So Much Going On...

Hello there.  It's been a while I know.  So much has happened in the past weeks, that my poor little blog was abandoned for a bit. 

Our one and only car's transmission went out one day while driving my son home from preschool.  Luckily, we made it home!  So we were out of a car for several days.  As you know, I live on a cattle ranch one hour away from Albuquerque/Santa Fe.  It's half an hour away from a gas station, grocery market, etc.  So, we borrowed one of the ranch vehicles to get us by those few days until we could figure out something else.

My dearest friend from college came to visit with her family.  She drove from Washington State down here to New Mexico with her hubby and three little ones.  We had such a great time, it's like we were never apart. 

Little princess pea (aka my 2 year old daughter), went through surgery and is now recovering.  She's such a little trooper!  Though she is not fond of taking medicines! 

Amongst all this, I did manage to finish my blue and neutral quilt!

Busy Little Bees

Things have been pretty crazy around here.  School started back up,  Logan is now in Pre-K.  We are just getting used to the school year schedule again.

My little Aslyn turned 2 years old!  Where does the time go?  Since one of Logan's teacher's birthday is the day before Aslyn's, we all took the tram in Albuquerque up to the top of the Sandia Mountains and had dinner.

 

 

Lots and lots of cattle work being done.  Ultra sounding (I am the ultrasound tech), breeding, embryo flush and transferring. 

We spent most of Labor Day weekend working, but managed to get away on Monday.  We drove up to Nambe and played in the water holes.

 

I did manage to squeeze in one little project.  After being asked for a business card and not having any on me, I decided I needed a business card holder.  After searching the web for a few tutorials, I got the general gist of it and put this one together.  This little project is great for those lingering scraps.

Lastly, my iron died on me.  Luckily, I had just finished reading the iron reviews in the debut issue of Generation Q magazine.  An order to Amazon and now I am impatiently waiting for my new iron to arrive.

Hope all has been well with you!

Go. Go. Go.

Do you ever have those moments where it seems you are go, go, go, do, do, do and yet nothing is getting accomplished?  My last two weeks have been this way.  I've been racing through the days trying to get everything done.

I wash the dishes, do the laundry, and yet it seems as if they are both piling up so that there is no end.  It is all a bottomless hole of dirty utensils, mugs, plates and dirty clothes.

At work, my desk has been a constant pile of things needing to be worked on.  I swear little devilish elves are coming in at night and applying some sort of paper-gro.  As I weed and dig through my piles of paperwork, they keep growing that much bigger.

Don't even get me started on my sewing.  Several of my little Christmas projects that I so lovingly have been cutting and piecing together, are slowly becoming a little pile of UFOs (unfinished objects).

I find myself getting a bit overwhelmed by it all.  There must have been something that threw my usual schedule off and I just have not been able to get it back yet. 

Thankfully the weekend is upon us and besides going to the grocery store, I have nothing else on my errand list (as of now) to do.  So I will tend to my piles and relax.  Slow and steady sometimes gets more accomplished than the race.

Just a Few Things - Nothing Really

Well, I have just been busy as can be in the office.  Tomorrow is our HFAC review - humane treatment of animals - and they want to look at all of the records on the cattle.  Luckily, most of what they want to see I keep track of in the computer and on paper for our NHTC (non-hormonal treatment of cattle) certification.  But still, I don't know how the two auditors or reviewers will vary.  We had our first NHTC audit back in November and our reviewer was just so easy to work with.  If anything was amiss she gave me a couple of days to straighten it out and then e-mail her with it.  I'm not sure what the HFAC people will be like so I will be spending today making sure everything is in order and caught up.

Last Sunday, after getting dressed in a pair of running pants, t-shirt, and light sweatshirt I planned to spend my day relaxing, working in the garden, sewing, etc.  However, JP came in and said we had to be at a graduation party at 2:00.  Well, so much for that!  The party was for our ranch hand Earl's grandson.  He just graduated from High School and was having a big bash with 6 other seniors from his class.

I have been wrapped up in the quilting/sewing online community lately!  I was wondering whether I should start a blog on that and focus mainly on my projects and share them with others, not just in this blog....

Logan's last day of school is this Friday!  And stupid me I didn't even think until this morning whether or not I am suppose to give the teacher's a gift.  Am I?  I'm new to all this and don't quite know the proper protocol.

Apparently, for Logan's graduation (he still has 2 more years of preschool but everyone gets to "graduate") the teachers will be wearing graduation robes.  Well, the kids decided they wanted some too!  So, since everyone knows I sew... I was asked if I could make graduation robes for the school.  Not for this year obviously since there is no way I could get 13 robes done by Friday!  But for future use.

I swear Aslyn is going to start talking just so she can yell at all of us.  She does it already in her baby babble.  Also, we've noticed that when she goes to crawl around, she takes her right sock off.  It has been pointed out by two people on why she seems to do this.  So she can get a better grip on the floor to move faster!  When I brought this up to JP, he looked at her and sighed.  What? I asked.  He returned with, "I don't want to have two kids smarter than us!  What will we do then?"  Hey we're still the parents right?

It's already 9:22 am.  I guess I've goofed off enough this morning.

Power Outage

Sunday is our day to stay home, relax, and hang out.  My original plan was to go out and try to get the rototiller started, then start tilling the garden (I've done everything by a hoe thus far.)  However, the winds were blowing 60 mph.  Not a very good day to till.  Though, I feel as though I'm running out of time.  Mother's Day is always my day to plant and I'm not even near getting the soil to my liking.

As I was hanging out in the living room with Logan and Aslyn, them playing on the floor and me looking at a quilt pattern trying to decide if I wanted to make it or make something similar to it, everything shut down.  The ceiling fan, I heard the fridge turn off, and then JP yelling from the computer room, "What happened?" - - he was in the middle of something in his online game.

Usually when the power goes out around here it comes back on within minutes.  Only one time in five years was the power down for three days - this happened when Logan was pretty little so he doesn't remember it.  However, after about a hour of no power, I realized this may be another one of those long term outages.

JP joined us in the living room, him whining about where he was in his game, me about how I can't sew anything now without power and how in circumstances such as these, a pedal foot sewing machine sure would be nice.

I stopped whining long enough to look at Logan and Aslyn, playing so peacefully together on the floor without a care in the world that the light coming through the window would soon be gone - it's also moments like these when I beat myself up for not buying any lanterns or stocking up better on candles.  My whining wasn't going to get the power back on any sooner, so might as well make the best of it right?

When the sun did go down and there was absolute no more light coming through the windows, I lit the few candles I have.  JP and Logan were given head lamps a while back so we dug those out, I remembered that I had a battery operated set of Christmas lights out in the bunkhouse that I had never used.  What better time than now?

Logan thought playing with his trucks by candle light was the best thing in the world!  He would run his tractor by the candle, smiling and, "Momma - whooooaaaaa."  Aslyn didn't seem to care either way, until someone got up to go in the other room for something and she realized she was sitting there all alone in the dark.

When the power finally did come back (Monday morning around 9:30 am), I found myself a little relieved and a little disappointed.  Relieved because, hey let's face it power is pretty darn convenient.  Disappointed because I knew that Monday night will be much like all other nights, JP in the computer room playing games, Aslyn and me hanging out in the living room doing whatever, Logan either with me or playing in his room. 

So often, our "family" time is running errands.  At home we usually are not all in the same room.  So, I found the evening rather enjoyable, the four of us hanging out together, reading, playing and just goofing around.

Really??

Saturday - gorgeous!  Sun shining - felt like Spring; ended up spending the day running errands around Albuquerque.

Sunday - 30 degrees and snowing; had no where to go.  Ended up spending the day organizing and cleaning.

Monday - another warm day with the sun out brightly shining.  Spent the day running around Edgewood - doctors and groceries.

Tuesday - (today) 50 + degrees outside.  Again sun out.  I have to work in the office.

So the only day where I didn't really have to go anywhere or do anything.  The day that I could have spent outside "playing" in the dirt - it snowed.  Really now!  On the positive side, at least I got Aslyn's room in order.

Sundays

Sunday is my day to take it easy.  All week long I have two children I am chasing, a husband, dog - all who demand my attention at all times (this is true for Sunday's too.)  On top of all this I have laundry to do, dishes to wash, the house to pick up/clean, etc.  So Sunday is my day to just be a mom and wife and nothing else.  House be damned, it can get clean the other days of the week. 

However, in my need to declutter, I spent my Sunday cleaning out the computer/Aslyn's room.  The room wasn't that bad since most of what was in there got moved out back in August before Aslyn was born.  But, nothing was done with the room since it was painted.  The task should have been one that would only take 2-3 hours; with two kids though, it took pretty much all day.  I cleaned the blinds, windowsills, and floorboards.  Dusted everything, and pulled it all out of the room for a good vacuuming and carpet cleaning.  Oh how filthy the carpet was!  When I was rinsing out the recovery tank of my carpet cleaner there was 3/4 inch thick mud caked at the bottom (and this was just the computer room!)

After the carpet was dry, I moved the furniture back in.  We had picked up a dresser I ordered for Aslyn on Saturday, so now that sits nicely in her room.  Her crib as yet to be moved from Logan's room, I'm hoping to get that done this week.  JP doesn't want to mess with it due to the fact we have to disassemble Aslyn's crib to move it (we discovered that Logan's door does not come off.) 

When the room was back in order, JP and I took turns learning Spanish from the Rosetta Stone program.  I have the hardest time pronouncing 'nada' why?  I have no idea.

It was a busier than normal Sunday for me, but I'm feeling content with one room down.

Before the kids got up this morning I took it easy by sitting at the kitchen table with my garden seeds spread before me, a hot cup of coffee and a seed catalog.  It was inventory time - I went through the catalog and decided on some other things I would like to grow or that I had run out of or am running low on (more on gardening and dirt time at another post.)

Now the kids are awake and it's back to my usual hectic day.  We are all headed into Edgewood today for Aslyn's six month wellness checkup and shots - Logan has the day off since it's presidents day.  Then it's off to the grocery store, and home to put things away and if time, office work for the ranch.

Hey, It's OK!

Every month Glamour magazine has a page devoted to little amusings that women may feel insecure about or are not likely to do (such as actually getting the dressing on the salad instead of on the side) So, I came up with my own list on things that I have learned or am working on.

Hey, It's OK!
...to ask for help.

...to curl up with my kids in bed and sleep in an extra hour even if it means not making JP breakfast (hey, he knows how to work a toaster.)

...to stand up for myself.

...to splurge on me once in a while without feeling guilty.

...to want to run away from it all somedays.

...to squander the day away playing with Logan and Aslyn instead of doing household chores.