Awesome Student!

Awards Day was Tuesday for Tina.

I was extremely proud of her for the academic award she received. She had the highest GPA in ADVANCED Language Arts for her class. What an accomplishment and to think she is my child!!! I am NOT a language person which is why I am a computer programmer. You don't have to know grammar or how to spell to be a programmer :-)

There were several band awards. She told me she was telling the girl she was sitting by that she guessed she was not getting an award. Then Mr. Stevens picked up the last trophy for Most Outsanding Woodwind... and it goes to Christina Cagle! She was very suprised. This was more special because this is Mr. Stevens last year teaching band at her school.





Tina received the "all around" student award from Mr. Buck. As her first male teacher, he has ended up being one of her all time favorites. Below is a picture of her receiving her award. What he put on the award was that Tina was a "Awesome Student"

Bermuda Triangle?

I was telling this story to a friend of mine and he asked "is there a bermuda triangle over middle TN that I don't know about?"...

I am home alone again in the middle of the day. As my normal routine when I am at home, I am taking a shower during my lunch time. (This way I have hot water!) I am taking my shower in the master bathroom shower. I am in the process of shaving my legs and all the sudden BOOM and something hits me in the head. After the initial shock I start to figure out what just happened. The shaving cream can exploded. It splattered shaving cream all over all 4 walls of the shower, the ceiling, and ME! As it flew across the shower it hit me in the head and then hit the glass. Luckily it didn't break the glass enclosure.

Here is a picture of the can - you can see the split down the side


and some of the walls


Of course once I got all the shaving cream off my head, I had to finish shaving my legs... so the swipe across the wall is where I had to get some shaving cream to finish :-)


and one last picture of the oposite wall

Looking like a fool - but no one has a camera!

I am very good at telling stories about Rod, Tori, and Tina. Normally if the story involves me, it is something that I am mad about - (normally Rod, one of the animals or during the building process - the builder).

Since there is NOT a picture to go along with this story, I will go ahead and tell on myself this morning.

Some background information: First the chickens are out. We let them out during the day and normally shut them up at night to make sure nothing gets them. Last night we forgot. Tina's baby chicks have grown and they are out as well. There is something about the younger chicks that get the dogs in a tizzy sometimes.

Second: I am working from home today (See Mother's Day post below as to why). Normally when I work from home, the house is empty by 6:45. I will wait to get a shower, get ready until my lunch time.

Now to the story. It is about 7:00 and I am sitting in the living room with my laptop and I have already started work for the day. I am however, still in my PJ's. (which means just a t-shirt and panties) I am working away and I realize that I am hearing some kind of commotion outside. I get up and look out the window to see Abby, Sugar, and Sadie chasing chickens. I run outside, put on my work boots and run over there yelling at them. I am sure I looked like a crazy fool. The dogs know they are not supposed to do this to the chickens and they scatter, the pig comes over and seems to say "are you going to feed up", and the chickens are saying "thank you", and I am saying "GET ON THAT PORCH RIGHT NOW" to the dogs. I am still mad as heck and yelling at them. Once I get back to the porch I realize how stupid I must look. I am standing there in a t-shirt, showing my panties, and muddy work boots. I am SO, SO, SO glad Mark (the guy working on the culvert) didn't show up this morning unexpectedly!!!!!!

So there is my story of me doing something stupid and looking like a fool. There are many more, but since I have creative liberty on the blog and Rod rarely posts.. most of the stories feature him rather than me :-)

Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day - Tori and Tina are the most amazing kids! If you are a mother, you will totally understand that it is the hardest, most frustrating, most rewarding job in the world. I would not have it any other way. They make me love, laugh, cry, yell, smile and every other emotion that there is. But what they do the most is fill up my life with joy. Time is going by too quickly and I look at them and wonder where my little girls went. They are beautiful young ladies now and sometimes I long for them to be 3 or 4 again.

So here is what we did for Mother's Day:

Breakfast in bed is normally what they do for me. This year was different because we planned to have breakfast with my Mom. Tori had spent the night with the girls in her youth department at her youth pastor's house. So she came home at 6:45 to bring me a donut and flowers. Tina got up with Tori and supplied my favorite morning drink - no not coffee - but a diet coke is what I want for caffeine. Tori stopped on her way home to pick the flowers from the roadside. I asked if she "stole" them and she replied - "I don't think the were any ones, they were just on the side of the road".


Around 9:30 we headed to Mom's house for a good ole country breakfast - country ham, sausage, hash brown casserole, fried potatoes, fried eggs, homemade biscuits, strawberries, cantaloupe, red eye gravy, and brown gravy. It was YUMMY even if we would all be thirst from all the salt the rest of the day :-)



While we were waiting to eat, Tori decided to try to french braid my hair for the first time. Certainly with practice she will be good at it. Over the years I have done many unique braids on Tori, Tina's and... Kaylee (Tori's horse) hair.



Christy, Mom, and I


Back Row - Christy, Mom, and I
Front Row - Aunt Sandra, and Granny


After we ate and made a few pictures at Moms, my family was ready to head to the Tennessee Renaissance Festival. Tori and Tina both have costumes that Mom made for them a couple of years ago and they dress up every year.


At the festival we saw several of the shows, Tori got a henna tattoo, Tina rode the swings, we bought Tori and ear cuff, Tina a heart ring, and I got a puzzle ring for me and Rod's Mother, Laine. We also ate a fair share of junk food!

Here is a series of pictures from that part of the day










After we left the festival it was about 5:30 and we were close to where Laine and Shelton live. So we decided to call and drop in on them to give Laine the ring we bought her. We arrived to them sitting on their front porch waiting for us. They were excited to see us and began digging in their garden for me some plants. I am not ready for all that she wants to give me, but I took a few plants that I knew I could get into the ground. We enjoyed eating dinner and desert with them and stayed until about 8:30.

Rod and Laine in her back yard


Laine and Shelton with their beloved shovel :-)


While in the garden, Tina picked me some of the most beautiful Roses that Laine had to add to my Mother's Day. She even scattered rose petals for me to walk on. The roses were beautiful and still look amazing sitting on my kitchen ledge.



Now the day up to his point has been great... As soon as we left there Rod's car started acting up. He thinks it is something to do with the intake gasket. We are over an hour from home and Rod keeps on driving. At this point we are probably down to 3 cylinders in the car. For a good portion of the way he has to keep it in 4th gear to keep it from sputtering and dying on us. It takes us a long time but we do make it to the house. At this point all you can do is laugh. So looks like I am another couple of days stuck at home because he will have to get it worked on and while he is doing that he will be driving my suburban. I could take Tori's truck, but by the time I take her to school, Tina to school, get to work, and reverse all of that, I am on the road more than I need to be and I could just be sitting at the house working.

Seeding the Front Yard

If you have kept up with the culvert saga... no new news... we are just waiting on it to dry up down there so the next phase can start.

Since there is not any work to be down down there, we started on 1/2 of the front yard. Saturday morning started at 7:00 as I got up and headed to buy some plants for out front. While in Rivergate I picked up our two new workers that we are trying out. TJ is 18 and the son of one of my friends girlfriends. Jase is one of our friends Nephews and he is 13 or 14 (I can't remember which). Both were excited to have the opportunity to come up here and make some money working.

Rod and I had actually started on Friday night dragging all the limbs up to two stumps to start a fire. He started this fire on Friday night around 6 and it actually burned until Monday morning.






On Saturday it was all hands on deck working (with the exception of Tina who went to a friends house and chose not to come home until after all the work was complete)



Jase and Tori spent most of their time raking the rocks up and hauling them out of the yard, then they raked the topsoil, seeded the grass, and spread the nasty, wet, moldy straw... Jase said that raking rocks was the strangest thing he has ever been asked to do.





We have been saving stones and bringing them up to the house for a year now. Some of the have been small enough for the little tractor and some of them required the backhoe. TJ and Rod worked on sidewalk. It took a long time to figure out the placement of the stones, get them level and spread the topsoil (that was wet, clumpy, and heavy)

In between all of this help, I was inside cooking lunch. One of the perks of working up here is I almost always feed the help :-) Nicole, a family friend that Tori was babysitting, was willing to come inside with me to help me cut up homemade french fries. Then we patted out some burgers and got ready to grill. Abby decided that she would sneak upstairs and snag a burger from the counter.. luckily she only got 1!!!!

After lunch the rain came for a little bit but it was not too much were we couldn't finish. In the end we got the sidewalk done, the part of the yard from the front porch around to the side steps seeded and straw put down, and my plants planted in front of the house. Make me feel much better about the look of the front of the house.

We will work over the next week or two to finish up the rest of the front, then side and the back. Jase and TJ were really excellent helpers. I am sure if either of them want to earn extra money, Rod would be glad to have either of them back up here to help out.

One oven too many

Just a little cute story about Rod......

I LOVE my double oven. I use it all the time. Rod doesn't.

Friday Rod and I were home alone. We didn't really want anything for dinner and decided to make bake some frozen apple turnover type deserts. So first I preheated the oven. When the chime when off, Rod put the pan in the oven and tried to set the timer. He has trouble with the timer and in the end he turned off the oven and the timer. I tried to come do it for him at this point.. but he wouldn't have that. So he hit the "lower over -> bake -> 400 -> start" and put the pan in the oven. Then he hit the "timer -> 1 -> 2 -> start".

Now about 8 minutes into it, he is watching the timer, telling me only 4 more minutes, then 2 more minutes, then 20 seconds.. our mouths are watering at this point. And finally the timer dings. I go in there and open the "lower" oven... empty. So I am dying laughing as I open the "upper" over to see our apple desert sitting there frozen as can be. Obviously he put them into the wrong oven :-) So now we had to wait another 12 minutes. (The really funny part is the is not the first time he has done this)

SMS Band Concert

The end of our day turned out to be very enjoyable. We went to watch Tina's band perform the end of the year concert. All the band did good, but I was very proud of the 6th graders. Mr. Stevens has been teaching them some advanced 7th and 8th grade music. They have truly only been playing for 7 months and I didn't hear any major mistakes. Tina is one of only 2 sax players in the 6th grade and she sounded great.

Mr. Stevens is one of her favorite teachers and Tina is sad that he is retiring this year.

That bus was not there a second ago!

And our day continues. Tonight is Tina's band concert and we are waiting for Tori to get home. She had went to watch her school's boys soccer team play in Murfreesboro. When she called to tell me they were on the way back to the school, I told her to get right into her truck and come straight home because we were waiting on her. I guess I should have said "check your rear view mirror first".

When she gets out of her truck she is dying laughing. Then she said "my day just keeps getting better". And then the next thing out of her mouth was "That bus was not there". So the short story? The visiting teams bus (there was a baseball game at her school) was parked behind Tori's truck. I'm not sure how she missed the BIG YELLOW BUS in her rear view mirror, but she did. She said she looked up when she heard the crunch and she told her friend Michaela that saw it happen "That bus was not there a second ago".

So what does she do? Gets out, checks for damage, yep you already know what is coming... and LEAVES. She said there was not any damage to the bus and only her tail light is broken.

After the band concert we did swing back by there and there really was not any damage to the bus.

Early Morning Run

Since around here has just been so much fun (can you hear the dripping sarcasim?), the horses decided they needed to blow off steam and take an early morning run. There is nothing like waking up to a phone call of "Your horses are running down the road". So I call Tina to jump in the suburban, and yell for Tori to jump in her truck and go get halters and lead ropes. Tina and I head down the street to look and see which way they went. Luckily we were able to spot them quickly. They had run all the way down Bills Lane, Across New Hope, and through a field to the next road over. We drove over there and they were in this man's yard. He started to let his yappy dog out and I said "please sir, my horses are behind your garage". He was nice about it and kept his dog in while we tried to catch them. They didn't want to come, guess their run was not over, but Tina has the smart thinking before we left. She ran back into the house and got a cup with some peanuts in it. She started shaking the cup and holding it out to them and they stopped and waited for us. Now we are in a "hurry up Tori" mode. *** Remember we are still walking to the barn, so to get the lead ropes and halters took over 5 minutes ***

Tori shows up and we are able to get the horses and then begins the walk back to the house. We are on a curvy, hilly, road (New Hope) and I am following behind them to make sure that no one comes over a hill hits them. We get them back to the barn. Now I switch rolls and go from horse catcher to fence repairman and Tina helped.:)

With all of the work going on down at the culvert, the fence is down. The only thing keeping the horses in is the single sting of electric fence and it has not even been in a position to be able to be turned on. Tina and I worked for about 20 minutes to get it stretched to where it was not touching and we were able to turn it on.

Now, I have been a horse wrangler, fence repairman, Laundry mat (1st thing this morning I had to put Tori's jeans in the dryer), Mom (writing a note for school), School Bus (Tori didn't have time to take Tina to school without being late), and Garbage man (the dump is on the way home from Tina's school). Now I think for the rest of the day I will take it easy and just be a computer programmer!

Waiting on the mud to dry up

Mud. I am not sure how many times I have blogged about mud. Mud in the house, Mud on boots, Mud on the clothes, Mud in the campers, Mud everywhere (we even battle it getting into the bed - our sheets get washed constantly!) So now we are at the point of waiting for the mud to dry up. We can't do much more until the ground dries up some. Last night Rod and Mark worked to "waste" the rip wrap and 2" gravel that was delivered. The mud was so thick, soupy, and slick that they had to put that down on the driveway so that it was usable until the ground can dry. It was originally bought to put on the sides of the hill to help with erosion. Once it dries out, we will be putting more dirt onto and that is why it is "wasting" the rock. We will be covering it up. We will have to buy more to replace it and I am sure I will blog about it and complain again about the price of gravel.

Here is a picture of Rod and Mark working to spread the rock.


So what does that mean for Wednesday night? There is actually not any work that can happen down there at the culvert. So does Rod take a break? Of course NOT! He spent hours tonight moving logs up to the burn pile. By the looks at the size of this pile, I see a huge bonfire this weekend!

THE CULVERT Part 6

Tuesday 11:30 a.m. - It has rained all morning and there is a break in the rain. Since we are having gravel/rock delivered today, I worked from home to be able to sign for the delivery. A lull in the rain means it is time to take my lunch and feed all the animals. I drive down the driveway and get out to walk to the horse barn.

Why am I walking to the horse barn? This is a part of the story I have not previously put in the post. The backhoe has actually been broken down. On Saturday it started acting up and Rod thought he had air in the fuel system - it is diesel. So he spent part of the evening on Saturday and then again on Sunday working on it. He finally got it figured out that it was a pinch in the line. Then last night he was down there moving it and some dirt when a hydraulic line broke. So he had to go to the tractor place today and spend $80 on a new line.

I digress - I am walking to the horse barn and I go over to check out the culvert when I notice... water running under the culvert. This is NOT good news. I immediately call Mark and tell him. He says "I hope you are not right". I did not tell him "I am a woman.. I am always right". Instead I told him "I hope I am not, but to my untrained eye, that is what it looks like". Mark made it here in about 20 minutes and sure enough..I was right.

Here is what it looked like when I walked down there. Notice the spray that is about 5 feet high



As soon as Mark got here he started grabbing dirt and putting it in front of the culvert to block the water flow so that he could work on it. Here is a picture of the culvert, it is dark and hard to see the channel that was washing out underneath it.



Mark working to dam up the culvert so that he could get in it.


And Mark climbing into the culvert. Once he got in there, he found that it was leaking from some holes that were put in the pipe from all the times the backhoe/excavator were used to move it. He had his Dad bring some grout type compound so that he could try to patch the holes well enough until we can get more time to repair completely.




An this last picture is just to show that the gravel delivery guy.... blocked my access to the driveway again and I am stuck again at the house!!!!! Gravel is at a premium right now so you are also looking at just shy of $1,500 worth of rock!!!!!! I think Tonka must be in business with the quarry people. Making kids want to play with dirt and rocks and then charging them a fortune for dirt and rocks when they still want to play with them as an adult!!! :-)

THE CULVERT Part 5

Friday April 29th - We have new equipment sitting on the house side of the problem. We called the guy that we bought the backhoe from, Mark. He came by to see it and said that at this point we needed to have an Excavator. Unfortunately he needed to get it to the house side and we didn't have a way for him to do that using just out land. We had to call our neighbor's The Halls and ask if they would let him come through their land with it. They have 100 acres that adjoins ours. The agreed to let him come through. We truly appreciated their willingness to help. Mark got right to work. The first thing was knocking in the part of the driveway that was already caving into the hole. The he started digging dirt, filling the hole, setting the pipe etc.

Mark worked all day on Friday by himself. On Saturday Mark worked his equipment digging dirt and Rod worked the backhoe hauling it to the hole. They were under pressure to get it going, why? BECAUSE MORE RAIN WAS IN THE FORECAST FOR SUNDAY!!!!






By Saturday night we actually had a driveway that 4X4 vehicles could cross. What a great feeling to now get to/from the house again. Here is what the pond and driveway looked like on Saturday evening.





Sunday, May 1st - Rain
Monday, May 2nd - Rain
Tuesday - I know this is hard to believe... RAIN! Mark called us this morning at 6:00 to say "I will be there in 20 minutes to look". We are now watching to see what it is going to do.

THE CULVERT Part 4

Monday April 28th - Rain

Tuesday April 29th - Rain

Wednesday April 30th - guess what? More Rain!!!!

So what are we doing at this point? Walking. We have 2 cars parked on the outside and one on the inside. I am running a shuttle service to and from the bottom of the hill. Then we are all putting on rubber shoes, walking down the hill into the horse area, across the field, across the 2nd culvert in there, (to see the work on that culvert: Playing-in-the-creek) up the fairly steep hill on the other side, through the fence (we had to take a section down) and to our cars. Every morning, every evening, to school, to work, etc. It was a real pain! Then during the day while they were all gone, I was stuck at the house. Luckily I have a job that I can work from home and was able to do this. (being unable to go anywhere, I actually got a ton of work caught up at my job since I didn't have any distractions and no where to go :-)

Rod walking up the other side to his car



Thursday - guess what!!! No rain. So what did it look like at this point? Obviously the gorge was larger, the sides were caving in, huge rocks have washed through, it cut the ditch farther into the creek which caused the pond to empty.