our latest adventure!

We had an interesting and tiring weekend.  Life on the farm is always so...unexpected!  We had an apartment built in May/June timeframe last summer and that is another story but once we had people in the apartment we found the septic system um... shall we say inadequate.  Glenn took a long plunger-like thing and tried to find the stoppage but to no avail.  When Cyndi moved out, actually before I guess we had a septic man come out and check into it and found that Loyce, the original owner had done a home made septic system – eew!  Anyway, we finally got to fix it this weekend.  We rented a large piece of equipment called a Ditch Witch which had a huge –what looked like a giant chain saw – on the back.  Glenn actually had fun driving it.  Anyway, we discovered that when Oscar worked on the apartment someone evidently made a large gash in one of the large pipes leading away from the building and so that was another problem in its self.  We worked as a team because I had to make sure that Daddy was going deep enough to bury it.

 

 After the tractor stopped working and we had to call someone to come out we stopped for a short while and drove to Tomball to see Santa.  Nathan was sure he would go right up to Santa and set on his lap and for the 3^rd year running he wouldn’t even come close to him but now because Nathan was scared of Santa, Mandy wouldn’t come close either!  Oh well.

 

Back to the trench and we had to measure along the line, it is 120 feet and make sure that the pipe was at an angle downward but it also had to meet up with the existing pipe that we are going to connect into from the house.  It was a lot of measuring, shoveling in dirt, leveling it and then putting in the pipe and then using a level to make sure it was at an angle.  It took us all day but it is accomplished.  I would love to put pictures here of Glenn running the big trencher but I still am not sufficiently knowledgeable to put pictures in here.

 

Also, Nathan had his first piano recital Thursday night.  He did great and had a wonderful time.  He looked so grown up and was very confident in himself and his playing.  We were very proud of him. 

 

Now, on to the rest of Christmas with decorating, cooking, wrapping, etc.  Kathie will be home on Friday and Cyndi and family are going to come around New Year’s.  We are looking forward to all of them being home again.

It's General Conference

Weekend.  We have had a busy but nice weekend.  Saturday morning Nathan had a soccer game and so we recorded the first session of General Conference and went to the soccer game.  Nathan wasn’t to in to the game which is rather unusual but when he played goalie he did great!  He stopped two scores and was really involved.  We stopped at Home Depot afterwards and by accident ran into a Kids Day workshop with Firefighters and Fire trucks and both kids made a cute little crayon holder fire truck out of wood.  They also received a Home Depot work apron and pin and a hand out which we will use for FHE on fire safety tomorrow.

 

Today was nice to be able to sleep in and listen to the Spoken Word and sit and enjoy listening to the speakers.  Nathan and Mandy received a packet in the mail from Kathie and they worked on it and also a page I copied out of the Friend magazine.  Nathan had fun checking out the ties on the General authorities and Mandy enjoyed the maze and coloring Joseph’s coat of many colors.  The page we copied from the Friend had a list of key words and if you heard the word “scriptures” then you decided what you would eat.  The only problem was that they did listen but they would hear a word and then search in their bowls for a pretzel or a cashew or a Trix cereal.  Glenn did keep up with the kids and kept eating Nathan’s pretzels.  Just for information we ate the most cashews (Jesus Christ) and then teddy grahams (Heavenly Father) and the third was pretzels (family).  In fact, we ended up bringing pretzels to the living room because we kept running out.  My guess is the theme of the conference was basically the family. It was fun though and the kids enjoyed the session but they weren’t very hungry for lunch after all of the teddy grahams, cashews, pretzels, gold fish, and marshmallows.  As I watched the sessions and President Hinckley didn’t speak until Sunday – he may have in Priesthood, I wasn’t there – I was so very glad that President Hinckley spoke on Sunday morning.  He is amazing at 97!  We hope you all had a wonderful General Conference weekend.

 

PS – the chickens are doing better and some have started laying eggs again.

On a September evening

I have had qualms about exactly what to write on this blog.  I don’t read others so I can’t compare – do I write just about the farm or about the kids or about me but I guess since it says ball family that is what it should be. All kinds of things have been going on lately.

 

I am still enjoying the wonderful sunrises!  We have had some very foggy mornings and it is like walking into another world with fog shrouded tall dark sentries in the distance and swirls of clouds caressing my face.  There is also a planet, I don’t know which one that is very bright every morning and positioned directly in front of me as I head east towards the chicken coop.  Speaking of chickens my chickens are sick.  They have chicken pox!  It is actually called avian or fowl pox but it is yucky.  The chickens all have black crusty looking sores on their combs and wattles (the red part above and below the head) and slight sneeze sounds.  They also have stopped laying and for a while there Fancy wasn’t crowing al all and Fancy loves to crow.  Fred crows occasionally but Fancy will crow dozens of times a day.  It took me several days to come up with what they had, actually Shelly came up with it (research specialist) and then if was confirmed by Brett, the rancher that rents our pasture and then the Montgomery County Ag extension agent.  We just need to wait and they will be better in a month or so.

 

We also have lost a cat.  One day Spencer was just gone and we haven’t seen him in almost two weeks.  My guess is he became someone’s dinner but I guess he could have found a different home.  Our duck is still doing well.  She came waddling up to the house the other day, we hadn’t fed her yet.  If she doesn’t have a mate we may buy some baby ducks for her to raise come spring.

 

Meanwhile, I think I may have broken the third toe on my left foot.  I dropped a very heavy plastic thing on my foot and then jumped around a bit and finally soaked it in ice water for a while.  It is really a very ugly toe right now and I still can’t wear shoes. I was supposed to get it x-rayed today but it just didn’t happen so I am just going to treat it like it’s broken.  It would help if my children would stop stepping on it.  So far today, Mandy has stepped on it three times and Nathan once.

 

I was very proud of myself last Friday as I mowed the entire yard in one day.  For those that haven’t heard about our mowing issues, they seem to be ongoing.  When we first moved to the farm we bought the old riding lawn that the old owners sold us.  It lasted about 2 ½ mowings.  Then we bought a rebuilt mower from Johnny the lawnmower man and then it kept breaking down.  I think it took 3 times of Johnny coming out and fixing this or that before we could actually run it.  Ask Jeremy, the poor guy kept climbing onto the mower and mowing a strip and then the mower would break and the circle would repeat itself with Johnny coming out, etc.  Finally, right before Cyndi and family left for Arizona it was finally running smoothly.  Anyway, in all this time I had never accomplished mowing all of it in one day until last Friday and I was able to get it mowed even thought I had to pick Nathan up from school and do some running around afterwards.  It looks so much better when it is mowed!

 

Glenn isn’t coming home until Friday night as he had a management meeting in Denver and Nathan doesn’t have school tomorrow and so we get to sleep in, Yeah!  Sleeping in at my house usually means 6:30 but it beats 5:45.  We hope to work on the road some tomorrow.  I am not sure how I am going to do that with a broken toe but it really is getting bad.  With all of the rain we received in early summer it has many and deep potholes and so it is time to do the dirt/gravel fix.  We have priced a tractor with an attachment that would fix the road but Glenn is waiting, I’m not sure for what but he is waiting.

 

Hurrah – we also received Mandy’s Social Security card today!  It’s been a year since we brought her home but we finally have it.  That’s it for the evening.  Ya’ll have a great night.

 

The sunrise

Since I take Nathan to school every morning, I need to get up fairly early to get myself dressed and feed the assorted chickens, cats, dogs and children.  This means that I am feeding the chickens every morning about sun up.  Each morning as I walk across the back yard to the chicken coop I am greeted by this beautiful scene.  Yesterday, the sun was sending orange shafts of light toward to sky and the surrounding clouds were laced with orange and pink and dark blue and white.  Other mornings, there is a mist that still clings to the ground and around the trees and I am in a nether land of contrasts.

 

 It is fast becoming my favorite time of day and even though I still am trying to figure out a time to go to bed so that getting out of bed that early is ok, I am loving the sunrises!

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday to our Mandy, who is 4 years old! Wow,  it has been over a year since Mandy’s gotcha day!  We are going to have a birthday party for her on Saturday but we did celebrate at Preschool with homemade cupcakes and juice and then we met Shelly’s girls and had a fun lunch at McDonalds and we play, play, played!  She has come a long way from the little girl that cried for hours and screamed “My Mother has left me!” at any passer by in Mandarin.  She is quite a character and has Attitude with a capital A but is turning into a loving, creative little girl.  Her language has finally caught up with her mind and she is now truly talking and describing what her life is to her.  On Saturday, we were driving to Shelly’s to take some things to her house and Mandy talked nonstop about Cinderella.  She went into every detail and every scene. It takes almost an hour to get to Shelly’s’ house and she didn’t’ stop talking.  Her monologue included sound effects and when the Royal messenger comes to the Cinderella’s house – she said “and he went ding dong” and just continued.  Anyway, again Happy Birthday to Amanda Paige Xin Jie Ball who is now 4 years old!

We have a

Happy Labor Day everyone!  We have done just that this weekend – we have labored.  Shelly and family came and stayed at the Ball family Bed and Breakfast over Friday night and spent part of Saturday with us.  I think everyone had fun and we got some work done.  We have a beaver that has moved onto our island at the pond.  It looks like his/her den is actually on the island – there is a pile of gnawed on sticks on the bank and a big whole in the ground under it and a larger hole to the side , which I am assuming is the escape route.  When Jason was out walking Bevo on Saturday morning before Bevo decided to be a bad dog and run away (he came home later) they saw the beaver at the island and watched him jump into the water.  So, we worked out on the island and wrapped the trees with chicken wire, hopefully if the beaver can’t get to the trees he/she will go away. 

 

Ducky Wucky (the kids named the duck) is doing well and has made her home under the little deck we have at the pond.  It would be nice if a male mallard would come along and we could have baby ducks.  We will see.

 

Jason figured out how to mow the long drive all the way to Riley Road and now you can actually drive with out hearing the grass hit the bottom of your car.  It is very nice.  Thank you, Jason.  He continued to mow a little after and then this morning, I got up and mowed for about an hour, Glenn took over for a little while until he had to stop and then I continued for another hour or so.  I still have some left to do but it definitely looks much better.  The day has been over cast all day and about an hour ago it let go and rained!  It is still raining some but not with the force it was before.

 

 We are busily thinking of plans for our Reunion in July 2008.  We are getting excited; I think it will be a wonderful time for our family.  Have a great week.

Summer 2007

Yeah!  I finally was able to get back into the blog that I was supposed to be typing into.  An English teacher would tear that sentence apart!  Our summer has been hectic-more about that later and now school has started back.  Nathan is now officially in Kindergarten.  He started August 20^th and is loving it.  Mandy has also started preschool and she seems to be doing very well.  Nathan is going to play soccer this season.  He has never played or even seen a soccer game before but he learned to play baseball this spring and I am sure he will do fine.  Mandy is starting dance-ballet and tap- and is very excited to do that.  She took her first lesson last Thursday and enjoyed it once she realized that the teacher was trying to get her to pretend.

 

Our farm menagerie is interesting.  It is growing for sure – we have a brand new duck that has joined us.  Our first duck – I believe she is a female mallard.  We don’t know where she came from but she seems comfortable around people.  She also seems to want to stay.  The kids have named her Ducky Wucky.  We are now up to 16 grown chickens.  There are two roosters – Fancy, who received his name because he has feathers sticky out of his head and Fred, our Rhode Island Red rooster that looks like every rooster should.  That leaves 14 pullets and they are laying well.  We have 2 white hens, 2 brown hens, 1 gold Brahma and 2 white Brahma, 1 black her (one of the dogs killed the other one) 1 rather unusual one that is black and white, 1 that is mostly brown but has different colored feathers around her neck and that leaves 4 others that I can’t remember.  I received a mixed group when I ordered. Anyway, I get white, tan, brown and dark brown eggs.  They started out very small but are getting bigger. We are averaging 7 a day so we are able to give Shelly about 18 a week. Again, I will try to figure out how to put pictures on here.  We have two dogs that have been with us basically since we moved and 6 cats.  Yes, I said 6 cats!  We started out with 2 male cats that Asia brought here from a litter her cat had and then I noticed a strange grey cat.  She has stayed and we have named her Smokey.  Well, Smokey presented us with 3 kittens and that brings us to 6.  We don’t want any more cats or dogs at present.

 

We have had a challenge of trying to keep up the acreage that we have.  We bought the riding lawn mower that the previous owner had and it lasted about 2 ½ mowings.  So, we bought another one from Johnny, the lawnmower man.  While Cyndi and Jeremy were here for the summer, Jeremy was able to get it to work well but now it’s my turn.  Whew! 

 

We have been going to the Magnolia Auction House each Friday night that we can and have brought some neat stuff.  Two weeks ago we found a swing set and we have finally accomplished putting it together.  The kids are loving it.  It is so wonderful to see them enjoying life so much here.  That as much as I can do tonight but at least I am back to writing.  Later.

update

Hi.  Just checking to see if I can get through.  Me