I'm melting..........

This is how my baby asks for a pbj sandwich. Have you heard anything more adorable???




Ahem.......excuse the laundry piled on the kitchen table....and all of the bridles and halters hanging from the banister.......and the Christmas decorations still up from last year..........this is a working household k? K? Meaning......we're a work in progress.......just as soon as I get off this couch....I'm gonna make some progress.....and get to work.........

And speaking of monkeys........

Look how high this little punk gets in this tree!





I'd be very terrified if I hadn't spent all of my growing up years in the tops of very tall trees in my yard.





We had several different species of trees in our yard and each was climbed for a different purpose. For example, there was one tree that had very long branches that reached up to the sky and they were very flexible. This tree also had little tiny orange berries on it that delighted us each year as we'd watch the birds fill themselves up gluttonously and then we'd laugh with delight as we'd watch the poor birds plumb drunk trying to fly. This tree in particular was great for swaying. We'd climb to the very top and then grabbing onto a sturdy branch start pulling our bodies back and forth until we had the top of that tree literally bending in half. Back and forth we'd sway harder and harder. I can only remember one casualty. My older sister fell and it was as if I were watching a cartoon as she went from limb to limb to limb bouncing all the way down like a pin ball. No broken bones. It was all that fresh cows milk. Strong bones for strong activities.

Another tree that we had which was my absolute favorite was a Japanese umbrella tree. That is what we called it anyway. I've no idea what it's real scientific name is. It is shaped in the form of an umbrella and the branches and leaves are such that they wind threw each other and are quite close together thus forming....welll.....duh.....an umbrella. You could climb up the tree and sit on top of the branches and leaves and not fall through which I think if we did we probably would have broken bones.

The hours we spent playing either under that tree or in its branches or on top of it. It was my tree. My dad took photo's of me at quite a young small age in its nether most branches......no surprise that my punks have taken to the trees. Not when they have a gorilla for a mother.

Told ya he is a monkey!

I have no idea how to turn this video so that it is not side ways so pardon me. Proceed as follows....

Lay down horizontally and then press play. It should look normal to you then right? RIGHT?

This is my baby punk climbing out of the cherry tree. I love watching his little feet curl around the tree trunk.

I could spend all day watching him climb out of this tree over and over and over again. Oh wait........I do........spend all day.......watching him climb out of this tree......over.....and over........and over again. And I love watching his little feet each time.....over.......and over....and over......again.

Washing the truck!

Around here Saturday is wash the truck day. It is this punk's job and his brothers.



It is a battle up there and as you can see, punk number 4 is making a bang of it.





It's a tough job to wash the truck AND keep an eye out for enemies who might assault you at any second with a debilitating spray from the hose.





Not to worry.....this punk is a professional. He's got all the natives under control....hidden behind him he has dirty wash rag bombs at the ready...

Goat's head, Bullhead, *!#&! stickers!

Today we are going to talk about Goat's head.




Not this kind of goat's head.





THIS kind of Goat's Head.......It's bad. Real bad and you wanna kill it! I know, I know, You look at the pictures and think, oh but it has such pretty little yellow flowers and the leaves are all delicate and ferny.........I understand completly.




But this.....





And this........





Turn into this!






I realize that they look all adorable and cute and funny but underneath all that soft fluffy stuff.......





They have pokey's. SHARP pokeys that get ya when you least expect it. Read what someone had to say on the internet about these sweet innocent pokey's.

Comments: This is that obnoxious weed whose seeds are incredibly painful to step on, get tracked into your carpet, puncture your bicycle tires, and have to be pulled out of your pets' paws. The seed pod grows 4 "bullheads" in a circle (see photo), when mature it breaks up into 4 separate instruments of torture. The plant is naturalized, originally from the Mediterranean. It is a pest plant wherever it resides in the US. In Europe the plant has been used in folk medicine throughout history, treating such wide-ranging conditions as headache, nervous disorders, constipation, and sexual dysfunction. In China, it has been touted for use in liver, kidney, urinary, and cardiovascular remedies.


Well, I'd have to say that if I were being poked all over by these suckers I wouldn't be thinking about my headache, nervous disorders, constipation, or any other ahem....dysfunctions......not that I have any........considering I procreate about as fast as these plants do........not that I'm calling my punks goat heads, or bullheads, or *!#&! stickers.

If that doesn't scare ya, read this article See? All cute and innocent and next thing ya know. BAM! Ya get poked. My horses pasture is full of these *!#&! stickers. Gonna go and kill em' before they suck me into thinking they are so cute and pretty.......

Where did THAT come from?

Another post about Levi. Our Levi who cracks us up daily and here is his latest.

To make any sense if you don't know Levi he has AHC. You can read more about it here or more about Levi specifically here.

A few years ago we went up to MT to visit family. We brought our dogs along with and stayed at my baby sis's house. My parents came one evening and as my dad walked through the door our dogs went bounding up to say, "hello"! My dad reached down and started to pet our Westie and said, "hello dufus".

That one word stuck with Levi. Why is this? I have no idea. The punk can't remember anything we try to teach him that might be useful but he remembers the word, dufus. Everytime he saw my dad for about a year he'd call out, "Hi dufus"!

We all thought it was funny and got a kick out of it. My parents went on a mission for our Church for 18 months so it has been a few years since Levi has used the word dufus.

Last night while I was putting Levi to bed he looked at me with a grin on his face and said, "you're a dufus"! He then doubled over in peals of giggling and laughter. He continued through out the entire process of me putting him to bed giggling and laughing in between calling me a dufus.

If I had any sort of a back bone I'd have gotten after him and made him stop because you know where this is headed.........but I'm a wimp and started to giggle and laugh with him calling him a dufus while tickling him making him giggle and laugh even harder in between him taking deep breaths and calling me a dufus........

Remind me that I thought this was funny when the day comes and he walks up to someone of importance and calls them a dufus..............

Squash the veggies.

Have you ever wondered why certain veggies have the names that they do?

After eating them I don't. I know EXACTLY why they are named what they are.

Some veggies I can handle more than others. I know veggies are good for us and so I choke them down and try to come up with all sorts of ways to cook with them so that I can neither taste or see them.....works for my punks too.......

Speaking of choke..........artiCHOKE........or aSPARaGAS......BEETS......SQUASH....there is a reason so many veggies are under the "squash" category.

When I was a young whipper snapper along with my bigger and younger whipper snapper accomplices one of the places that we liked to play was down in the basement in the food storage room. We'd play "grocery store" and pretend that we were shopping. One of us would be the cashier and the other two would "shop" loading up our baskets making purchases and then we'd trade places.

One day as we were shopping we discovered to our horror of horrors that under the table that we were using as the check out stand were these huge yellow football looking things and some of them were big enough we could lash them together and make a raft.

We whipper snappers looked at each other and we had only one thought.......survival! We knew that at some point during the long winter months our mother would go A-wall and delight in watching us as she shoved that stuff down our poor throats.

My older whipper snapper accomplice had already sabotaged the aSPARaGAS by weeding and pulling them all up and then innocently when mom wondered why none of her spears of death hadn't produced....."I don't know mom but there isn't a single one out there".

Survive we must and so we did the only thing that such young vulnerable beings could do...WE FOUGHT BACK. We grabbed some chopsticks and started stabbing the retched soul sucking creatures of the vine to death.

We knew that we had time on our side. When mom finally found them, they would be shriveled and moldy doomed for the compost pile where they deserved to be......

Squash......ya, I know EXACTLY where they came up with that name...