I apologize for the dead air here on the blog last week…my only excuse? Too many other things vying for my attention–all good things, of course, excepting my daughter’s ear infection! (Please ignore the weird spacing of the pics in this post…I’ve been having such a hard time working with images on WordPress lately! They will not go where I want them to go!!!)

Monday

Monday morning began laid-back and kind of melancholy…we’d had big plans for homeschooling friends to come over for lunch and swimming, only to have the plans fall through Sunday b/c of my friend experiencing some dizzy spells…she’s 8 months pregnant, so we were really concerned. However, she called at 8:30 am and said she was good-to-go! So we ended up having a very joyful, exciting day with her and her three great kids. Pizza and fruit for lunch and ice cream sundaes for dessert, plenty of swimming, toad catching and playtime for all, and a great visit between us two moms! I’d been looking forward to that for a long while!

Alas, she had to leave…and the girls and I had to get to our small town library and turn in our reading time logs by the deadline. The Summer Reading Program–over already…

Tuesday

Woke 10 yo up at 5 a.m. so she could go gather cattle with her daddy–have I mentioned that late July and early August equal many pre-dawn wake-up calls for my cowboy husband as he and the rest of the ranchers round up all the cattle that have been enjoying summer grass and load them on cattle trucks or bring them back to the feedyards? Well, this is pure bliss for my older girls–a chance to ride horseback all day and spend quality time with daddy…

My oldest sister came over around 10:30 am, bringing my niece and nephew for some water-fun and lunch. We enjoyed chicken salad and zucchini quiche, etc, and a leisurely chat together which was long overdue!

That evening, we ran my husband over to the hay field so he could drop off his truck and trailer to his uncle…to be loaded with big bales of prairie hay…and then we ran on into the “city” to the farm store and to drop off our reading program booklets at the “city” library by the deadline!

We got home, fixed a (very) late supper, and oldest threw together a batch of sugar cookie dough to get a jump on chilling it for a cookie-baking marathon the next morning!

Wednesday

Wednesday began at 3:30 am for my 7 yo, being her turn to don jeans, boots and spurs and tag along to work with daddy…I don’t mind admitting that I wasted no time jumping back in bed after seeing them off!

Three or four hours later, I baked two pans of cherry dump cake for the cowboys’ dessert while my oldest painstakingly rolled out the cookie dough from the night before, shaping each treat with our butterfly cookie-cutter. The library’s summer reading program theme was “Bugs” this year, so she wanted to bring a plate of frosted butterflies to the children’s librarian. Aw…yes, very sweet! They turned out so pretty!

At 10 a.m. my husband’s boss called to let me know that the cowboys were finishing up and would be ready for lunch by 10:30! So we flew out the door with our desserts and made it to the pasture barely on time! They’d spent the morning gathering 1,400 head of cattle…about 15 cowboys/girls…and we enjoyed lunching under the shade trees out on the prairie! Brisket sandwiches, potato salad, pickles, trail mix, and cherry dump cake!

Then it was a rush back to town to make it to the library’s Summer Reading Program party at 1 p.m. A bug expert came to talk bugs with us, bringing many live critters and even baked larvae for the children to enjoy! Woo-hoo! (My daughter said it tasted like they were barbequed!) The exciting part is that my youngest won the grand prize drawing of an electronic toy called a Leapster!

After the party we stopped by Dairy Queen for a little ice cream and then we hustled over to the county fair to watch my niece participate in a dog agility course. She won!

Out to my folks’ house to water their flowers and tomatoes…as they’re gone on vacation!

Home in the 103 degree heat for the girls to swim and me and hubby to finish spray-painting the house! YES!

After this, we hopped in the car and headed to the “city” (hope I’m not confusing you all…we did two library programs this summer, the one in our “small town” and the one in the “city”) for their library’s end of summer reading party! It was a mini-carnival, and we really enjoyed seeing several of our homeschooling buddies there…after that was over, we dropped hubby off at the hay field to retrieve his hay-filled trailer and headed home. Another late supper and into bed!

Thursday

My 33rd birthday and 15th anniversary! (Thank you all so much! I got several lovely cards in the mail, as well as a slew of online greetings, you guys are the best!) My oldest got up early and crept into my room to give me a 35 minute back massage! I could start EVERY day off that good!

My 4 year old made me a banner…with 33 written backwards on the back of the Happy Birthday sign…TOO cute! And of course, I received several awesome home-made cards from the best girls in the world!

My oldest prepared breakfast and lunch and made me a two-layer white cake with frosting from scratch…

And my dh took us all out for supper to my favorite Mexican food restaurant and then to Hastings where we found great deals on two of our favorite movies–used–to watch with our birthday cake and ice cream!

My favorite gift? A gorgeous leather Bible cover from my oldest daughter…

Bedtime on this illustrious occasion? After midnight!

Friday

Well, Friday was spent keeping things quiet so my 7 yo could rest and recover from her ear infection. Thankfully I had an exceptional read handy, From a Distance, a new one by Tamera Alexander. Highly recommend this author, and especially this book, the first in her Timber Ridge Reflection series, it’s SO good!

My mother-in-law stopped by with one of my nieces bringing birthday/anniversary fun, we visited for an hour or so, and then I ran to town and out to mom and dad’s to water plants again, solo this time!

We ended the day with our weekly Family Movie Night, watching Tomato Sawyer and Huckleberry Larry’s Big River Rescue (which I won recently over at Veggie Tales Review!!). Great family movie!

Yes, the week was busy…but I could have eeked out some online time if the one time I tried our computer hadn’t frozen and refused to shut down and reboot. Didn’t have time to waste messing with it, so I just shrugged my shoulders and decided it could wait till this weekend!

Glad to be back, and I really enjoyed catching up on my blog-reading Saturday!