Out Sick

I'll have to tell my latest stories next week. I am sick this week and my head is a little fuzzy. I don't wanna say anything too silly. Gotta go before I infect everyone. Sniff Sniff......

A Little Wiser

Well, the last of our leaves have finally fallen. This time, we went to Jonathan's grandfathers house and borrowed his leaf sweeper. Jonathan was pulling it behind his 4-wheeler and ended up with a massive pile in the middle of the yard. Just as Jonathan was starting to bag the leaves, one of our other neighbors walked over. He asked "Ya collect'n leaves??" Jonathan says "looks like it". Our neighbor then confessed to also dumping his leaves in the fields across the road just like another neighbors did. He then offered us his yard wagon to help get the leaves across the road. That was such a big help. He says we can just help ourselves when ever we need it. ( I don't think we will ever just help ourselves though) So, a big thanks to Grandpa Lavy for letting us borrow the leaf sweeper and the neighbor with the wagon that allowed us to discretely schlep our leaves across the road. But, we still have the 11 bags of leaves sitting in our shed. Those, with permission, will now be heading to the Senior Yoder household to be thrown in to the garden. Hopefully the dogs can get a few good runs through them before the leaves turn into compost.
On Sunday, we decided to pull our Christmas decorations down from the attic. It's always so much fun pulling things out from the boxes. Every item has a memory of who gave it to me or what great deal I got on it at after Christmas sales. Luckily, the tree I had at my apartment was a perfect fit for our house. Not to big and not to small. For those who always ask what it looks like, I have posted a picture. And also one of Jonathan "collect'n leaves". I don't think it was work for him though. He really loves his 4-wheeler. I'm sure I will have pics this winter of him plowing snow with a smile on his face.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENDY!!!!!!!!!

I hope you're having a great day! You deserve it.
Sorry, if I knew how too, I would have put you an e-card on here.
Alejandro says happy birthday too.
We miss you guys so much. Hope you guys have a good winter out there (if that's what you call it). We will be thinking of you while we trudge through the snow this winter. We hope to see you guys sometime next year.
Love you

Reminder to Fellow Bloggers

I wanted to take this time to give our fellow bloggers a reminder about open blogging. I started this blog knowing that anyone in the world could read what I post. But I really didn't think anyone else would want read this blog outside of family and friends.
Well, this weekend I realized that wasn't so. I received 2 comments from an undesirable stranger that I was forced to take off the blog for fear of offending everyone else. He ended up commenting again after I deleted the first comment and then I was forced to delete the other. He was insulted that I removed his comment.
My reminder:
Strangers around the world are looking at our blogs even though we may not think they would be interested. Just because they don't comment, doesn't mean they aren't there. We need to be extra careful about how much personal information we reveal on our blogs. Being careful about last names and current or future locations. I was a bit spooked this weekend to say the least.
This was definitely the hard lesson learned.
The good lesson learned. Now that we know people around the world are reading about us, What do we want to say to them??

A Mouse in the House

For the past two weeks I have gone to work and had to listen to the latest happenings with a girl that I work with. She is currently battling with mice in her house. Everyday she has come in telling us about all the crazy things that she and her husband have been doing to catch these mice in her house. So far, her mouse body count is up to five and she is still fighting with them.
Anyway, Friday evening about 6:30pm, Jonathan and I were sitting at the dinner table eating our pancakes and bacon (yes, breakfast for dinner). We had just started eating when I saw something run behind the refrigerator out of the corner of my eye. Instinctively, my bare feet lift up and I yell to Jonathan "oh my gosh, I think I just saw a mouse". Jonathan has his back toward the refrigerator so he didn't see anything. I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me. He didn't react at all and I began to doubt what I might have seen. Maybe I was a bit more hyper to the idea since I had been talking about them for the past two weeks.
So, about this time, Jonathan's dad rings the doorbell to pickup something from Jonathan. As he is walking in, Jonathan says "she thinks she just saw a mouse". The guys then began to shake the refrigerator to get the "so called mouse" to come out. Nothing happens. So then they move the refrigerator out just a bit, and wouldn't ya know it. The mouse comes running out and some how manages to zip into a hole that is in the bottom part of our kitchen cabinet. He won't come out.
That was all it took for me. I left my pancakes and bacon sitting at the table, threw on some flip flops and grabbed my keys. I peeled out of the driveway leaving Jonathan behind. I was off to the hardware store. I'm pretty sure that when the guy said "can I help you find something ma'am?", I looked like a crazy lady. I told him "I need mouse traps, STAT". Of course they were out of the cheapie $1 traps, so I had to settle for the more expensive ones that they said were less mess. I didn't really care about the mess at the moment, just something that would get the job done.
So, I flew back home and tore open the package. I loaded the traps with bait (peanut butter) and set them where I wanted them. At about 8pm, Jonathan and I were watching TV when we heard some commotion coming from the kitchen. I got up to see what it was, and there he was. The mouse was belly up, stuck in the jaws of the trap. SUCCESS! Jonathan put on his gloves, grabbed the mouse and threw him in the field across the road.
We still have the traps sitting out for a few more days, but I think there is only the one. Hopefully this is a lesson for any other rodents that want to invade our home.

A Leafy Predicament

OK. So it was a slow weekend. My mom asked if I had blogged anything new yet today. I had to tell her no because we didn't do much other than rake leaves this weekend. And of course, after talking to her, she manages to find some humor in our situation.
Well, as many of you know, I was born and raised in the comfy suburb of Vandalia. I had always been around the country scene with my grandparents living on the outskirts of Laura. (Although visiting now, it doesn't look like the "country" I remember). Anyway, I had always loved the country but I was never countrified. I would always end up back in my bed in cozy suburbia.
So, when Jonathan and I bought our house, we compromised on an area that was country but still had easy access to the comforts of the "city".
And now, I begin my transformation to becoming countrified. Saturday was the first day that I realized that we have to find creative alternatives to dumping our yard waste. Saturday, Jonathan was going to mow the lawn. But, we noticed that there were too many leaves on the ground to just run through them with the lawn mower. We then grabbed our newly bought rakes and began the overwhelming task. Sadly, when we looked up into our trees, we still had over 2/3 of our leaves still on our trees. As we finished our raking we looked at each other and asked "what are we gonna do with all these leaves?" We couldn't burn them. The neighbor suggested we just throw them into the fields across our lot. But, no matter which way the wind blows, they will just end up all over the road and back into our yard. We ended up bagging them up (a total of 11 bags of leaves, and still much more to come). We then decided to put all 11 bags into the truck and haul them over to Jonathan's parents house. We were going to put them into there garden, like they do with there leaves. But when we got there, the wind was blowing so hard that there leaves were blowing all over the place. I knew that wouldn't be right. If we dumped our leaves there, they would just blow all over there yard and end up having to be raked up again by his dad. So, we headed back home again with the leaves still in the truck. When we got home we just sat in the truck pondering our predicament. The only thing we could come up with was to throw them into our shed out back. We were tired and ready to just give up. And that is were the leaves currently sit, with many more bags of leaves still waiting to be raked.
So today I had an idea. Why don't we take them to my dads house in the suburbs and just let the city pick them up from my dads curb??
I am now begging, does anyone else have any other creative ideas on how we can get ride of all our leaves??