nope, not what you are thinking!

Hahaha to those of you who thought I might be preggers. Nope, not gonna happen anytime soon, probably not ever which does make me a little sad, but on the other hand we have our boy and girl and they are a handful enough for the two of us. Feeling normal today as well, so hoping I am really over this mess. Asher, on the other hand, was up at 4 am on the toilet! I just don't get it. And today he acts completely normal and fine, eats fine, just so strange the coming and going of it. Oh, and we did end up canceling our swim playdate yesterday as I just didn't want to risk getting anyone sick and/or feeling horrible that morning and then canceling really last minute. And of course we felt much improved but I still felt it was the right thing to do to cancel as much as I hated to do it. It has been HOT and sunny here this week. Today we worked outside again. I took the kids out after an early lunch to burn some energy before Allie's nap. We watered the garden and played in the sandbox. Allie just does not tolerate the heat like Ash can. I douse her with sunscreen, but her fair cheeks get so red and hot and her body just gets so hot. I tried a Dora sippy/straw cup that I have had since Asher filled with ice water, the other day and she loved carrying that around, so that helps. She will suck down one of those in nothing flat, and it is like 8 oz. Once we got her down for her nap, FedEx arrived with a package. I expected it yesterday so was glad it came today for goodness sake. It is just annoying as we have to track everything and then leave the gate open when it is FedEx as they don't have a gate key like our UPS driver does. Anyhoo the package was two stuffed birds from John's last October South Dakota hunt. Ash and I were excited and went about trying to open the box. John got back home right after we got the birds out of their extremely secure not going anywhere packaging, they were literally screwed into plywood that was then screwed into the bottom of the box - it took 20 minutes!!! Wrapped in plastic and a million peanut things - ugh I HATE those things! Such a waste!!!!! They aren't recyclable and I never use them with shipping. They get everywhere and stick to everything. I wish he would have had one of his pheasant mounted, but these are awesome looking. One is a sharp-tailed grouse and the other a prairie chicken. Very sleek and pretty! I will take pics eventually. They are on separate mounts, and they are wall mounts which I wasn't expecting. I was thinking we would put them behind glass in the entertainment center. So we hung them next to the front door where my John Grisham print and a candle/holder was, just used the same screws and am seeing how they grow on us there. As of tonight I don't like them there. LOL Allie had crashed for her nap so we 3 went outside. Checked on the chickens/turkeys. At least 4 of the 19 turkeys are strutting. It is sooooo cool looking! Asher was like, "Mommy, next time you HAVE to bring your camera down and take pictures!!!" Then one will gobble and all of a sudden several will gobble all at once. It is really awesome. I am glad we got them, even though they were T-R-O-U-B-L-E. Well I guess the baby chicks were more so, but whatever. Speaking of which, they are almost 19 weeks old now. And we have at least 6 or 7 roosters unexpectedly. They are starting to crow a little bit, and assert their dominance with each other and the hens. I am also expecting some of our early laying hens to start producing some eggs soon. The day I have more than 8 at a time I will know for sure, LOL. Yesterday we had 6, then 2 more, which is rare. We have 8 mature hens, but we typically only get 5-6 eggs a day. So it may be that we are getting a few here and there extra. It is hard to believe that when we are in full production with 50 or however many hens we will have about 3 dozen eggs a day instead of 3 dozen a week! WOW! Asher will reallllly be earning his egg money then! We also took the 4-wheeler over to our neighbor's farm, we can access his through a gate on our front pasture. He has 120 acres, just beautiful. Our farm and his were actually connected long, long ago. He has an old stagecoach stop house that is full of antiques, and he told me yesterday when I saw him while he was moving hay bales off our farm (he bought our round bales but we didn't know he was going to buy them before John put most of them along our back fence line) and he told me to go on over and get all the peaches we wanted from the backyard and that he would leave the house unlocked so we could look at it. He and his wife don't live there anymore. He is probably in his 70s, a really nice gentlemen named Ronnie Ryan we have enjoyed being neighbors with, which sounds funny since he doesn't actually live on the property, but you know what I mean. That's the best kind, right? LOL. Because of all the trees in the valley area where our properties meet, you can't see his old house from our house, and vice versa. We could look over from his place and see our barn and turkey pen. Ronnie runs horses and cattle in partnership with our neighbors across the street neighbors Sam & Kay (who do actually live there, but we can't see their house either from ours! It's great being secluded!). So, we collected some peaches, not quite ripe yet though, and checked out the really cool old house with all the antiques in it. And I would LOVE some of those if and when he wants to part with them! I immediately told John, "We have to bring your parents over here when they visit!!" as they are big into antiques. Asher and I finished weeding and tying up the row of ROMA tomatoes in the upper garden. They are so heavy-laden! We are finally starting to get some ripe ones. Took long enough! So we have weeded the row of new potatoes/sweet potatoes, and the 2 rows of baby corn didn't need it, then a third row of baby corn got pulled as only a handful came up, then we finished the tomatoes today. Next is 3 rows of mature corn which may not get weeded much as they are very tall and doing a pretty good job choking out the weeds themselves. Then we have a pitiful row of squash, I think like 4 or 5 plants came up, and we haven't gotten any yet. That needs to be weeded and then there is the final row of cucumbers, again only a few plants came up. Strange year for the cucumber and squash as the same thing happened in the lower garden. Just didn't come up. Not sure if it was from the same bag of seed that were duds or what. Lower garden is definitely neglected and I am tired of looking at it. I am ready to till it all under and sow grass seed. Bleh! Right now there is a row of peppers, a row and a half of tomatoes, and I think that is it. The peppers are doing way better than they did last year, despite all the weeds in between them. John uses the tiller to get in between all the rows, so that stays nice, it is just the weeds in between the actual plants that get out of control. After Allie got up, we all 4 swam for about 30 minutes. The water is finally at a great temperature! I guess the lower 90 temps have helped. Still very refreshing though, not like bath water that you get in Arkansas in August, LOL. We got showered and decided to head into town for dinner at Applebee's, since I needed to pick up a prescription at Kroger as well as diapers. We called the Maves once we figured out we were going to eat, to ask if they wanted to meet at Applebee's, they said sure! So we met them at 6:30 and we had a good meal. Then onto Kroger and then headed home. It is funny as it was already almost 9 pm when we got home, yet still completely light out and doesn't feel like bedtime at all. Ash didn't get his lights turned out until 9:30, which is late for him. Thankfully Allie went right to sleep after her bath and lights out, which was by 9:15 I think? A full day of sun, work, and play. Definitely a good day and I thought several times how much I APPRECIATE the farm and the life we have here, the way John provides for us and that God has graciously allowed to come to fruition. Life is good. Tomorrow is Library at 10 am, Storytime. We have books due since we didn't make last week due to illness. Hoping everyone feels fine in the morning! Not sure if we will do the park/pool afterwards - probably not. It is supposed to be lower 90s again and if it were just Asher I would totally do it, but Allie is harder to deal with at the public pool and in the hot temps not to mention close to naptime. I may take a break from working outside and try to sew a little or maybe get my Crop stuff together. John is on call and who knows how his day will go as he didn't have to go in at all today EITHER! This working every other day thing has been nice these past couple of weeks. Of course he stays when he is on call sometimes 16 straight hours, but hey. It could always be worse.