Friday, May 29, 2009

Boating Trip

Last Sunday Luke & I took a trip over to Thousand Hills State Park, about 45 minutes west of here. We rented a jon boat and set out with our fishing poles & swimsuits. Luke got to drive the boat:

My view from the front of the boat. Yes, the water is disgustingly brown, but we're not in Montana anymore :(We didn't have a single bite while we were fishing, but we did get to go swimming and get some sun!

It was a really nice relaxing day!

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Bale Out

I thought this was pretty funny. It's along Highway K (I think that's right) just south of the Kirksville/Brashear area. We drove by several times, but this last time I just had to stop and take a picture.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

My New Chore

I have a new daily chore, but it's one that I'm really happy about: picking strawberries! For the past 5-6 days my strawberries have been going crazy.

I usually get 2 of this size containers per day. I've made strawberry shortcake that was delicious, had strawberries on my cereal, and made strawberry jam. The jam was my first experience canning and making jam so it was quite the time. I think it worked out really good though. I'm going to taste some today.

This makes me really excited about my garden this year. Hopefully it's an indicator of things to come although my strawberries require very little work and lots of rewards. I'm not sure that will be the case with the rest of the garden since it was already a lot of work getting it tilled & planted.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Willie Concert

Last Wednesday we went to Columbia for a Willie Nelson concert. They closed down a street in downtown Columbia and had the concert outside. Here's Willie's bus as we were waiting for the concert to start: It was kind of strange: he didn't have an opener or anything. Nobody even introduced him. He just all of a sudden walked out on stage and started playing Whiskey River, in true Willie style!


He put on a good concert and it was a really nice evening so we had a great time! On the way out I just had to touch Willie's bus as it pulled out: Bye, Willie! Come back soon.

The next day we didn't have to work because our boss's celebrate Ascension Day and close the mill. Luke met his dad in Moberly and brought the baler that he was giving to Luke. Luke took it the rest of the way home and made it just fine...just had to drive slow. I spent the morning in Columbia shopping and had a great time. I got some office supplies at Staples for work and then headed to the mall & Old Navy to get some summer clothes. I got a really cute dress for Erik & Courtney's wedding too. It's so nice to have options!

Friday, May 22, 2009

Last Weekend

Last weekend seemed like we were going non-stop with working on all our projects that we hadn't been able to do because of all the rain. Now that the nice weather is here (and it's gorgeous, I must say) we were very busy!

One of our projects was to work all our cows & calves. The fall calves finally got weaned and the spring calves got shots. We set the cows up on a synchronization protocal so that we can start AI this coming weekend. Well, not all the cows. Apparently our pain in the butt bull that kept getting out last fall did a pretty good job of getting some cows bred. We were hoping to have everything switched over to spring calving for next year, but now about a third of the cows are bred to calve this fall. Not much we can do now. Here's some of the spring calves. They were very curious:


After the cows were all taken care of, Luke spent a good portion of the weekend working on the lawnmower. He really had a good time, if you can imagine. But, we were finally able to mow the yard and it looks so much better!! I've been working on adding a new flower bed to the front of our house and finally got it finished. The big pink rosebush was all that was there before. I put in the blocks, weed mat, mulch and planted 4 new shrubs. I think it looks so much better!! Now Luke wants me to do this around the whole house...we'll see.


So far the chickens haven't been bothering it too much and they better not! I'm sure this weekend will bring many more projects so I will try to take more pictures.

Monday, May 18, 2009

The Tornado

If you have watched the national news or weather channel lately you have surely heard about the tornado that we had in Northeast Missouri last Wednesday. All day they had been calling for a good chance of severe storms. Luke was over by Milan (west of here) for work and I was at home. The weather radio was going off like crazy telling me that there was a tornado watch (which means a tornado is likely). Then on the news they were talking about the tornado touching down in Novinger, MO which is west of here about 40 miles. They were showing the path that it was taking right towards Kirksville and then to Edina. Our house is right in between those two towns. Next thing you know were in a tornado warning (which means theres a tornado coming for you).

About then, the radio went out so I knew Kirksville had gotten hit. I was on the phone with Luke (who was basically following the tornado towards our house) when I was looking out the kitchen window and saw a cloud come up over the trees and as it was moving upward it was also rotating. Now, I've never seen a tornado but several of our neighbors also saw this and said it was one! That's when I headed for the basement with a blanket, flashlight & Kelly. I had just gotten down the stairs when the wind & rain hit and the power cut out.

Let's just say it was REALLY scary and I don't ever want to be that close to a tornado again! I finally heard the storm let up and felt like it was safe to go upstairs. Luckily the twister stayed just North of our house and we had very little damage. However, others were not nearly so lucky. We spent all the next day helping in Kirksville, where some of our friends got hit really hard. I only took a few pictures because it was such a sobering and sad sight. It was not something that I ever could of imagined if I hadn't seen the destruction first hand. So sad.

Here's where we helped with the cleanup. These people lost every barn, shop, vehicle, piece of machinery, etc. that they owned, including most of their house, but they were all okay.

Here is where one of their pickups got hit with a chunk of wood so hard that it dented in the door and you can't pull it out:
In the corner of this picture you can see their feed truck on it's side. All the fences were completely striped of all wires and most of the posts were just flattened over.
This is where their neighbor's house used to be. Yeah, I know you can't really tell where. It's such a mess.


One of the most grusome things was hearing about what had happened to the cattle in the area that had debri thrown through them or had been thrown into trees, etc. There were also lots of dead birds & squirrels around. We were so incredibly lucky that this was not us and we are trying to do whatever we can to help out with the cleanup and rebuilding process. Pretty scary stuff.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Standing Out In The Crowd

Last weekend we brought home our half longhorn heifer that has been at Luke's parent's house. She was the cutest calf ever, so we just had to keep her--plus she adds a little color to the black herd. She's now the marker cow:

She's getting along really well with the rest of the herd, and she kind of matches Kelly:
Here's my cow (Bella) and her unusally brown calf checking out the longhorn. They're extra friendly:
I think since she sticks out so well, we need to have a name for her. Any ideas?

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Our Weekend

We had a great weekend in Carrollton with Luke's family. Friday night there was a couples BBQ baby shower for Luke's sister Amanda and her husband Luke. They were in town for the weekend from Florida. I must say, it was much more fun than your typical baby shower. Amanda looks great and has 3 more months to go. They don't want to know if it's a boy or girl so everyone is guessing.

Saturday was Luke's brother, Matt's college graduation. It was outside and really nice weather so we enjoyed that. Saturday night they had a graduation party for him at the Miller's house. They set up a volleyball net and we all tried our best to be "athletic". It was really fun. Luke & Matt stayed up until 3 AM!

Sunday was Mother's Day and Debbie fixed a big lunch and had their Grandma over. It was a busy weekend for us, but we really had a good time.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Winning Big

Last Saturday night we were in St. Louis because Mom's flight left early on Sunday morning. We had some time to kill so we thought it would be fun to check out the Ameristar Riverboat Casino.

We had a great time! Mom won a little, I lost a little, but Luke was the luckiest of all!

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Mom's Trip to MO

My Mom was here all last week! She flew in last Sunday night and was here until this morning. It was SO nice to see her. She hadn't seen our house since we moved in over a year ago and we hadn't seen each other since last Thanksgiving. We had a great time catching up and hanging out. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and it rained every day she was here! We had wanted to work on getting the garden planted and finish up some landscaping I have been working on...but we mostly stayed inside due to the rain & mud. We went to Quincy one afternoon for some shopping, watched a movie in Kirksville, gave Mom a tour of where we work, went to the cow sale in Edina and went mushroom hunting a little.

I hope Mom had a good time even though we didn't get to do much outside. It was a very relaxing week and it will be hard to get back into the swing of things again this week at work and really get some stuff done!