Fashion on the farm!

I bought a bunch of fabric, last summer, intending to get some skirts and tops sewn up for Her Royal Highness, but didn't get that done....among many, many other things!

Anyway, when Aunt Bert was here this summer, she and Grammie Karen got busy and whipped up two dresses and a broomstick skirt. Maggie is over the moon, with the new dresses! I didn't get a picture, yet, of the last dress; coming soon in a photo post.
This is the dress Aunt Bert sewed, back and front. SO pretty! I wish I could wear it!

This is the broomstick that Grammy Karen sewed. It matches her new boots! And it really twirls! Maggie's ready for a dance, now. Cowboy PopPops could teach her how.

See? New boots, AND a twirly skirt!

The big OC herd...

...got in my yard, and acted as though they owned the joint!

Here's a picture of Daisy, taken off the deck, as she lounges in my potentillas. She all but stuck her tongue out at me, when I told her to get out of there! Annie Light, after grazing through the flower bed, had to take a big rest in the shade of my Aus tree.

The Princess, sans clothing, getting them up and out.

Look at their ears. They are thinking mean thoughts about her, but they know they're in big trouble, and they don't want Mama to come down off the deck. When Mama gets there, the jigs up.

Daisy is taking Maggie for a run. That calf is awfully canny, and I believe she'll make a really annoying lead cow. She WILL be lead cow, being all knowledgeable about ranchers and hay and pellets, and all....

Since these pictures were taken, the herd has gone down 33.333%. Festus just kept getting worse and worse, and was just getting to be a sack of bones, so Wayland finally had to shoot him. He did so without telling me first, and that was probably a good thing. But Daisy and Festus were very close, and Daisy is still grieving, I think. He said she followed him for about half a mile, after he loaded Festus up.

These girls are growing well, and I think we'll be able to hold our heads up, come sorting time this fall. I don't think they are going to be shrimpy at all!

Big Boy Pants

We are potty training Angus....still. (You can take a minute, right now, and say a prayer for us....)

He is perhaps the most stubborn individual I've met. (...and I don't want to hear about any OTHER stubborn individuals in the Dutton family, so you can just stop with the suggestions in the comment box about heredity and what goes around, comes around...) You can't bribe, beat, suggest, applaud, peer-pressure or bait this child into doing something he's not absolutely convinced isn't his idea. And potty training is most definitely not his idea.

I've tried all the old tricks. (After all, this isn't my first stubborn child; just my MOST stubborn child.) Let him sit in wet pants....nothing. Get an M&M after the trip....nothing. Stickers....he "own't wike stickers". Go see PopPop.....shoot, PopPop stops anyways. I even bought him really groovy Lightening McQueen underpants, so that maybe he wouldn't want to get them all wet and icky....um, well, he's not as compassionate about keeping cartoon characters nice, as I'd hoped. In fact, there's no concern whatsoever.

Yesterday, I went to Walmart in a huff and bought 14...yes, double digits....big boy pants, with every cartoon super-action hero you can name! * We are going to DO this! And we are going to do this while Daddy is busy harvesting, so he doesn't have to be here for the trauma and the drama. From Mama.

I took them out of the sack, proudly showing the trainee his new big boy pants. Maggie LOVED them. Maggie WANTED them. Angus shoved them away and said, " I own't wike 'em, Lightening Queens! I own't want 'em Lightening Queens! " Of course.

He must've slept on the idea, and decided otherwise, because this morning, he wiked 'em. And he's been trying them on, about every 20 minutes, all day. Oh, no...they aren't wet, when he changes them. He just gets tired of wearing, say, Buzz Lightyear, so he digs through the pile until he finds Nemo. And then he's a Nemo man until he remembers he saw Wall-e, so he does the old switcheroo of underoo, and voila! he's a Wall-e man!

And we've made it through the morning fairly dry. I'll spare you the details. But you can imagine, when I find a pile of cartoon underpants, how I gingerly go through them, hoping beyond hope that they are all dry....sometimes they are, sometimes they aren't.

I'm hoping we make real progress this week. I'm hoping for initiation on his part, of the run to the restroom. I'm hoping we get through one day with 60% of the super-heros dry. I'm hoping we get this done before I take him to Kindergarten, in 3 years.




*A little tip, here. One should always try to calm oneself, before purchasing anything in a tiff. Who knows what one may come home with, otherwise? Standing in the aisle, in front of all those crisp little Underoos, I suddenly had this feeling like buying 29-350 pairs, and locking the two of us up in the bathroom until he came out dry and trained. I am so sick of changing britches. But I reined myself in, and only bought 14, which I thought showed remarkable restraint. My husband thought I had maybe lost my marbles, when he saw the number of big boy pants, but then he's not the one laundering them, either.

Twilla B.

If you have been a Chronicle follower for a while, you probably know we had to euthanize our Irish Setter, Ruby, earlier this summer. It was one of the hardest things on our little family, and there's been a big hole where a floppy eared, silly red dog once filled in our hearts. About a week after we walked around, missing our left arm, so to speak, we decided to apply to adopt another setter from Save Our Setters. They are a rescue organization for Irish and (I hope this is right) English setters. The process is quite involved, and includes an extensive application, vet check, and several people reading through the application before we were even considered for a dog.

Last week, I got an email from the S.O.S. organization that said they had a dog that may be a good fit for our family. We looked at her profile, and after reading her story, knew that she belonged with us! What we didn't know was that about 20 other families thought she was the dog for them, too. Her foster mom, Shelly, called us, and we visited for the longest time, asking questions and actually interviewing each other! Shelly said that Twilla is an affectionate, gentle young dog that loves other dogs and kids, and would fit into a young family with a stable lifestyle. She said Twilla is still a little unsure about life, and rather timid, but that she will be good with a lot of love. And Shelly recommended to S.O.S that we should be Twilla's new family.

Twilla will come to live with us in October, when Shelly and her husband come for a vacation in Montana, and we can hardly wait! Maggie is having a hard time with her name, but in one of her fairy movies, there are Twillerbies, and she calls this little dog, Twilla B. I just got an email forward from Shelly that said Twilla was named after her rescuer's newborn neice, and that they just knew she was that special.

One of the unexpected blessings of this (rather long) story, has been getting to know Shelly, and having a new friendship. We are looking forward to having Twilla B. here, in October, and we are just as excited to meet Shelly and Don in person.

So, that's the beginning of the Twilla Tales. As we get more pictures and video, we'll put them up to share. Shelly told me that Twilla doesn't really care for "paparazzi" , so glamour shots are tough to get. Quite the opposite of Molly, my Brit, who actually pauses and poses....

*You should know that we are considered the Crazy Dog People in Cohagen. We chose non-stock dogs for our family, which was against the Code of the County, and proceeded to spend more money on their maintenance and care than some ranchers spend on a horse. Not that we're proud of that; it just is what it is. So you can imagine how much flack we are going to get for getting another setter....

I guess if we're going to be Crazy Dog People, we may as well embrace the title, and do it right!

Quiet time.....right.

I love my quiet time in the morning, with my coffee and my thoughts; it's where I read my Bible and pray and plan for the upcoming day.

And I haven't had it since the kids were born, except, maybe 3 times.

My kids have some sort of sensor (probably the same one that tunes into the phone when it rings) and will wake from some serious slumbering if there is a change in the ambient temperature of the kitchen air, due to my body being there.

I have tried everything. I've made the coffee the night before, and set the timer to go off at 4:30. They meet me at the pot at 4:35. I've gone outside to grind the coffee, under a heavy blanket and bathrobe, on the deck. They greet me at the door, blinking. I've tried getting up earlier. They could match my early-ness, and have more energy at 3:45 in the morning than any human being ought to have. My son now slips into our room around 3 a.m. and into our bed, so it's not like I can just take the coffee pot into our bedroom and sit on the floor under that heavy blanket over a steaming cup of joe and my Bible. They have all the bases covered.

To add insult to serious injury, I can call my best friends at 9:00 a.m. to see what they are up to, and they have the unmitigated gall to speak softly into the phone, "Well, ------ is still sleeping, so I'm just folding up my laundry and having a little quiet time." "Really?", I respond, " You guys must've had a late night..." (Hopefully)
"No, the kids were in bed by 9. " At which point I question exactly WHY we are really best friends. It was the same when the kids were infants. I'd call T. and H. and B. for a little sympathy, during the 15 minutes my daughter slept during the rinse cycle of the dishwasher, only to hear about little -----'s 4 hour nap, and how they got 2 rooms painted, the floor mopped, a shower taken and (you know what's coming...) a little quiet time.

Do they give them sedatives? Cough syrup? Tie them to the bed?

Now I must tell you that I do get prayer time. I pray while the kids are fighting, while Bob and Larry are singing that cheery little Veggie song, while I'm trying to get the stain out of what's left of our carpet, while dinner is burning, while I'm trying to locate the little darlings in the 200 square miles of prairie where they went on a "quest" with the dog and bum calves. Oh, I pray, all right! It's just not quiet. Sometimes I get to read my Bible, in about 3 minute spurts, while I tell them I'm going in to the bathroom. (That's when they escape to the prairie...)

There are women who nearly glow, talking about their quiet time in the morning, with God. Focus on the Family applauds the endeavor, Today's Christian Woman just assumes all women get this. I always feel like sort of scrunching down in my seat when I hear of it.

I realize that these years go fast, and pretty soon all I will have is quiet time. I will be wishing for little bouncing bodies and chattery voices and sticky kisses before my coffee in the morning! And I do love them. I just wish I could figure out a time to recharge that isn't somewhere between the hours of 2:00 a.m. and 3:15 a.m. (I'm sure they'd figure that one out, though...)

(And if you think I could be having quiet time, instead of blogging, you should know that I'm typing this while the kids are running back and forth, chasing the cat, and Wayland is trying to capture them to eat Cocoa Pebbles or yogurt. It's not quiet. And it's not yet 7 a.m.)