Experiencing a New Normal

It's been awhile since I've posted anything.  There are several reasons why I haven't but the honest truth is I'm struggling.  I'm struggling with things to post about.  Don't get me wrong it's pretty busy around here and there are many things I could talk about but have no desire to do so.  So - I guess if you are looking for an upbeat post you've come to the wrong blog! The holidays are always extremely hard on me and I just haven't seemed to get out of that slump yet.  Jon and I have also been struggling with some major decisions concerning our farming operation.  I've also been struggling with my Christian walk. Through all of these things I guess you could say I've been too stressed and bummed out to share our life right now.  It's not exactly a place I like to find myself.  Since I find it hard to get into the Word lately - I've been trying to find "help" through some books.  One of those books I've been working ...

So for quite a while now we've had an artificial tree in our house during Christmas. Well because of our remodeling project the tree was put in the garage for a year AND the lid was left open during that time (don't ask me why.... I'm not really sure how that happened). Anyway I was afraid to put the tree up. I was worried we would find a family of mice or a snake!  So I talked Jon into getting a real tree this year. I also thought it would be the start of a new family tradition.  So, the Friday after Thanksgiving we went to pick out and cut down our real Christmas tree! We had a fun time trying to pick just the right one. We brought it home, set it up and proceeded to decorate it. I'll be honest I didn't really like it. It took up so much room in the living room and it was bigger than our fake tree so all our ornaments looked pretty sparse on this new tree (just call me the Grinch)! Well by Wednesday afternoon I wasn't feel very well. Thursday, Will and I both ...

I finally got it figured out.  So here are a FEW of the pictures I took of harvest! This was one of the tractors I drove this year - the JD 4850! Jon just got this tractor this summer to replace the 305. Jon combining beans! This was one of my jobs one day.  Every year Jon would get frustrated with his Dad for not cleaning out his bins before they got busy with harvest.  Well this year all the bins were cleaned out ready to go before harvest.  HOWEVER, DFS had a hot bid and Jon knew we were going to run out of room, so he sold corn right during the middle of harvest! So my job was to empty the grain bin and fill the grain cart full of corn so when Jon came back with the semi he could fill it up a whole lot faster and get back down to Osky quicker with a load of corn.  I teased Jon about this later - how he was keeping up the tradition of getting rid of grain during harvest!   This was just one of the examples of our dow...

It's been awhile since I've updated this blog.  There have been several factors as to why I haven't. Those being harvest, internet problems and exhaustion!  So now that I've got a little down time I thought I'd update you all what's been going on around here. We finally finished up harvest for us on Saturday, November 8.  We had about 30 acres of custom combining that we finished up the following Monday (10th). Boy was I thankful to be done!  It was a harvest we probably won't forget.  It was our first harvest on our own.  I'm sure there were several times Jon wished his Dad would've been here - I know I did!  We had several breakdowns with one being pretty major setting us back two days.  Another breakdown had us taking the combine into Titan Machinery only setting us back not quite a full day.  Other breakdowns were just little maintenance things but sometimes took us all morning to work on.  I tried my best to jump in and do what Jo...

I honestly can't remember what year it was - but TJ and Anthony had pooled their money together and bought a laptop computer.  They mostly used it just to have fun with - and it kept them off my computer!  Well, the way the two of them set it up was that they each had their own log in page.  That way TJ's stuff was on his side and Anthony's was on his and neither of them usually used the other one's side!  Since TJ's been gone we have been trying to get on his side of the computer.  We have tried different words, names that we thought he might use as password and nothing ever worked.  I've asked around to different people if they knew of anyone you might be able to hack into TJ's side.  Nobody could ever give me a name.  Until one day we were over at our friend's house.  He told us about all the work he had done to their own computer - so I asked him if he would be willing to give it a try. I knew I could trust him with this computer.  W...

This has been a hard week. We started off the week attending the funeral of a young man who graduated a year a head of me at school.  This same man was the son of TJ's fourth grade teacher. We knew it was important for us to go and I'm glad we did - it was a very nice service with a great message for all to hear!  Later that day we started harvesting.  Remember the corn that was flattened this summer?  Well Jon wanted to get that out of the field before the stalks rotted or broke off and we had bigger issues of getting it out of the field.  It was a little wetter than we would have liked but the yields were better than we expected which was great!  We finished this field up Friday afternoon. Then Tuesday we got a phone call from our landlord's daughter telling us Bob had passed away.  This was a complete shock to us.  He was the neatest, amazing, and one of the most godliness men I've ever met.  Jon and I absolutely adore this family! ...

Earlier this year we had gone to a special event for Help a Heart.  At this event they had a silent auction  - and it was there that we bid and won a Kansas City package - complete with Zoo passes and Royals tickets!  It just so happened that the dates that were available for the Royals game and the dates free on our calender was Labor Day weekend!  So Friday we picked up the kids from school and headed to Kansas City.  We ran into some pretty good rain almost all the way down -so it wasn't any too early when we arrived. Saturday morning after breakfast in the hotel we headed to the Zoo.  I was pretty impressed with it!  There wasn't an animal exhibit we didn't see an animal - and it was a HOT day!  They had what they called "animal chat" - where there would be a zoo employee telling you more about that particular animal.  We just happen to be at a couple of those (not on purpose) - the leopard and the rhino - that made it a little more int...