Thursday, October 18, 2012

Sentimental Value

I had a garage sale last weekend.  Of course, that meant going through tons of baby clothes and deciding what to sell and what to keep.  It's not an easy task.  One of the things I came across was a pair of socks.  I set them aside and when Cole came home from school, he asked why I wasn't selling this particular pair of socks.  I told him these socks had sentimental value.  He wanted to know why.  These are the socks I'm talking about:

This was Cole the day of his surgery to close his PDA (a small duct above the heart that normally closes after birth, technically it wasn't surgery, but they had to knock him out and do procedures and stuff).  If you met Cole his first year of life, you wouldn't have noticed anything wrong with him, but he was small, he slept a lot, and his feet were always cold.  I just chalked the latter up to a family trait.  He always had socks on.  He was the first one in that morning for his procedure, then he had to remain completely flat for 6 hours following, to make sure the site where they went in closed properly.  We lost one of his socks at some point and while I was searching for it, Pat told me to touch his sockless foot.  It was warm.  For the first time in 14 months our baby's feet were warm!

I gave Cole the shortened version of that story and about teared up holding those socks.  We had wondered whether this procedure was really necessary since he never seemed to have any ill effects of that duct, but we did what the doctors recommended.  I guess warm feet were our sign that this was the right decision.

On a side note, one of the socks has gone missing again...

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Little Old Men

Cole's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. J, attends our church.  On Sunday I was telling her how impressed I am with his writing.  When he started his first year of preschool, it took days for him to write his name.  Now he wants to bring a notebook everywhere so he can write his words.  I was also telling her how another mom and I are frustrated because our boys can't seem to venture far from the farm.  Everything they write is about tractors, semis, cows, or something farm related.  Mrs. J proceeded to share how she has this group of farm boys and loved listening to their conversations.  She said it's like listening to little old men.  "We finished corn last night, how about you guys?"  or "We started chopping corn stalks today."  It just made me laugh because the image is perfectly clear in my head.

My boys have also become very anti-John Deere.  We have a mish mash of machinery, but only a couple of John Deere pieces, an old 60 tractor that was a gift for my father-in-law as that was his first tractor.  We have an old baler and a seed drill that are also JD, but most of our tractors are red.  The boys take this to mean that John Deeres are gross!  Last year with the dry weather a lot of combines caught on fire, mostly John Deere, so now, according to Cole, if you ride in a John Deere combine, it might blow up.  The boys in his class, and one of the paras, love giving him a hard time about John Deere green.  He had a field trip to the apple orchard, where one of the boys spotted a combine in a shed and Cole refused to look at it because it was John Deere.

Last night on the way to bed I was pointing out everything in our house that was green.  Cole thought he might have to move.  I told him Antarctica was the only way to go since nothing grows there, so he wouldn't have to worry about green plants or grass.  I also told him I probably wouldn't come visit because it is way to cold.  His response: "do phones work there?  Cuz then I could just call you."

Saturday, October 13, 2012

The College Fund

I had a garage sale this weekend.  I understand, now, why some people refuse to do them.  I thought I would try it once.  I don't know that I would do it again.  I prefer to just give people my stuff if I know they can use it.  I actually have 4 boxes upstairs waiting for delivery to a friend.

Anywhoodle, Friday night was spent loading the pickup with boxes and totes of clothes and toys.  Since I live in the country, a neighbor and I decided to haul our stuff into town for the community wide sales to generate more business.  After things were loaded, Shelby and I took off to do a little garage sale shopping.  When I got home, Cole had convinced Pat that he was coming with.  I promptly told him no.  He didn't want to know why he couldn't come, but instead wanted to know how else he was going to get money for college!  No money for toys or candy for that one.  It's going straight for college!  So how is it that a 6 year old is planning that far ahead?  Well, remember our pigs?  Our pigs, and any red steers, fund our kids college funds.  So Cole was convinced that he had a ton of money coming to him when we sold our pigs, only to discover that the money was going for college.  So now he thinks all money needs to go for college.  I feel sorry for his future wife, if he has time for one.  That girl is going to have to be completely smitten to take second place to work all the time.  :)

Oh, and as for the garage sale.  I made enough to pay up our neighbor for babysitting Shelby and the advertising and had an extra $5 in my pocket.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Answers

Before you go any further, make sure you read this post.


Did you read it?




Did you make a guess??




Ok, last chance....



Here are the answers:
Top:  My blue eyed beauty, Shelby
Middle:  My future farmer, Cole
Bottom:  My only non-redheaded child, Tate

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Look Alikes

People always claim my kids look alike.  So here's a test.  Who is whom?  (is that proper grammar?)  So here they are, in random order, all wearing the same outfit at about the same age.  By the way, the outfit is a hand me down from my now almost 12 year old nephew.  Still in pretty good shape, eh?




Stay tuned for answers!!!