Moving and Settling In

We have finally bought and moved into our own house in the country!  Almost 20 acres with plenty of room for us all including the horse!  While we are getting settled, we are also turning a room into two bedrooms.  That means everyone will have their own bedrooms.  That has pretty much never happened!  I'll be back on now that we are getting all settled in.

It's been a  while since I blogged due to there not being anything really  interesting going on.  Just everyday stuff. But I guess that's what this is all about.  A site where my family and friends can keep up with the everyday things going on since we never see them anymore.

I'll be back soon with pictures of our paradise!!

Black Widow vs. Tornado

Because we've been in a severe drought since November, we have not felt a need to open, inspect, clean or check our storm shelter.  Well, we had some family visiting this last weekend and they randomly opened the storm shelter door and the whole entrance to the stairs leading to the safest place to be during a storm or tornado was-I kid you not-totally blocked by a spider web.  Oh. My. Gosh.

Here was the great architect:

 Do you happen to recognize this black spider with an egg sack larger than her body????  Oh. My. Gosh.  So we joked about the issue of being able to run down the stairs to safety while a tornado comes crashing through the house.  Would we be able to walk through said spider web knowing this big BLACK WIDOW was hunkering down waiting for her next pray????

 Yes.  It is a black widow.  The fist one, thankfully, we've seen while living here in the country.  The fist one I've seen in my life actually.

 Yes she has an egg sack with lots of little black widows as well.  I just can't say I would be able to run through that web knowing she's hanging there waiting to drop.  Seriously...I just shivered.

 Can you see that scorpion shell in the background?  The widow sucked the juices from the scorpion.  Can you just imagine that for a second?

So what did we do? Did we immediately clean out the shelter?  Because even though we have had record high temps and no rain worth speaking of or even looking forward to in the future we will eventually need it.  It would be the responsible thing to do as parents of four children and two pets. Well, we shut the door and talked about throwing a fogger down there even though I doubt fog will kill a spider that SUCKED THE JUICES OUT OF A SCORPION!!!! So what to do? 

Send the kids to find and kill the spider and pull down the web?  I think not.  Even though they stink, eat alot, and leave messes everywhere I'm rather fond of them.  Any suggestions?

Hot Enough For Ya?

I just wanted to share this.  Seems appropriate for the season.  Pretty much sums up the weather around here currently.  We also experienced a cracked windshield and a cracked dash due to the heat.  And we've experienced temps of 109 for the last 7 days in a row...

 Author is unknown.



Dear Diary,


Just moved to Oklahoma! Now this is a state that knows how to live!! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. It is beautiful. I’ve finally found my home. I love it here.


June 14th:
Really heating up, Got to 100 today. Not a problem. Live in an air conditioned home, drive an air conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I'm turning into a sun worshipper.


June 30th:
Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.

July 10th:
The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least, it's kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.

July 15th:
Fell asleep by the community pool. Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body. Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the Ol’ sun in a climate like this.


July 20th:
I missed Lomita (my cat) sneaking into the car when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot car at noon, Lomita had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag, then popped like a water balloon. The car now smells like Kibbles and Shits. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat. Good Ol’ Mr. Sun strikes again.

July 25th:
The wind sucks. It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!! And it's hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.


July 30th:
Been sleeping outside on -the patio for 3 nights now, $225,000 house and I can't even go inside. Lomita is the lucky one. Why did I ever come here?


Aug. 4th:
It’s 115 degrees. Finally got the air conditioner fixed today. It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85. I hate this stupid state.

Aug. 8th:
If another wise ass cracks, 'Hot enough for you today?' I'm going to strangle him. Damn heat. By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!


Aug. 9th:
Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts, and when I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my ass was on fire. My skin melted to the seat. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and ass ... Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and baked cat.


Aug 10th:
The weather report might as well be a damn recording. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. It's been too hot to do shit for 2 damn months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Doesn't it ever rain in this damn state? Water rationing will be next, so my $1700 worth of cactus will just dry up and blow over. Even the cactus can't live in this damn heat.



Aug. 14th:
Welcome to HELL! Temperature got to 115 today. Cactus are dead. Forgot to crack the window and blew the damn windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and guess what he asked me??? “Hot enough for you today?” My sister had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail. Freaking Oklahoma. What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live here?? Will write later to let you know how the trial goes.

Our New Toy

Do you remember this?  The high grass, the high temperatures and the tired boys after 3 to 4 days of mowing only to get a day off and start all over again? 

Well we just couldn't make them suffer that way any longer.

 So we got them a new toy!  And you won't believe the amount of mowing that has happened since we've brought that mower home!

 We have the best mowed yard in the whole little town!

In fact, there is actual arguments over who gets to mow! It's amazing!  We should have thought of this ages ago!!

On another note, we do have 3 teenage boys so our yard is littered a bit with...boy things.  So while one mows, the others have to scour the grounds to find things like this arrow stuck in the ground.  I can tell you they most likely shot up straight in the air and couldn't find where it fell.  Dangerous?  Nah....they run for cover...geesh! 

These?  If you have boys (or a husband) you most likely will recognize these.  

Air soft gun bb's.  Yep.  I have boys.  And there are 3 of them.  4 if you count my husband. Which I usually do.  And the 3 are teenagers.  Prayers welcomed.  Amen and thank you.

My Poor Garden

As you will shortly see, the following pictures will show how badly my gardening experience is going up here.  I'm not even counting the fact that my dad is pulling the biggest, ripest, most successful crop of tomatoes he's had in history!  I've hardly just put mine in the ground.  But it doesn't matter.

The wind, the dog, the cat, the wind...they are all my enemies when it comes to my garden.



I have planted a few Lantana plants and so far two out of three are hanging on.

Hardly hanging in there.

Here's my hope.  I'm hoping it has a will to live.

 Here's an example one of my enemies.  The wind...it blows much.  It blows hard.  It blows nonstop!  As a matter of fact, I can hear it slamming against my window right now as I am writing.  It blows stinging sand at your feet and grit in your mouth. 

It kills my pepper plants.

 It kills my tomato plants.

 My one tomato plant that may have a chance.  That is if I can keep the dang Cat from thinking the garden is a litter box.  Hence the pine cones.  A woman told me it helps to keep the cats out.  I also sprinkled Tabasco sauce all over the garden which seemed to help but when I water or it rains, it goes away.  Sigh!

 This is one of my tomato plants that did not survive the wind.  I planted a few in different places just in case they didn't like where they were.  This one was in a container.  First one to die.

Morning glory I think.  I had a ton of it come up last year except I didn't know what it was so I kept pulling it up thinking it was a weed (which I guess it could technically be considered that because apparently NOTHING kills it).  So it's either Morning glory or a weed.  It's pretty much the only thing I can grow so I hate to pull it up.

 This is one of my bigger problems.  This was actually one of the pepper plants that was withstanding the wind.  Maybe it's because it has so many holes, the wind blows through the leaves instead of whipping them around.

Aha!  This may be one of my biggest problems!  GRASSHOPPERS!!!!  Last year they stripped everything.  Even our bushes.  And they just continue to get bigger and eat more.

 And then there's this matter.  Dang Cat!!!  Doesn't matter how many times I swat him with my flip flop he has no respect for my boundaries!!!

Or this guys boundaries!!!!

As you can see, our grass has no problem growing.  Much to the boy's dismay!!  Heehee!

Lotza Meatza and Incredibly Sweet Moments

So along with the crazy, busy-ness of the end of the school year crud going on...I have volunteered to cook 60 lbs of brisket this weekend for the upcoming Band Banquet.  I actually didn't volunteer to cook 60 lbs.  I thought it would be like 20 to 40 lbs.  That is all I have to say about that! 

I celebrated Mother's Day with all four of my babies and my sweet husband.  It was nearly perfect.  I missed my own mother terribly.  It was compounded by the fact that my siblings and grandmother got  together to celebrate the incredible job (if I do say so myself) that my mother (and father) did and to appreciate the fact that we (and she) survived four teenagers (which I can say I appreciate more so now that I currently HAVE four teenagers) without me. 

I am homesick now more than I've ever been.

I'm very excited about my daughter coming home from college for the summer.  She will be here while she goes next semester also.  My heart sings!   I get her a little longer...

I just fussed at my son (who has Dyslexia) to "put the book away and finish it tomorrow--I'm not kidding Mister"!!!  He argued that he was not at a stopping point and had only 10 pages to go and can we please get the second book because he is going to be done with this one?  I fussed a little more at him and told him to finish it tomorrow---LAST WARNING!...but did so with a secret smile on my face.  I am so proud of him my heart can hardly contain it!

My youngest son begs me to take steroids (jokingly--sorta) because he hates that he is so skinny and small.  I repeatedly tell him in no time he will be taller and bigger than all of his brothers and father.  Secretly, I relish the fact that he is still my little boy for a little while longer.

So I'm off to sleep so I can dream about marinating slabs of beef while my open window allows a cool, soft breeze to fill my room with the smell of outside.  The crickets are softly sing me to sleep... 

And I love living in the country.

What We've Been Up To

So you may have heard we've had a few weather problems lately.  Weather problems would depend on where you live and what kind of weather you're getting.  Our weather problems where we live include no rain since the middle of November.  None...zilch...nada.  The other half of the state is getting slammed with storms, hail and tornadoes.  Go figure.

We are also dealing with wild fires as the winds have been  violently blowing.  In fact, I had a thought today, "I remember when I thought 20 mph winds were high!" If you've been in wind where gusts are over 65 mph, 20 mph winds are a breeze...hehe...sorry...couldn't resist!

It's hard to try to capture the awesome power of the wind through a picture.  It just doesn't show the violence.  In this picture you can sort of see the leaves blowing.  And by the way, check out my dog.  He loves the wind.  He's so brave.

 Here's my porch with metal chairs.  It leads to the garage.  But wait...something is amiss...

 Can you just imagine for a second how hard the dang wind must blow to blow a metal chair up against the house on the porch into the garage!!!!  The day after, we went around and picked up all the nails from the shingles torn from the roof.  We picked up the metal roof vent that was ripped off the church next door to us and gently laid it at their door.  May I mention also that there is a thick layer of dirt on everything in my house?

Earlier you saw my sweet dog Buzz, bravely fighting the harsh wind. Well, here is our mighty hunter Rex. We got him and his sister a while back and shortly after having Trixie fixed, she disappeared. (sad pause)
Well, Rex has stuck around and not abandoned us mainly because we hadn't had him fixed yet...that is until last weekend...

He still is not speaking to us.  "Rex?  Rexie?  We love ya pal!  We are so proud of the dead mouse you killed in the shed and we are all depending on you to keep the spiders and bugs and other creepy crawlies out of the house".  Sigh. He won't even look at us without glaring!   At least he  has decided for the time being he will not abandon us despite "de-manning" him. 

 This is Roxy, our new addition.  She was kinda, sorta given/loaned to us for an undetermined amount of time.  I have to admit this girl has stolen my heart.  It's been reported in the past that I am deathly afraid of horses.  And while I am still getting to know her and trying to gain a little self confidence I am totally taken with her.  I love her!  I actually get on Roxy and ride her...by myself.

Of course you remember Buttercup.  She's just a baby so we asked around and found  a really great horse trainer who not only is training Buttercup but us as well.  She's coming along well in her training and is allowing people to ride her. He has taken her to his place so he can work with her as much as possible and last night we drove out there to see how she's doing and she was giving a baby girl a ride!  I'd say she's almost ready. 

 Here's Brandon riding Roxy, who is already broke and we are using her to become more comfortable with riding.  She's been a real trooper. 

 Did I mention I love her? But alas, I can not lie.  There is a person right in front of her that she is following dutifully.  But he did drop the lead rope after a few times around the pen and the next time I rode her I didn't need no stinkin' guide!  But I made sure someone was close just in case I (she) started freaking out (bucking, jumping, running, trotting, shaking, etc....) 

 Something else we've discovered...roping!  Here they are practicing and working it out with the rope. 

Now nothing around this house is safe! Please note I didn't take pictures of the boys roping each other around the ankles.