Recent quotes

Charlie: Mom, can you go to the store and get milk? Because I don't want water and I 'm too young to drink beer.

Sam: (wondering if I could give him a ride to football practice) So can you run me over?

Frank: (thinking Sam was talking to him) With what?

Olivia: Get out of your room! (said to Elena when she walked into her own room, where Olivia had been napping)

Olivia: Olivia's mom! (after hearing her friend call me this enough, Olivia also started referring me as "Olivia's Mom")

Seth: We're not keeping it that way. 

This was in reference to our new riding lawn mower, which we bought locally. It came with a clown face painted on it for some reason, which Elena, Sam and I found hilarious and wanted to keep. Seth was very opposed to the idea, especially after riding it down the street and getting several "What the heck is that??" looks. He had it painted before I even got home to get a picture. 

It still has the eyes, though!

Another one bites the dust

 We've had a run of severe thunderstorms in the area with straight-line winds this summer. The first storm back in May pushed one of our pine trees over enough that we needed to cut it down to avoid it falling on someone. That's the 3rd tree we've lost in 3 years so our yard is quite a bit sunnier than before. 

Seth cut down the tree himself, and within minutes of the chainsaw being fired up, men started coming out of the woodwork to see the action and give their advice. My dad happened to be over that day working on our apple trees and Seth's Uncle Ken was next door visiting Grandma and Grandpa. Of course Grandpa DeCock brought out a chair to watch as well. I was happy to have several eyes on the project helping make sure the tree didn't hit the house. It did not fall where exactly where they were aiming, but it missed the house and ultimately that's all that I wanted. 

It's times like these I'm super thankful to have married a hard-working farmboy. Once the tree was down, he proceeded to chop up the entire thing in one day. The kids helped load up the wood to haul away over the next few days and the whole thing was gone in less than a week. 

Now we just need to decide which trees to plant in it's place. We have enough needles in our yard that we definitely want deciduous trees. We're open to suggestions!