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.

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.