Skunked

That smell that about makes you keel over when you smell it.

Skunk.

A smell I smelled at 2 o'clock this morning in the basement.  The smell penetrated through the walls of the house. 
Turns out Lucy and Skeeter still haven't gotten the brains to know better and stay away from the striped foe. 

Lucy

Skeeter

I stepped outside automatically letting out a groan.  It was pretty bad.  I leaned down to smell Lucy to see if they really were responsible for this.

Bad move on my part.   

So the two have to stay out in the kennel till the smell wears down.  I've been told that water, soap and vinegar or hydrogen peroxide(3%) mixed together works.  I've tried it before and it did reduce the smell a bit but not totally.  Time is going to have to remove it.  Thankfully, its nice weather right now so I don't feel so bad about them being out there. 
Going to miss my sleeping buddies though.

Smile!

I saw this and I was like,this is totally what I feel like doing to people sometimes.


Simon's cat is a funny cartoon on youtube by Simon Tofield.Excellently done!  Check him out.  :)

*Image by Simon Tofield

I remember warmth...

I went down to Alabama to visit friends of mine.  This was in the spring.  Along with them, I miss the warm weather.  Can you believe its in high 80s down there??  I don't know bout you but that sounds very appealing on this rainy, 40 degree day.  My friends live 3hrs away from the coast so one of the days that I was there we headed over to Florida and went to the beach.

You didn't want to dig down to far or you might dig up a crab.

After staying at the beach for a couple hours, we headed back up the road to a place on the side of the road that had some trails. 

This is the first thing we saw before going.  We didn't see any, but you can be sure we had our eyes open. 

On our way home, we stopped at a shop along the road.  It was a neat little candy shop.  The thing that caught our eyes was:

It was pretty good!

 

 

The people at the shop had a funny sense of humor.  At the checkout they had a sign that said:

"Suppose we refund your money,send you another one without charge,

Close the store and have the manager shot...."

WOULD THAT BE SATISFACTORY?

Underneath:

Customer Support.

 

So so

Ever had one of those weeks where you're busy, but at the same time don't feel like you're doing anything?  Yep, its been of those weeks for me personally.  There's no main theme for this post so I guess I'll throw the random pictures from this week in. 

My little birdwatchers.  A bird kept grabbing onto the screen giving them a real close view.  They enjoyed themselves immensly. 

A walk around Spring Lake

How many can you fit at a piano?

Camera shy :)

Thats all I got.  Have a great week!

Never a Turkey, but always a Run

I've Never seen a turkey running, let alone a TURKEY at Turkey Run.
On Sunday, we, along with our cousin, Phillip, went to Indiana to Turkey Run.  after a couple pit stops to go to the bathroom, and shoo out some pesky flies we made it. 

You can really see the fall colors here.  Its absolutely beautiful here in the fall.  We had no sooner gotten down to the river when we remembered that Olivia's glasses were still up at the playground sitting on the fence.  So.... Me and Phillip ran back up there to get them.  It has to at least be a mile or two up there.  Thankfully, they were still there and we got back them back down to Olivia.

Sarah showing the fall theme.

 

While we were there, Phillip found this awesome little guy.  He's a soft shell turtle.  I've never seen one of these before.  It was without the highlight of the day.  Well, running along the river to get to a sandbar and slipping and sliding and almost falling in was a close second. 

Flippin himself over..AWESOME!

Me and Sarah

After we got tired of hiking, we headed back and ate at the lodge thanks to dad:)
We got home around 8:30 without any emotional breakdowns from the tired bunch.
Life is good.

Overview of Missouri Trip

Me, Sam, Sarah, and Bryce and Emily packed our stuff into the back of Bryce's truck and headed off to Missouri- the land of hills that are bound to make you sick.  (however, we were prepared and brought a bucket.) 
We were on our way to attend the first wedding of the month, Nick and Esther's. 
We arrived in MO with no problems, except for running out of cookies.  Nevertheless, we survived.

Us, grandparents and cousins stayed in 4 hotel bedrooms so there was alot of running back and forth between rooms exchanging items(especially food) and such. 

We went swimming quite alot. I believe about 4 times we went swimming in the 3ft deep pool that was 4ft deep in the middle. 

Again, no pictures. I was swimming.  I'm sure someone did, but I don't have any.
Excursions to walmart, honking down on cereal,  chocolate milk, pizza rolls and ho hos one night, going swimming and going up and down the granny elevator, going to DQ ,it was a good couple nights.

The next day after the wedding we went out to our Uncle's farm.  I did get pics this time. 

Bryce and his cats.  Phillip was loading him up. 



They took in this fawn in when  it was found wandering around and the mother couldn't be found.  It free roams the farm and woods they have.  It refuses to drink from a bottle.  It would rather drink from a bucket



 

Pigs!
 

Phillip and his herd of chickens.

The cows being milked.

150 washed jars.  Hey, you have to put that milk somewhere.;)

 



Empty ?

Not anymore!

 





Bat Dog!

 

And so that concludes the Missouri Trip



The Tale of the Spider

Spiders and me, we have a mutual agreement; I like to think we do anyways. Apparently after this incident, I guess I'm the only one who has an agreement with myself.
I don't touch them and they don't touch me. 
Life is happy. 
Cross that barrier and its time to kill! *as my brother, Sam, would say.*

THE BARRIER WAS CROSSED.

It was a regular night, I was sitting on my bed listening to my jam when I felt something on my leg.  I sorta glance down and see this crawling up my leg about to go up my capris.

Of course I didn't take a picture of it on my leg! Who do you think I am? Wonder Woman??
 

 

O MY GOODNESS!!!-which is exactly what I said at that time in a high pitch voice.  Freaking out, I start violently shaking my leg.  I'm not quite what I would've done if it hadn't fallen off and continue to crawl up my leg. 

Nevertheless, the arachnid fell off.  Much to my close to passing out ,having a heart attack self.(actually I've never have passed out so I don't know how that feels, or a heart attack for that matter)   

 

There it lay on my bed daring to crawl on it.

 

I picked up a rubber mallet to squish it.

Rubber mallet and a spring mattress.

Yeah, no progress was made.  I'm surprised it didn't bounce back up and hit me in the face.Seeing that this combo wasn't working I scraped off the vermin with the mallet onto the floor then squished it. 

All that laid there was 8 flinching legs and a flat as a pancake body.

But...

There still wasn't peace. 

So... I searched the whole bed.  Carefully.  I didn't find anything, but every night now before I get into bed, I check. 



 

The ole machine in the noggin runs slow sometimes, but "Spider" registers pretty quick.  Thank goodness for that. 

 

Been awhile

So....
Its been awhile.
Its not that nothing significant has happened;I mean alot has.  I just haven't blogged.

To start the ball rolling there were two weddings in September.  Both had excellent weather-a definite good thing for the outside one- both without a hitch.

I mean, the people were hitched together, but I meant-
You know what I mean.  Stop making things difficult!

We had our first ever garage sale.  (Living out in the sticks you don't get many visitors.)
Unless its about an animal out in the ditch or road.  Then they're pretty good about stopping by. 
Nevertheless, a couple people did stop by and buy some things.  Whatever wasn't bought was then taken to our friend, Goodwill.

After some complications with school, I am now back home to homeschool. 

 

Harvest has kicked off into full swing!  Keep your shirt on; pictures are soon to come.

My friends from Alabama came up for a week.   Made some memories just didn't get any pictures.  Pretty disgusted with myself. 

Celebrated my cousin's 18th b'day.  She starts work at Precision Planting next week where every Whitaker in this generation has gone.  Thats the trend so far. 

We've all changed alot since those pictures that were taken a year or two ago.  Sigh.  Our group keeps getting smaller and smaller.  I suppose its okay though since new people are brought into the family.

This is Caleb's smile face.  :)

Yep.  Thats a foot alright.

Needed a nap to make it up the rest of the stairs.
 

More to come! 
-Me

August Already??

Can't believe that school is going to start in a couple of weeks!  Some days it feels like the days are going so slow,and then other days you're running around like a chicken with its head cut off thinking, what have I been doing this whole time?! 

  

Been doing a couple loads of straw and hay...  Thankfully it was on one of the cooler days!:)

Sam and one out of the four cows he owns

This little beauty I got to watch for a week while her owners were away.  Such a sweetie!

 We usually go to a place in Indiana called Turkey Run a couple times a year.  Sometimes we spend the night at the lodge and other times we just go hiking for the day.  This time we only went for the day but we had a pretty good time. 

Since we had little ones on this trip we decided it best to forgo canoeing.
 

Katie seemed to have a good time.
 



Sarah posing for me.

All in all, it was a pretty good trip.  Had some soggy shoes at the end of the day, but hey, we all knew it was coming, right?
  I'll have to load more pictures later....I'm having some computer trouble.