We attended a wedding in central Nebraska over the weekend. Part of our duties were to help watch this Grandchild during the reception. This is an older pic of her sleeping with her Dad.
She fell asleep in her little flower girl dress on the way from the Church to the reception. Just a four block journey. When Marilyn approached the sleeping child she said, "Ahhh, she's asleep already, she must be very tired." To which her Dad calmly replied, "Well of course she's tired, it takes a lot of energy to run her attitude."
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I must appologize to regular readers of this blog. I've been really busy trying to keep corn watered and also with meetings and stuff to do relative to getting ready to leave the farm for a while. I will return with renewed vigor to this blog about the 27th. I will be gathering enough personal experiences to keep blogging for a while. I also hope to be able to give you a date for Blogstock '08. Don't give up on me.
Stay safe my friends.

And Then July!

After a record wet month of May, we had one of the driest Junes on record. I've had trouble blogging because I can't sit down at the computer without falling asleep. We've been hauling irrigation pipe, planning Independence Day Celebrations, hauling hay, and mowing weeds.
THE FOURTH
We had a great get together. It included a Birthday party for one of my sisters, a surprise family baby shower for our youngest and his bride, and a few lady fingers and parachutes to fire off. Nothing says America like grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, homemade ice cream and fireworks from China.
We found the perfect compliment to Homemade Cherry Nut ice cream, it turned out that if you put a scoop of that on top of a scoop of Homemade Vanilla you had a combination that was hard to beat. We also had a chocolate cake for the birthday and a white cake for the shower. A great day indeed. My oldest son Dan and I finished it off with a quick nine holes of golf at just before sunset. He and I both had new fairway woods (metals) we wanted to try out. We came home and changed the sets on two of our irrigation wells, said our good byes and we collapsed into bed.
As a follow up to this. My 8 year old grandson ended the day with some 'delayed fuse' lady fingers. (not to worry, these fire crackers have the same power as cap gun with a two second fuse.) He was only allowed to light them with a punk. Punk, used in this manner, is a new word for him. He used up his last punk and was distraught because he had a few more to light at the end of the day and his Mom wouldn't let him use matches. Then yesterday, he found a couple of old punks in his Uncle Toms old room upstairs in our house. He came downstairs just beaming, held them up to show Grandma and said, "Look what I found Grandma, JERKS!" Apparently someone in this family, (ahem) uses the word 'punk' interchangeably with the word 'jerk' .
One last thing, I want to see if you think I'm correct. Last night my Daughter and I came into the house. We'd been hauling some hay and Grandma had the kids. They were watching a high def nature film. Fish were jumping out of the water. My Daughter said, look at all of those fish jumping. I told her, "I don't think fish jump out of the water on purpose." Then I imparted my theory on her. A theory I had developed thru years of taking the family camping and fishing at Harlan County Reservoir. I told her "Fish don't jump out of the water on purpose, I think they are just swimming upwards and suddenly run out of water, they then say to their buddies, Oh crap, AIR and turn around and dive back into the water."
They must have thought I knew what I was talking about because they all stared at me for a second and left the room. It seems that I often get the last word in these discussions. I think they are in awe of me.

A View From The Porch

This 'View From the Porch' is brought to you by Marilyn. I wanted a sunrise picture and the sun comes up about 5:30 AM around these here parts. So I had Marilyn take it. My thinking was that there's no use of both of us missing sleep for my blog.
I had to 'lighten' the exposure to even be able to see the machine shed. That little tree in our front yard indicates that we've had some mighty strong south winds as of late.




This pic is of our Grandson hitting a ball in his 'coach pitch' league. About half of the players in the league are girls.
I'm showing you this for other reasons. If you'll examine the first baseline it shows one of the following:
1. Alcohol was involved.
2.Coaches should ask at least a few questions of the volunteers. As a for instance, "Have you ever done this before?"
3.Whomever put the line in, didn't see the 'foul trash can.'
4. Someone said, "A Line?" "Nah, I can do a good job without bothering with stretching a line."
5.There'll be no need to worry about a fair ball hitting one of those pesky bases. They're out of bounds on this field.
6.The hitter has a head start toward second base or the Dairy Queen. They're both west of here.
7. And finally the truth. The gal that did it was having a great deal of trouble with the machine and was too busy to worry about 'direction.' She took the good natured ribbing quite well.

Etc

We went to a reception in Lincoln on Sunday. It was within walking distance of two of our Granddaughters. We had taken our Grandson with us. This is as organized as it got.

This is our other Granddaughter. She's "gonna be six." She is engaging. She will walk into a room full of strangers searching faces. If you will smile at her she will come talk to you. A real people person.

She can barely stand to sit down before church because there is always one more of us elderly types she needs to visit with.

She is a really good singer and can hit any note Mariah Carey can hit.

You can make her smile and laugh, while she is crying.

She is sneaky to a fault. She will always figure out how to get her way. (I suppose the above line could have been said by saying she is a female.) I've always said she could be dropped off in a jungle by herself and you could come back 10 years later and she would still be okay but the animals would all be under her command.

She taught herself to ride a bike about six months ago.

And the reason for this post...yesterday was the day her first baby tooth came out. She said "Look Grandma, I have a loose tooth." Grandma said it looks pretty loose you should just pull it out. Now in all of my 57 years, I have seen a lot of loose baby teeth and not one child including me, would reach in and pull one out. Until now. Without hesitation, she reached in and popped it out. "See" she said as she proudly smiled and displayed it for Grandma.

Views From Around the Farm

This is a picture of one of my Grandaughters sleeping in a carseat. Do not try this position at home without the aid of a diaper.

Just trust me on this one.

This view from the porch is a week old. It proves that I'm having trouble with the lens on my camera. The same lens that made me look overweight in the photo below, makes those corn rows look crooked. I'll admit that they aren't 'perfectly straight' but as I've mentioned before, it's hard to plant straight rows because of the constant rotation of the earth. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Weekend Update

Everything went well last weekend. The two roasts almost did it to me again however. I put the 18 pound roast in at 5 A.M. as I was fearful that it might still be frosty in the center. It was. The oven was set at 350 degrees and when I checked it at 6:45, I found that the main control knob had been turned from Bake to Off. Cold oven. Mad cook. After this, Nobody is to touch my oven control knob. My wife won't let me cement it in place because we may, one day, want to clean the oven again.

Both of the roasts were judged edible and since it was a low turn out of people, we sent meat home with everyone. At least we got rid of it.

The Pine Wood Derby was Sunday afternoon. My Grandson got a 3rd place trophy for 'speed' and a smaller one for best design. The picture doesn't show the metal flake paint his Uncle Dan helped him put on the car. (metal flake is that gold sparkly stuff that makes the paint glitter)(sorry I got all technical on you there)

In the pic the clear coat comes out looking dusty. It really was shiny. You'll have to trust me on this one.

Here on the farm...the players are in the dugouts, the tarp is on the playing field, and we are in a 'Rain Delay.' My 'Day in the life' won't work until it dries out a bit.

Those Carwash Blueskies

On Saturday the Owners, Employee's, and Friends of Morrow Collision Center gathered for a carwash to aid Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Lincoln. The first photo show's about half of the crew involved. We went to visit and planned on helping. And we did.
They raised over $600 for a good cause. My oldest son Dan (the one in the back) was a tireless job foreman. My youngest Tom is in the one nearest the camera.





I began to see how this was being so successful. (the getting the customers part) These folks had all been on the phone the day before. Nearly everyone who drove in had a big "Hi" for someone who was helping.







Near the end of the day my grandaughters showed up. The oldest demonstrated on Mom's wheels the proper technique for washing fine motorcars. The youngest (below) demonstrated the lesson that we all begin life with lovely skin and when we fail to take precaution with the sun and it's harmful ultra violet rays we will most assuredly lose that youthful glow so THAT'S the reason she was keeping her hat on.

Tough Crowd

Marilyn picks-up and delivers dogs door to door. She picks them up in the morning and delivers them back to the owners that evening. Most of her customers are in a larger town 25 miles away. This time of year I normally go with her. Her knee replacement operation has put a crimp on that. It would have been hard to use crutches and carry a dog to the car. Yes I have and will do about anything for Marilyn but picking up strange dogs isn't one of them. Dogs generally don't like strange men. They do like Marilyn, she has a way with animals of all kinds. So our daughter has taken over that duty. As a trade off she tucks her kids into bed here at our place most week nights, we get them up, Grandpa cooks breakfast, and then we put them on the bus for school.

Every morning I've been going to the upstairs doorway, take a deep breath, and start with my best Luciano Pavarotti impersonation. I love the big echo in that hallway. I've been singing things like Zippity Do Da... and Ohhhhh What a beautiful Moooorning, Ohhh what a beautiful day...

Yesterday I finished my song and in my best Las Vegas stage show voice said, "Thank You, my names Cliff Morrow and I'll be here all week." My 8 year old Grandson is stumbling all sleepy like down the stairs and as we come face to face he mumbles "You've been here your whole life Grandpa."

And Good Morning to you I thought. I fear I'm having some effect on these kids.