, but with my stinginess on paying shipping and the fact I didn't find anything in town means he'll end up wearing the shirt he wore for Easter. Who knows, I might be able to squeak into the other town tomorrow and see if I can find anything. (I just hope the clearance racks cooperate with me.) Most likely I will end up freaking out and T will say that everything's fine. OH! I just remembered I have to get the boys' hair trimmed. Which means T will need a trim too. Who trims their hair? Me. Cause we are "thrifty" like that. I do a good job sometimes, too.

I got a new book in the mail yesterday. It's certainly not something I would usually read, but it was recommended to me (after I asked for a book suggestion) and I'm going to give it a shot.

My veggie garden is fading away. I'm down to just tomatoes and peppers. The peppers are being stingy and not really doing anything. This fall I'm going to plant some other things. And we are moving the garden (or some chickens) to combat the bugs. Hopefully our fall garden (which we've never done before) will produce better than the spring/summer garden. Maybe I can get my roses planted this weekend. I think I'm just going to move them to larger pots. They don't like the soil out here.

I think this concludes the blogging for this week. I've some kids to entertain, some towels to wash and some chicken fried steak to make. If I'm lucky I'll even get to vacuum and put the boys' clothes in their closets! How exciting!! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
Mama