Rock Garden

So what do you think a mountain bike trail that has a location called the "Rock Garden" looks like? I would not know because that is certainly not my cup of tea... But Rod enjoys mountain biking. He goes with a group of people almost every Wednesday to different places biking. They went to Hamilton Creek this week and came home with a new good size bruise from a wreck at the Rock Garden. In the middle of the night I heard him say ouch two different times when he rolled over. I have a picture of his back and bruise but I will spare you...

Pictures

I have talked to a photographer about coming to the land to take family pictures. I have a few ideas of places that I want some taken but I want to look for more locations. So Rod and I went out looking for places where the sun would be in a good spot during the evening hours when she will be coming. I think I have found two things - the first is a good picture taking spot - the second a little work for Rod... I think the down trees need to be cleaned up a little before she comes. I guess if I am honest with myself, the third is to finish shaving Sugar so that we might be able to have the dogs in a few of the pictures.

What do you want to be when you grow up? A Ditch Digger

Who knew that Rod aspired to be a ditch digger? I don't really think he wanted to be one, but he certainly picked this as his first project with his new toy. He brainstormed and designed his drain. Now he has two gutter downspouts, the floor drain in the mechanical room, the drain from the flower box, and any runoff all going into his drain pipe that he ran to the back of the yard. As usual his #1 audience member that watches him work was right there with him - Sadie!

Tina's business expands

Tina has lost chickens over the last year to old age, the dogs, and we think a coyotee. She is down to only 10 laying hens and some of them are getting to the age of no longer producing eggs. She has saved some of the money that she has earned and reinvested in her business this week. So on June 28th we get a call from the post office at 6:30 to say we have a package. Yes, you can ship live baby chicks through the mail. They were born on the 25th and shipped on the 26th and arrived on the 28th. Rod and I woke Tina up and headed to the post office before work. Through the entire process she only lost 1 baby chick that didn't make it.

Ocoee meets the Hiwassee

Since 2003 we have had a yearly tradition of going on a camping trip with 3 other couples. There are a few simple rule..

1. we always have blueberry pancakes
2. we always bring sprite with us
3. we never bring any kids

We have been many different places and this year took us to the a campground that sat on the spot where the Ocoee River and the Hiwassee meet. After living in the campers for over 200 days, Rod and I decided that we would just take the tent :-) We went down the Ocoee on Saturday - Rod, Charles, Ken, and Scott in tubes, Bobbie and I in a canoe, and Heather and April each had their own kayaks. Ken kept up with the sprite tube. chjw.shutterfly.com - to see our pictures from previous trips

It's here! It's here!

Christmas morning.. not exactly, but Rod's new toy was delivered! After buying a backhoe from a construction sale, it was a week long wait until they delivered it. Since we were an individual buying it rather than a business, he took it to Nashville Ford Tractor and they checked it all out and gave it a tune up for us. Since Rod was at work, I had to get the crash course of everything he is to do before each use. I really tried by best to remember all that he said to tell Rod...

Little tractor........BIG tractor


First task was to move the extra sand that was in the front yard. He will use this sand to build a horse shoe pit.

Father's Day Weekend

Father's Day weekend - how do we spend it? Saturday my Dad and Rod (obviously both Fathers) spend the day working on the bead board again. They worked and finished all of the remaining bead board. This section had 2 ceiling fans that they had to work around.




While they were doing that, Mom and I were working on more painting that was left downstairs, Tina was cleaning, and Tori was painting trim upstairs. Unfortunately... I can't say that we finished the painting, there is still more to do.





The only non-workers of the day.... the dogs


The finished bead board on the back porch looks great!


Later in the evening Mom, Dad, Mike, Christy, and Logan all came over to celebrate Father's Day with a grilled steak and chicken dinner.

On Sunday just the family went to Nashville Shores. We enjoyed a relaxing day without doing any real work... it was a nice weekend.

Gravel - 125 TONS worth

Ever been to my house? Were you ever here after all the rain? Well, guess what! We have put 125 TONS of gravel on the driveway... Unbelievable how much better the drive is. We had them to a 4" pull all the way down the driveway. This is in addition to the 100 tons that were done about 4 weeks ago. So now the driveway is passable by all types of vehicles!

Bow and Arrow

Tori's youth group has a summer contest every year called the Incursion. They are broken down into groups and get points for different things. One item is each group is responsible for the "game" of the week. Tori's group was the first up in the game category and they had to have a game for this Wednesday youth group. Tori came up with the idea of shooting arrows at water balloons. Rod and Tori made 6 bows from PVC pipe, used some of the pink insulation as backdrops and filled up water balloons. My Dad helped make the hooks for the balloons. According to Rod it was funny watching them. Tori hit the target with both of her arrows but didn't pop a balloon. Only 1 person (a girl) popped a balloon!!!

Another Tori driving story

We had 5 loads of gravel delivered today. Rod was using the tractor this afternoon smoothing out the gravel and the tractor ran out of gas. I picked Rod up, brought him to the top to get a gas can and left to pick Tori up from Basketball practice. Fastforward a trip to walmart in the mix and it is now 9:30 and we are back home. I dropped Tori and her friend Paige off at the Toyota to feed the horses and drive it back to the top. They just came in laughing... Tori couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on so they drove down the the barn with the caution lights on hitting the brakes often to be able to see..

RIP Diamond

At 6:30 this morning I am sitting at the kitchen nook table starting my laptop to check on work. I look over at Diamond's cage and see that he doesn't look right... On Thursday of last week he shed and the skin was all in 1 piece. That is a great sign of a healthy snake. So we are really not sure what happened. We measured the skin and in the 4 or 5 years we have had him he has grown from 7" to 17". So by 7:30 this morning, I am digging a grave for a snake. I know most of you think I am crazy, but this is one of Tori's favorite pets. Never, never, never dull around my house...

Backhoe 101

Mom and Dad saw a construction sale and kept telling us we needed to go look. We bought 2 sticks of 42" culvert; 4 sticks of 12" culvert; and 4 sticks of 10" culvert. So that was not too bad but then we also bought a new piece of equipment for the land... a 1998 Ford 555D 4wheel drive Backhoe. Rod spent several hours this afternoon going back and forth of if we should buy it. The list of things he could do with it is long! So when it finally came down to it we decided to go ahead and buy it and figure we can always sell it at a later time. Here is a picture of him getting the 101 instruction of the basics.

Bull Riding

Tori went on Saturday night to help at the Cheatham County Flood Benefit at Owen Farm. She had a good time riding the mechanical bull. Russell is a guy from her 4H honor club that was running the bull riding machine. Tori was riding on full buck and according to Russell she was the best one that rode that night. I guess all the horseback riding had her prepared to hang on with her legs. She did have a couple of bruises the morning and she skinned her knuckle.

She also had to work the inflatables with 4 boys from juvenile detention. She said they were shocked when she told them they could not cuss around her. They were amazed that "you don't EVER cuss?" To which she replied "NO". Then to add to their frustrations.. she also would not let them smoke and made them put their cigarettes out. I'm sure their community service would have been more fun if they didn't have someone just as strict as their jail warden to work with :-) Tori is such a good teenager!

Happy 18th Birthday Zac!!

Zac officially became an adult on Thursday! It was his 18th birthday. We threw him a small party to help celebrate. The guest list included: Bobbie, Scott, Seth and Wyatt; Joy, Samantha and Dennis; Mom and Dad; Rick; Hayley and Zac; and my family. Tori stayed up very late on Wednesday night to bake him a cake. I don't think Zac had any idea she had planned on making this large of a cake and certainly not in the shape of a deer. I think it turned out great!

Mission

GSY is Tori's youth group - Good Springs Youth. They go on a mission trip each year. This year several of their opportunities fell through because of one thing or another. Their youth pastor then realized that Nashville has had a crisis of its own and their mission was local this year. So they decided to stay here and "Serve Nashville"! Different groups of kids went to the Nashville Rescue Mission, Habitat for Humanity, and the Bethesda Center. Monday my work gave me the day off to do Mission work. Tori and I served together at a location in Ashland City called the Bethesda Center. They are a thrift store that also has food for needy families.

Because they had close to 30 teens volunteering in 3 different locations, Jeremy needed additional adults to take groups to the different places. On Tuesday I decided to take a day off from work to go back for a 2nd day. Tori went all 3 days. By the end of the three days there were 39 different people who served in 4 cities and over 500 hours of service was donated!!!

Sometimes it is hard for my kids to understand how some people struggle. I try to help teach them that they are so fortunate to live in a home where food is plentiful, the bills are paid, and most importantly they have 2 parents that love and care for them.

Here are some pictures from the week at the Bethesda Center - certainly fun was a part of the day.




Look at all the food on the shelves:


Lunch Time


There are pictures of the kids trying on clothes... I will spare you!!!!

Kristyn and Kyles Wedding

On Saturday night we went to Rod's cousin Kristyn's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding with a great reception. Tina was the most excited about it. She took a long time to get ready and had several meltdowns before we left the house. First Tori wanted to wear the shoes Tina wanted (they were Tori's shoes after all). Then she had to change her dress because she didn't have shoes to match. After rolling her hair she didn't think it looked good; the straps were too long on her dress; etc. We finally left the house and they both looked great. Unfortunately we did not get a family picture, but here are some of the kids.

Tori and Tina with their great-grandfather Papa


Waiting on the wedding to start:


I don't have a good picture of the bride and groom.. this was the best I was able to get


Tori with her great-grandmother Maga


Tina with Maga


Tori and Kristyn


Tina, Kristyn, and Tatum (Tina loves Tatum!)

Where oh where could my eggs be????

Tina's egg business has its ups and downs. The ups are when she knows where the eggs are and the downs are when she thinks they are not laying or she can't find the eggs. Rod took the underpinning off from the campers and look what we found.......

(Don't worry, we threw all of these out since we didn't know how old they were)

Cleaning the campers

In case you forgot what "home sweet home" looked like, here is the outside view right before we started the cleanup.


Tina is taking care to wipe everything down. The dust was horrible - the entire time we either had lots of mud or lots of dust!


And it looks good as new!!

Camper for sale

The kid's camper was nice, clean and everything worked on it when I bought it. Even after living in it for 6 months, it did not take us long to get it cleaned up and ready to take pictures. I still had to fix a plumbing redirection I had done to connect the campers to the well and make it through freezing temps. I will be listing it on Craigslist this week.

Paid Days Off aka Vacation and horse poop

My work does not have vacation, holiday, sick days. We have a single bucket of time called 'paid days off'. So last week I requested to be off on Thursday, Friday, Monday and Tuesday. On Monday night I thought about it and I really had several items at work that I felt needed attention and I decided that I should go to work on Tuesday rather than take the day off. Hayley had spent the night and Tori and Tina were going to go to Nashville Shores with her. My plan was to get up early, leave the house at 6:40, take them to Mt. Juliet to Zac and he was going to drive them to Nashville Shores when they open at 10:00. I was going to work until 4:00 and go pick them up after work.

So instead here is how my day went:

Got up on time at 5:15 and took my shower
Got Tori up at 5:45 for her shower
Had all the kids up, ready and loaded into the car at 6:30!! We were AHEAD of schedule
6:35 - arrived at the horse barn to feed the horses and goats... and here is where it all went to heck in a hand basket. The horses were out and the gate was wide open.

So now it is 6:40 in the morning and I am driving all around looking for evidence of where the horses have been (aka looking for poop). We check the boy horse that lives about 1/2 a mile from the house and they were not visiting him, we drove down New Hope Road and found some droppings almost to the golf course. So now we are thinking that sure is green grass over there and I pulled in. Walked up to the club house and asked them if they had seen any horses. You should have seen Tori's truck in the parking lot compared to the golfer's cars... (remember it always has mud all over it and now the tailgate is off, and it was loaded down with trash that needs to go to the dump)

We drive and drive around and around in circles looking. I called Robertson County animal control and Cheatham county animal control. The next step is we headed to Dollar General for poster board to start making signs. At this point it is now about 9:30. While the kids are making their posters I called my vet friend Denise to ask her if she had heard anything and she suggested to call the sheriff's department. So I made a call to them and bingo... a lady named Charlotte Sanders had called in and said she found two lost horses!!!! We were in luck. I called her and asked if they were a dapple gray and a palomino and they were. She was nice enough to get them off of New Hope road and put them into her neighbor's pasture. We went over there (10:00 now) to try to get them and the man with the key to the padlock on the gate was not home.

About 2 hours earlier I had decided I didn't see myself working today anyways :-)

So we went onto Nashville Shores. After 4 hours in the sun we headed back home to try again to find the person with the key. We did and Tori and I walked the horses 1.5 miles from where they were back to the barn with Mom and Tina following behind us to keep traffic from flying past us and spooking the horses. I could not have asked them to behave any better on that trip back. They knew their joy ride was over and were ready to go back home. I don't have a picture but just close your eyes and see Tori and I walking with two horses down New Hope Road....

Double Play!!!!

Last night was one of Tina's last softball games. They lost again (they have not won a game yet) but Tina made a single handed double play! She played 2nd base, caught the pop fly and tagged the girl that ran from first!

And here she is with the game ball!

My Pantry

On one of the many trips to the hardware store Rod bought me some organizers for the pantry. I love them. He tediously put them up with a ton of screws to make sure I could really load them down and they would not fall... Problem is we are tired and are at the point of making mistakes. He should have checked after the 1st screw... yep you guessed it - the screws were to long. I think we will be able to knock the raised part off, wood putty them, and put another coat of paint on the doors.

Oh, those beautiful steps

Rod and Dad worked very hard to get the steps going down from the deck done last week so that we could have them ready for the occupancy letter. On Sunday while moving a load from the container to the house Tori's truck was in my way. So Shelli said "I will move it" but Tori jumped out and said no let me. The last person to drive Tori's truck was Rod so the seat was put back and Tori did not adjust it. She put the truck in reverse to back out of the way. When she thought she was close to the steps she was trying to brake. But since the seat was too far back she didn't think her brakes were working right (they have been losing fluid) so she stomped on them very hard. The problem is she stomped on the wrong pedal.... Luckily she hit the post and not the retaining wall which she could have went flying over! Rod took it pretty well and only cried when Tori wasn't looking. My Dad couldn't even come over to look. He just waited until Rod got them repaired.

The handrail leaning

The broken 4X6 post that was concreted into the ground

Her tailgate was down... it took the full brunt of the impact. Luckily the truck was not hurt other than this. Rod had previosly put a dent in her tailgate from hauling the trailer (another reverse accident when the tailgate was down) So at least now she can stop pointing out where Rod dented the tailgate.

And now the repair starts. Monday morning was a trip to the hardware store for Rod and Tori for a new post and more bags of concrete. He strapped the post to a tree in order to get it setting right in the hole before he started pouring the concrete in.

Rod thinks he is going to use this small hammer to move the post....


So if the small hammer doesn't work, you go to the shed to see what else is available...


And now he moves the post that was not replaced back into alignment...


A few more pics of the work that was done...


And now they are back to close to new...

Tori wrote in the concrete at one of the posts "Compliments of Tori"


and Tina wrote "Tina says STOP"