Protecting the Girls

Last night, in the dead of night, the dog barked.

I mean, after acting half crazed this afternoon and barking all evening and then barking insanely much around eight thirty pm, my dog was driving my crazy.

My eldest, after seeing that his mama was about to have a meltdown because it had taken he and his three  brothers TWO HOURS to clean the living room (that wasn't even that messy, I know that is hard to believe, but it's true) he took it upon himself to clean out the kitty litter.

That's how I know he knew he needed to do something grand to make sure I knew he had heard me.  No one likes to clean kitty litter.

Not only did S1 clean the kitty litter, he even pulled on his boots to take the kitty litter right out to the dumpster.

He came pounding back up to the house, burst through the door, uttered the word "Opossum" and headed straight for the gun cabinet.

We have an all out hate of the opossum animal.  You may have read about my dramatic war with one in the Praise and Coffee Magazine in Spring 2011.  Earlier this year an opossum snuck into our chicken coop and killed my most favorite chicken, Holly Hoppie.

She could only hop on one leg, her other leg was non working.  We returned home one night from church and heard Holly's death cry.  The boys and I cried for days.

I hate opossums.

Anyhow, S1 went charging for the gun cabinet.

He got loaded up and with S2 at his side, the stormed outside to protect our girls - our chickens.

S3 and S4 stood on the porch...one was wearing jeans, winter boots and a tshirt.  One was wearing undies, a tshirt and bare feet.  The stood perfectly still to wait for the death shot.

The nasty opossum was in our SHED.  The shed I spoke of last night that is stocked with ice cream. In this shed also sleeps chickens...they don't like to be far from the ice cream either.  They know that's where the good food is.

I had been in that shed TWICE that very afternoon.

Whether I was in there for ice cream or not I do not need to say.

At this moment, with two boys standing on the porch clinging to each other, with one son running around with a flashlight and one son loaded with a gun and a dog barking insanely much, my husband pulled in the driveway.

He was told by four excited boy voices what was going on.

I just smiled sweetly and said, "Welcome home, baby."

He grinned as he pulled out his gun and went to join the boys.

The opossum was shot.  My husband informs me I should be nice and not put the picture on the blog.  I think of Kellyn and how she still goes on and on about the boars head post.

Then I thought of Kellyn and how she went on and on about the boar's head so I just texted the photo to her.  She was stuck in a meeting last night, she needed the photo.

Becca tells me she is not interested in the tail being sent to her either.

But here is the information I will give you about the nasty opossum that was attempting to kill my chicken and then steal our ice cream.  S1 is (gasp!) two inches shorter than me (DO NOT tell him I admitted this fact) and that opossum was as long as his waist to his boot.

Not a one of us have ever seen such a huge monster.

It was such a great shot that my husband said we could eat it for dinner.  NO WAY!!!!

Sigh.

Anyhow...

i am thankful for my boys who protect the girls - the chickies and their mama....

Pukes NOT Pucks

(a post not for the soft stomached)

Yesterday, I left my house for the first time since Thursday morning.

After dropping the boys off at school

ON TIME

I went home to make Death by Chocolate Scones.

Then I went over the library that I love so dearly.

The library I just happen to work at.

There we ate scones, drank delicious tea from quaint tea cups with saucers and watched this movie.

I so love this movie.

I really love the book as well.

While I have read it before, I never did finish the book in time for this book club.

It was a grand time.

After the movie and chat (we are going to stick with reading woman authors and taking suggestions), we decided to read Little Women next.  My ultimate favorite book.  And Alice hasn't read it and this makes me a wee bit worried about her. ;)

After all that girl time, I picked the boys up from school and we headed to Meijer so they could spend the Christmas money that has been burning holes in their pockets.

S1 loaded up on clearanced hunting gear, and was shocked d things can add up to $45 dollars rather quickly.  He was nearly ready to get in an argument with the cashier, but she was right, not him.

S2 got BB's, air soft bullets, nerf bullets and a target.

S3 got a new game for his Leapster and a case to carry his Leapster.  It was fun to hear him say, "YES! Now I can do subtraction!"

S4 found himself a lego boat he can use in the tub (can it get any better?) and sunglasses.

I was thankful I had some girl time earlier in the day.

But it wasn't long after we were home that S1 informed me he wasn't feeling well, and it wasn't long after that he was puking.

It's been years since he has been this sick, since his Boar hunt, actually.

I don't handle puke well.

Like, at all.

Husband does things like that shockingly well.

I can change diapers, I can clean disgusting things, I can do most anything.

But not puke.

As we heard S1 puking throughout the night, husband (exhausted from hours of plowing and hours of fixing plow trucks) said sleepily, "Go help him."

To which I - and yes, I feel some shame in admitting this - said, "What am I going to do? Just let him puke it out and fall back asleep."

Yah, I'm that kind of a mom.

At around one in the morning, S2 came down and began puking too.

Thankfully, we have two buckets.

This morning I wrote a facebook status bemoaning the fact that I had puking boys.

But I wrote PUCK instead of PUKE.

Which is funny to me, hilarious really, and that could be because of my lack of sleep and the fact that I have been dealing with puke for nearly two weeks on and off.

I could well be sick of pucks.

Because this is a picture of my boys over the weekend.

And people know my boys well enough to know that they COULD have pucks IN the house and how that always seems to turn out.

I'd so much rather have that then this.

My poor sick boys.  I am bleaching and lysoling and hoping that I don't catch this bug at all.

Say a prayer for us.
Say a prayer that I can handle dumping buckets of puke.  I know that sounds awful, but it's really hard on me.  And my two oldest boys are as pale as the snow and lifeless today, I feel so awful for them.

Things I NEVER Imagined I Would Do

WARNING...DISGUSTING PHOTO BELOW!

NOT FOR THE FAINT OF TUMMY!

( you have been warned )

There are things you just know that you will do one day when you are a parent. You may not want to do them, but you will...

...like let a baby spit up all over you.

.......clean puke.

............not gag when you change nasty diapers.

The list is forever long.

When my sweet baby boy number one was born, I was totally disgusted by drool and declared he would never drool.

The boy was the drooling king. He wore a bib the entire first year of life...just to catch drool.

I should have known it was the beginning of a life of things I would declare I would never do, but would. Because I'm his mom.

But, I never imagined I would do THIS......

Remember when Andrew went on his boar hunt this year? He shot one on the First of January and we all cheered and congratulated him and have loved eating all the meat that is now in our freezer...especially the ribs smothered in Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce.

This weekend, Hubs and I went on a fun date and all the boys stayed at my parents - where they had a blast -. Sunday night all of us were together at my parents and my brother mentioned we needed to grab that boar's head out of the back of his truck...it was ready for him to take home. But we forgot and it got late so I just told my sister in law I'd pick it up the next day when she was at work since she drives the truck every day.

I ran a few errands, getting groceries, paczki's for Fat Tuesday the next day and then coffee for me and hot cocoa for my sister in law. I arrived at the farm she works at, pulled along side her truck and dropped the tailgate to see this........

I nearly dropped my coffee.

But, of course, you know well how I love coffee.

I went to hunt down my sister in law - who is a very tough farm chick - and hauled her to the truck.

She was as grossed out as I was.

We stood in the cow barn discussing the grossness of it all, and she dug a bag out of the storage room for us to drop the nasty head into for me to take home....but neither one of us discussed who would actually pick it up.

I'm the mom of the child who shot the thing. I supposed I would be the one who would pick it up. So I delayed as long as possible and we visited new born cute calves instead.

Who doesn't like new born cute jersey calves?

But then, oh-thank-you-God, one of the farm owners stopped in to see if we could move our vehicles and he - the hero he is - heard our plight and followed us out to our vehicles and picked up the nasty boar head, dropping it in the bag for us.

When I opened up the back of the suburban and he seen the carpeted back and the bags of groceries, he just laughed.

I was carrying a boars head home with my groceries.

I do not recall how I became the mother who does such things.

But I did.

And I have a happy eleven year old because of it.

Prayers Answered for a Ten Year Old S1

For Christmas, S1 was given a calendar only. Bless his heart, he was happy with the calendar of hunting scenes. Truly, he is a terrific young guy!

But, on February 19th we wrote “WILD BOAR HUNT”. From January 1st to that date I had a countdown written down for him.

He was more ecstatic than I could ever hope to put into words.

So imagine his complete anguish when he woke up on February 18th with the flu. And not any flu bug, a doozy of the flu. All week he had been worried this might happen as more and more kids from his class were sent home sick.

He was sicker than he has been in years.

Laying on the couch he began to have tears literally drip down his face. “Does this mean I can't go on the hunt?”

Oh, just break my heart into a million little pieces.

So, I put out a call on face book asking everyone to pray really hard.

He did not eat dinner, he took two naps, he ate about a handful of crackers, he laid listlessly all day long and when he woke up this morning, he literally was jumping up and down for joy, he felt great. Super great.

He was pacing he was so excited to get going. Afraid his appetite would reappear in the middle of the night in the hunting cabin with his uncle, I made him his favorite cookies. With more than enough to share.

On our way to my brothers to drop him off, his little legs were shaking with excitement. “Feel like you could just jump up and twirl around and leap for joy because you are so happy?”

“Defiantly.” he laughed.

Laughed. Thank you ever so much, God, for this answered prayer.

And believe me, I will let you know how the hunt goes.....