Meltdownish

There's water, but at the same time its frozen back over.  So I guess its keeping the water somewhat temporary. 


Water across the road



All icey in front of the barn

Flooded field

 

I went to do chores for our neighbor and when I got there it smelled like smoke.  So I walked around a bit, and I found the problem.  Apparently, when the rain leaked through the roof, an extension cord to a water heater got wet.(this extension cord was questionable to begin with mind you.)  It was smoking and buzzing at where the water heater connected.  Guess I won't be using that cord anymore. 

Whelp, thats all I got. 

Ice Ice Baby

I know I'm a little late getting this up seeing how everything has melted and is flooding everywhere.  But, I figured I might as well put it up. 

Flooding pics hopefully to be coming soon!

Little Screechy Dog

This is Lucy.

Lucy is a dachshund mix.  You can tell that hound part whenever she's barking at something; its real low and loud.  She whimpers, yelps and makes all the other sounds that dogs make. 

However, there is one sound that she makes that lets you know that she's chasing something.  Its sounds like a screaming banshee pretty much.  Just this high pitch screeeecch.  

This is Moonbeam, who is my 10 year old cat.  Not many know that we have an inside cat.  She's a bit shy, usually spends the day in the drop ceiling, and making her apperance at night when its safe(kids are in bed) 

Well, usually its safe.  Sometimes she meets Skeeter and Lucy and then the three of them are scrambling with me tripping over my own feet trying to catch the dogs. (You wouldn't think that they'd be fast on their little legs, but whew boy!)  And that's when the screeching sound is usually produced by Lucy.(unfortunately, because the kids are sleeping)

Oh well.  I guess I'll always be able to find her when she's on the trail of something.

Things that go bump in the night.

Sam and Dad left on Sunday to go to an auction on Monday.  They went early so they could look at things before hand.  Therefore, the older men of the house were gone. 

So...
 Nighttime came.
 And with it came noises. Noises that usually don't bother you, but since you're in the house by yourself you get to thinking.  (The little kids go to bed at 8 so us older people usually scatter to the kitchen or our separate bedrooms.)
You get to thinking that maybe...  theres more to that noise. 
That something made that noise. 
You imagine images like this:



What I meant to say is, you WISH this was the image you were thinking of. 


 

Needless to say, I wasn't suffering this problem.  I go out in the dark by myself all the time, sleep in the dark, whatever.  Usually have the mind set that since I'm wearing my rubber boots, I'll just kick whatever it is to the next county.;)

However...
Mom was a bit nervous.  There were these periodic bumps outside. (I believe it was chunks of ice falling off the roof of the house.  That's my theory anyways.)  I was downstairs spouting out inspiration onto paper when she comes running down.  It kinda reminded me of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHsZFxnG6g0&feature=player_detailpage
(sorry, I don't know how to get it to show up here.)
Anyways, here's some vital information you'll want to take into account if you ever stumble into this situation. 
1. Stay calm.  Two peoples imaginations running wild isn't good.
2. Don't scare the person though its an opportune time to do so.  You'll won't be able to sleep all night because they'll keep you up to sit with them or they'll be in your bed.
3. Reason the situation out.  Come up with a theory.  Robbers, monsters scary things, ect  shouldn't be words coming out of your mouth.  (Go back to #2)
4.  Don't over think your theory.  Don't think at ALL.  Just go to bed and hide under the covers if you must.  Some prefer under the bed. 

Needless to say, we are all looking forward to Dad coming home.  Not that we aren't with Sam as well, but I think Dad is more effective than he is. 

Skeeter, Lucy and me didn't lose our sleep over the noise. :)

Billy Goat Gruff

When we were younger, we would go to our grandparents house down the road a couple a miles and play with lincoln logs, hot wheels, bounce on the bouncer, the puppets and whatever else we found.  If grandpa was there, we would would have him read to us because then none of us were old enough to know how.  There is one particular story that I was reminded of yesterday because we were trying to put a billy goat away.
The gist of the story is there are three goats trying to pass over the bridge but underneath is a hungry troll.  So to trick him, the first one tells the troll to let him through because his older brother would be coming and he was much bigger.  So the troll lets him through.  The same happens with the second.  When the third comes, the troll tries to attack him, but the goat just pushes him into the river.  I believe the troll turns into stone. 

Anyways, the reason that brought up this memory is that we had to put the billy goat into the barn since its going to be soo cold.  The billy goat is well.... more like the troll in the book, and me, Sam and Sarah were like the goats.

Pretty much, every man for himself. 

 I actually filmed this experience forseeing that this was probably going to be, shall we say, interesting?  Problem is, the file is too big and won't load.  So I will tell you what happened.
The plan was to open the gate, run into the barn, find safety, and the billy goat would run into the barn to his stall.
Pretty much, we opened the gate and I froze up and jumped on the fence. 

The billy goat did not go where he was supposed to go.  Since he was in the pen still, we did redo.
This time me and Sam tore off like lightning to the barn and got in one of the stalls ,closing the door.

The billy goat ran after us, started to go into his stall that he was supposed to and stopped.  Because he heard a boy giggling(loudly and wildly) because of the excitement of making it to the stall safely.

So he naturally came to our stall and tried to get into that one by ramming his head against the door.  Luckily, shaking a bucket and making a bunch of racket, scared him off and he went into his stall. 

So yeah.  It would've been hilarious to get the video up, but after 3 attempts and long amounts off time, I had to accept that the file was too big and wasn't going to load. 

I'm very glad that tomorrow I don't have to do chores as it will be -45.  The beach sounds good right now, no?

New Years and such

I apologize for the bad lighting in these two photos.  There was no way around that window there.

Notice anything?

How bout now?

Oh, theres Sarah!

A friend of ours and her husband from South Carolina came to visit and we were trying to find ways to surprise them.  I think we succeeded seeing how they sat down on Sarah not seeing anything unusual.

New Years was spent in Missouri with my cousins.  Me, Sarah, and Sam packed into Sarah's car and headed off on the 4 1/2 hour drive.  We only got turned around once and thats because there was a misunderstanding in communication.  Kinda goes like this...
Sarah: "AH, its hot in here.  Wish I could take my coat off."
Sam: "We could pull off somewhere so that you can.  I'm kinda hungry anyways."
(Sarah pulls off at some restaurant.)
Sarah:"What do you guys want to eat?"
Sam: "Eat?  I'm not hungry."

It went sort of like that.  Sam, gotta love him.

One of my aunts and Uncle's customers lets them stay in a lake house of theirs every now and then and were kind enough to let a rowdy bunch of cousins stay.  The house was HUGE. I mean, you can tell by just the bed that a couple of us slept in .;)

Now it wasn't New Years ,but a couple of us prepped for it by staying up till 5:30 in the morning.  Don't worry we got up at 10 and tried to function.  I think I did pretty good and didn't act like a zombie too much.  ;)

Squishy

That is Squishy the cutest little kitten you've ever laid your eyes on.  I teasingly tried to sneak him home but his owner caught me before I got out the door.  Naw, I thought it best to leave him there for 1. It was going to be crowded in the car since a couple cousins were coming back with us 2. He'd much happier there seeing how my dogs would probably try to chew on him.

Cartoon app. You take a photo and it cartoonizes it.Love it to death.

Ice storm

Smokey and Honey

Ever been and sick and wished you could like take you stomach out and let it deal with itself?  Yep, thats how a couple of us are feeling right now unfortunately.  I think I'm on the mend though.  Haven't thrown up all day, and was able to do chores.  Quite the kick off for the New Year, huh?

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.