Wow - a whirlwind of a week ending up with one very sick Elder. The much awaited sleepover swap ocurred finally last Thursday evening with Lily going to spend time with the Jones girls doing girly stuff and Gabe coming here to do guy stuff. The boys had a good time and did a lot. Both of them crawled into bed at 10:30pm of their own accord and didn't stir again until 7:00am.
Elder started to cough quite a bit on Friday and by the evening had developed a low grade fever. As of Saturday morning it was 103 and the poor kid was incoherent. This evening he seems to be back to being fairly normal...just a little lower key than usual. He has been getting several nose bleeds lately due to the dryness on top of the illness, so I went and entered to dreaded Walmart to purchase a humidifier today. Because it is Sunday, there is virtually no other place within 70 miles that sells them and is open today. I am hoping that this will stop the bleeding episodes.
Forrest (Grandpa) has spent the last few days on a bulldozer making the tanks bigger for irrigation water storage, smoothed out a field and knocked down a few giant piles of wood chips up in the compost zone. We all hate it when a big tractor is here because of the dust and noise, and in Forrest's case, the sore body but when it is all done, the results are great. I can't tell you how much I appreciate having 2 tractor operators on the land...Tony and his dad. I did some really minimal bobcat work one day with them and will leave it to those guys if I can at all help it. It's really fun, but you can sure tear things up quickly if your not careful. It may not be as fast, and it sure does hurt a lot more the next day, but I still feel way more confident with a shovel.
All of the public school kids are returning to school this week, so things ought to be a bit more quiet around town. We will be back to people giving us weird looks when out and about during school hours. Lily hates it (and so do I) when people quiz her to find out if she actually knows things. Elder just clams up and hides behind me still. I think that we are going to self impose a school hours curfew on the days that we don't have other classes or field trips in order to minimize some of the discomfort for the kids...atleast until they get a little older and Lily's sass level is a little higher! I have a feeling that Elder will always be silent when around complete strangers.
What else is new...Oh yes! We seem to have a new colony of mice that have moved in under the house. I have set traps under my kitchen sink for 5 days now and have caught 4 mice. I sure do hope that I've gotten them all but we shall see. I have 3 traps set tonight.
The neighbor told me he found a copperhead snake in his house a few days ago. I'm not sure whether he identified it correctly but there are sure a lot of snakes around. I have never seen that variety here - I thought that they prefered it where it is a bit dryer...like across the street! We have the dogs and cats hanging around here and I think they deter snakes - hopefully. I have found 2 scorpions in the house in the last month. The first one stung me. It wasn't as bad as a bee sting. I was expecting far worse. And... the spiders are multiplying. I haven't seen any black widows or brown recluses this year yet. I think we have finally established too much of a presence right up near the house and school and they prefer it in the back of the property where there is a lot less human and animal action.
Well, we shall see if I manage to post something again within a week. It seems that I only manage to get to the blog on weekend night. I guess that is ok for a start.
Have a great week folks. See you around the farm.
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