Tina Pictures

Here are a few of Tina

Family pictures

I have been wanting to have some family pictures done up here on the land. A lady was recommended to me through a friend. She agreed to come take pictures up here and give me the rights to the pictures. Here are some of my favorites:

Welcome, Abbie

Just shoot me? Maybe that would be easier on some days. I am such a pushover and that being said, we have a new addition - Abbie. Tori has a friend whose dog had puppies. The dad is full blooded great pyraneses and she is going to grow quick! So we have now added her to Sadie and Sugar and they are all learning to get along!

Horse Flip Flops

ok, have you read our other posts before??? You know that we certainly don't do everything conventional around here. Our farrier came out and Tina's house, Willow, had a bruise on the bottom of her foot. He was trimming her foot and he said the best thing we could do was to watch it and give her some cushion. I truly thought he was joking when he asked if we had a men's flip flop. Nope, no joke. He told me to take the flip flop and duct tape it to her foot. Aiden just happened to break one of his so I just happen to have a flip flop. So we went down there and did just that. It only took her about 2 days to get it off, but that was enough time to help the bruise to heal and she is totally fine now. The picture is a little dark because it was getting late.

Aiden comes to visit

Last summer Rod's cousin Nicole let her son Aiden come to visit for 2 weeks. We really enjoyed him coming and we wanted him to come back this year. So from July 19th - July 30th we had a house guest. Almost every night he was here someone else spent the night as well. Aiden is real close to Tori's age and they all had fun. Nearing the end of the visit he was missing his younger brother because he really started picking on Tina :-)

While here they did some shooting, riding the mini bikes, and fishing. One one of the trips down Sycamore Creek he caught 18 fish (to Rod's 14).

Pay Day for Tori

I know you know that I am proud of my kids. We have great kids (even if I am biased). The last weekend in June while Rod and I were gone camping Tori went to a church to say her monologue. They asked her to do it for all 3 services and paid her $50!

Tina's egg Business

This week has been hard on the egg business.... First on one of the hot days - Tina had went down to show the baby chicks to her great grandparents. They were all fine and moving around and fluffy. 2 hours later she went back to feed and water them for the evening and 1/2 were dead. We think that they got overheated from the excitement of when she was showing them to Mrs. Maynard. They were NOT in the sun at all any that day but it was a very hot and humid day. Tina was extremely upset.... Now fast foward about 4 days and Tina is out of town in FL. We are taking care of the baby chicks (they have a new coop and I have order replacement babies for her). Tori and I were going out to check on one of the adult hens that I thought seemed to be under the weather. She has been just laying in the coop for a couple of days. I had made her get out of it on Sunday but she was right back. Now I know why. She has been guarding the egss. When we went over there, she was out and about so I told Tori - see must be ok, let's go ahead and get the eggs.... Look at what we found (not one egg was left)

4th July Party

Party - We had a group of friends come over for the 4th of July. We wanted to celebrate with all the people that helped us in this building process. We have 4 wheelers, mini bikes, horse shoes, fireworks, and most important - good times with friends and family.

The attendees were:
My family - Rod, Tori, Tina, and I; Mom and Dad; Mike and Christy; Rick and Christy; Joy and Chris; Shelli, Zac, and Hayley; Darrin and Heather; Bobbie, Scott, Wyatt, Seth, Brittany, Andrew; Ken and April; Kevin; Charles, Austin, Brooke, and two friends.

Horse Camp

This week Tori held a horse camp for the first time. Her camper was Sarah who is 5 years old and goes to her church. Each day Tori had it planned out that they went down to feed the horses, came back up while the horses ate and did a craft, went back down and walked the horses up and then Sarah would ride. A couple of days she rode bareback and some with the saddle. After they rode, they ate their lunch (sometimes it was a picnic in the woods) and then sweat scraped the horses. This was Sarah's favorite part - getting the horse (and herself) wet! On Thursday Nicole, Tori's normal babysitting job, was here and they used both horses. Sarah rode Tina's horse Willow and Nicole was on Kaylee. I think they all had a lot of fun. I also had them shirts made that say TnT Acres on them!

Rec Room Tile

We originally wanted to stain the concrete in the rec room. Once we got the room cleaned up from construction debris it was obvious that the floor in that room needed attention. We had our contractor come back out and "patch" the low spot. You could clearly see that the slab was not level. When I put a 4' level on the floor it was unlevel by 1 3/4". So they came out and put a leveling compound on the floor. This meant that we could no longer stain the concrete and had to decide on another flooring. We ended up going with tile. The installer said the floor was still very unlevel and he did the best he could to use thinset to level it out. In the end I can still see some of the highs and lows, but I am happy with the finished product. It is after all just a Rec Room....

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...