Emily's Wedding

And Dave's too.

Last weekend I had the honor of being a bridesmaid to one of my dearest friends from college, Emily. They had a beautiful and fun wedding. And even though Emily is planning to kick their minister in the shins for slighting her Detroit Pistons in the wedding homily, he did a fine job of outlining what a Christian marriage should look like. The readings they selected were superb. I am confident that they are entering their marriage with good expectations and excellent help. Praise the Lord for sending Emily and Dave to one another.

We had a lot of fun at the wedding and reception too. I got to see all my old college housemates. The bride and groom did and great job selecting a caterer and baker. The food was great. The music was really fun too. Their photographers were great. They were fun to work with and quick. I felt more like I was just being natural rather than being posed really artificially. The picture of Emily and Dave above is from the photographer's blog.

Julia joined the celebration, but Paul stayed back on the farm with his grandparents. Julia was really well behaved - I was delighted. And I think everybody enjoyed Sunday better with Paul able to be at home. Thank you grandparents!

One of my jobs on Sunday was to bring the Wedding Day Survival Kit. It had essentials like clear nail polish to stop runs in nylons, safety pins, and candy in it. Steve suggested that it should have some kind of liquor in it, but I was afraid that would send a poor message. I packed gingersnaps, not knowing that too many gingersnaps had previously given the maid of honor a delusional episode. I waited until after the ceremony to give her a couple, and told her to share. One of the most useful things I packed was the New Skin liquid bandage. After Emily gives me permission, I'll list the things we used that for.



I am sad to see my friend move away to another state, but I am so happy for her and and her groom.

Happy Birthday Carrie

Twenty-four years ago, God gave me a beautiful blue-eyed sister. Carrie and I have had our ups and downs. We've survived being roommates. We've survived differences in taste on clothes and music.

Carrie is my house-cleaning inspiration. She is neat and organized and brings sanity to chaos. She is daring enough to take on photography as a career. She was self-motivating enough to start doing her own laundry before she moved away to college. She has triumphed over some rotten boyfriend relationships. She read Shakespeare for fun in high school. Her nephew thinks she is super cool. She bakes cakes from scratch. She helps me when I'm at the end of my rope. She is braver, smarter, and more beautiful than she gives herself credit for.

This has been a rough year for Carrie, but it seems like the sun is breaking through the gloom. I'm so glad I have a sister. I'm so glad it's Carrie.

Signs of Life

Even in light of the recent bunny incident, our garden is showing some good signs of life. Just last night we noticed the first sprouts from some of the gourds, squash, & melons, as well as the first batch of corn. The peas are nearly waist-high and are getting increasingly covered in blooms. The cabbage is starting to really fill out, and the first section of lettuce is looking really good. The second section of lettuce is coming up nicely now and we're starting to see sprouts from the second section of carrots. The first section of carrots is looking really good and has so far been mercifully spared the plight of the rabbit. Now if I could just get these darn beens to sprout.... On the plus side, I was able to get the rest of the corn planted last night as well as the rest of the gourds, squash, & melons. Other than moving the pepper & tomato starts outside, which is clearly gonna have to wait until I get some gates installed, about the only thing left to plant outside are some various herbs and a couple more cucumber mounds. We might actually have our garden all in by June...it'll be close, but it just might happen. Not too bad, I suppose, for a couple of gardening novices with a toddler & a baby.

Dang Bunnies

At least, I assume it was the bunnies that lopped off all my tomato plants. We had lovingly gotten 8 tomato plants started inside and cared for them for weeks before planting them in the garden a week or so ago. And they had been doing pretty well, really, until just the other day. I came out to work in the garden and was checking things over, when I noticed that most of my tomato plants were gone. Just gone. There were 2 inch sticks left where a couple of them had been. But most of 'em had been chewed off at the ground. Now it seems to me with carrots, lettuce, peas, & cabbage all right there near the tomatoes, that the tomato plants would be one of the last ones to find their way into the belly of a bunny. I mean, when did you ever see Bugs walking around chewing on part of a young tomato plant?! Oh well, I guess its a good thing we have 4 more starts going in the house. And I guess I'll to get a few more going now to at least partially replace the damage that 'ol Stu did. Stu, by the way, is the name by which I lovingly refer to all the bunnies in my yard. And one day, one happy, wonderful day sometime in the future, maybe I can make that name more of a reality for at least one unfortunate rabbit.

Off to Slovakia...Eventually

We were honored and blessed to host our good friends Kris & Paula Lundgaard part of this weekend. They were in town (visiting from Austin, TX) for Kris to lead a conference at our church on his book "The Enemy Within." They are also in the throws of raising support to move to Slovakia to work with an MTW ministry there. In the past many years Kris has been an associate pastor, a program manager for Dell, and an author. We have also had the pleasure of serving with Kris & Paula and their daughter Karen at the English camp in the Czech Republic. We praise God for their visit, the excellent teaching they gave, and the success the are already seeing in their support raising efforts. If you would like to find out more about them and their work in Slovakia, you can check out their blog at: http://www.the-lundgaards.com/. It was great to see you, Kris & Paula, and we pray that God would bless your work in Slovakia. We look forward to when next we meet, hopefully in Slovakia or Czech Republic.

New Look

Unless you're pretty dim or have never visited this site before, you've noticed the makeover to the look & feel of the site. It occurred to me recently that I've been running this blog for just over a year (5/2/06). I figured that it was about a time for a change, and blogger recently added a bunch new themes to choose from, so that made it pretty easy. I hope you like the new page design, I think it fits us a little better than the stock layout I had before.

A plantin' we will go

Mid-May really came on me quick and as of a week or so ago there was still a large portion of the garden yet to be planted. With the days getting longer, I'm finding I actually have a brief window of opportunity to get things done outside after the kids are in bed. And over the course of the past week I've found a few moments to run the tiller through the garden to till in all the nicely composted chicken manure I cleaned out of the coop a few weeks back. So there have been several nights this week that I've run out after the kids are down to plant some more seeds. Last night I got half the corn in the ground and about half the squash/gourd/melon in the ground. A couple nights ago I got lima beans & kidney beans planted. We also got some cucumbers started finally. And before that we got some of the tomato starts in the garden.

We've got a few herbs, more tomatoes, & several kinds of peppers started indoors that'll probably go out in another week or so. And I'll hopefully get the rest of the corn & the squash/gourds/melons in the ground in another week, too. There's a bunch more herbs to get started too, but those are a little less critical to me. Also, many of them are perennials, so even if we get 'em in a little late this year, we'll be getting good stuff off of 'em for years to come.

The peas we planted a while back are just getting their first blooms, and the cabbage, onion, lettuce, & carrots are all doing pretty well. More impressively, some of the hop vines that we started last year are already climbing the lines up over my head. They're all looking great and we're starting to see some nice flower buds coming on, which is the important part for my brewing needs. It looks like we might just pull it together enough to have a pretty decent garden this year. Anyone wanna come out sometime in August to help us harvest most of this stuff?

Gonna Be Trouble

These pictures about say it all, I think. On a recent excursion to the barn, Julia's trying to escape the wagon, and Paul's loose with Daddy's hammer. Good times were had by all. Boy is this gonna be fun when they're a little older.

A series of unfortunate events

Nothing too bad has happened. I just thought I'd report some of our recent mishaps.

On Saturday, Paul was having a great time playing with my parents' beagle, Penny. At one point he was running while looking back at her. Grandma Hughes just started to say, "Paul, watch where you're..." when he careened into his swing set. He had crashed into the climbing wall and his chin now bears a scab outlining the circular shape of the counter bores in the hand grips. It doesn't seem to be bothering him much now, but he did wake up Saturday night claiming, "My chin is grouchy."

Julia had grouchies of her own last night. She was awake and whiny for the better part of an hour. Her excuse is that she is teething. Her upper two front teeth seem to be coming in simultaneously and they are just piercing the skin of her gums.

And then I had a little bit of an adventure today. Steve built the doors on both the main chicken coop and the new little one. The main coop has two doors: a screen door with a spring to close it, and a wooden door with a catch that locks it when it swing closed. Since the new little coop is just for summer, there is only one door with both the spring to swing it close and the catch that locks it when it swings closed. (can you see where I'm going with this) Steve had noted that it would be easy to lock yourself in, and warned me about it, and installed a catch to hold the door open for the times he was working inside the coop.

Today I went down to the barn to check on the chickens while the kids were napping. The wind was really drying things out today, so I wanted to check and make sure the hens had water. Sure enough, I stepped inside and let the door lock behind me. Fighting down panic, I assessed my options:
1. Wait until Steve gets home, knowing the kids will be awake and in chaos first - no good.
2. Try squeezing through the little chicken door at the other end of the coop - not likely.
3. Pull up the tacks on the chicken wire covering the top half of the door and reach around to unlatch myself - that worked.

Hopefully one time locking myself in the coop will be sufficient.

Pig Roast Invitation

As many of you have heard, Sarah and I are leading a team of 8 to the Czech Republic in July to teach English at a camp. We've both been several times before and really enjoy working with the students, and supporting the local church there at Ceska Trebova. But there's a lot to be done to prepare for a trip like this. There are lessons to prepare, travel plans to iron-out, and funds to be raised. It is with this last item in mind that I want to invite everyone to a pig roast at the Kuhlman Farm on Saturday, June 9th.
We're asking for a suggested donation of $10/person or $30/family to defray the costs of the food (pig, corn, etc.), but if you plan to come and haven't donated yet, please plan to bring your checkbooks & be generous. Festivities will begin around 4pm and we'll plan to be eating by 5:30 or so. There will be games for the kids, and probably some for the adults, too. So please plan to come on out and enjoy a wonderful time on the farm. If you need directions, feel free to e-mail me. And if you're unable to make it, but would like to help out our team, please let me know. I hope to see ya'll there!

One Flock, Two Flock, Old Flock, New Flock

As many of you know, I decided to do things a little differently with our flock(s) of chickens this year. Last year, shortly after the new flock arrived, the old flock got transferred from coop to freezer. While this is the simplest way to handle things, it presents a problem for me...no more fresh eggs 'till September. So my thought was, transfer most of the old flock to the freezer, but keep 6-8 around through the summer so we still have enough eggs for our family. Part of the issue, at least this year, with this scheme is, where do you put the old flock? The new flock needs to move into the coop at about 3 weeks old or so. But, for several reasons, I don't want to put them in with the old flock; it is better to keep them separated. I was first batting around the idea of making an outside nesting box/roost on stilts in the chicken yard. But it was gonna be difficult to adequately secure it against predators. What I finally struck on was the idea of using this little hallway behind the current coop. With only 8 hens left, they don't need a lot of space. In fact, this is certainly bigger than what I would've built them outside. Also, it seems like less work. After all, the walls are already there. I just need to add a door at each end, one for me & one for the chickens. Oh, and I'll need to build a roost, and some nesting boxes. And hang a watering can and feeder. And, oh yeah, I should put some lights in there since there's not really a window for outside light. So after a decent amount of work, I got it done last week, and got the old hens moved into their new home first thing Saturday morning. I posted a good picture of the mini-coop so you can get an idea what I'm talking about.
Now the fun part...I get to clean out the old coop before moving the chicks in. Well, many hours & ~144 cubic feet of manure/wood shavings later, the coop's back down to bare walls & concrete floor. I managed to get everything sanitized later Saturday night, and enough of it put back together to move the new flock in Sunday night. YEAH! The day-to-day maintenance goes way down once they move from the brooder box into the coop, so its always a happy day when that job is done. I've still got some detail work yet to finish up putting the old coop back together, but the bulk of its over and the two flocks seem to be figuring out their new digs pretty well.

Farm Names

Sarah and I have always enjoyed the names people give their farms, ranches, etc. There's a nice one near us that we really like: "Trails End". So we've often kicked around farm names for our little patch of ground and buildings. Obviously Kuhlman Farm is an easy one that we've used in absence of anything else, but we finally came up with a list that we can present for your polling pleasure. If you think of any other good ones and want to suggest them, please feel free to. No guarantee we're gonna change the name based on the outcome of the poll, but you never know....

Mowing...finally

See Steve. See Steve mow. Mow, Steve, mow. Part of the reason I'm all smiles whilst mowing is the fact that for the last 3 or 4 weeks my tractor has been playing the "Will I work today?" game. It had started at the end of March, 'cause I mowed for the first time of the season then. And it started right up until the day of the chicken processing several weeks ago. It just wouldn't start. It would click, and sometimes try to turn over a little, but mostly nothing. After a couple weeks of trying different things (battery, starter, etc.) I finally got it to start about 10 days ago when I replaced the negative battery cable, the short one that goes to chassis ground. It started right up, so then I had to finish the other job that I was in the midst of, which was replacing the cooling hoses & thermostat. You see, at the point at which I first got it to start, there were no hoses going in or out of the engine block, no thermostat, no water pump, no fan, etc. Pretty much all that stuff was disconnected, partially to troubleshoot the non-starting problem, and partially because I was planning to replace the hoses & thermostat anyway to fix an occasional overheating issue.
So anyway, it started...so I drive it up the house, flush the cooling system, and drive it back down to the barn to re-install the hoses, water pump, etc., etc. Sometime middle of last week I get all that put back together and fire it up again. Everything sounds good. So last Thursday, I refill the coolant and run it for a while to check for leaks. Then I change the oil, 'cause I do every spring and it seemed appropriate since the side panels and such were still off. I start it back up after that and run it for a bit more. Everything sounds good. Put it back in the barn.
Last Friday I came home a little early from work, then, so I can finally mow after nearly 2 weeks since I last borrowed my neighbors tractor to mow and at least a month after I last mowed with mine. I run out to the barn, reinstall the side panels, jump on the seat, click-click-click, nothing. You gotta be kidding me! What I actually said was probably a little more colorful, but you get the idea. It just worked the night before just fine.
So I pull the old multimeter out and start to troubleshoot more electrical issues. I try jumping the ground connection again, but that's not it. I test the different safety switches & starting switch, but everything looks good. Just using the multimeter, with no load, everything looks like it ought. So I bring the Jeep in and attempt to jump it. For a brief second it started to turn over, and then I see a little puff of smoke from the direction of the battery and...nothing. All right then. Put the Jeep away and forget that.
This brings us to yesterday, Tuesday. I finally decide to give up, spend the $10 for a new positive battery cable, and see if that fixes it. I've reached the point of: start replacing everything electrical I see starting with the cheapest & easiest items first mentality. Wouldn't you know it...I pop in that new cable, which I must say is quite a bit beefier than the old one, and it fires right up. How does that happen that both cables go within a week of each other?! So finally, yesterday afternoon after much consternation, cursing, etc., etc., I am finally able to mow my grass with my tractor. And it even seems to start fairly consistently. Also, it didn't overheat once, even with the tremendous strain I was subjecting it to mowing my grass when its that long. Pretty cool...finally.

Garden Time

Dad & I, after much toil and a little cursing, finally got the fence finished up before they left a week or so ago. I've been working outside so much I haven't had a chance to get the pictures off the camera until now. But darn it all, we did a good a job and the fence looks mighty fine. We still have to put the line of barbed wire up, much to Sarah's chagrin, but at least this oughta keep the small furry animals out of the garden so our plants can grow. That is, assuming they don't realize that there are no gates up yet. Maybe I oughta get on that soon....

We've been reduced to what?

I've been making a concerted effort toward potty-training Paul the last couple of days. My sister had asked a professor about how he had potty trained their little ones. He answered, "I think my wife set our son on the potty every 15 minutes." So yesterday, that was the tactic I started with.

I had bought him 3 pairs of Thomas the Tank Engine underwear. He hadn't expressed any interest in them. Instead, he wailed, "Want Cars pull-ups." So Wednesday night the pull-ups (i.e. diapers with pictures that can be worn like underwear) got hidden. Starting Thursday morning, his only options were Thomas underwear or cloth diapers with vinyl liners.

Within a half hour period Thursday morning, he had wet all three pairs of underwear. I discovered that putting him on the potty every 15 minutes was not frequent enough to keep him dry between trips to the potty. And it's not like he isn't tinkling into the potty when I get him there.

In the afternoon, we reduced it to 10 minutes between trips to the potty. He still was wet when we got there. Steve had pity on him and put him in a nice absorbent disposable diaper for bedtime. The cloth & vinyl combo looked like pantaloons on him.

This morning I scientifically proved that putting Paul on the potty every 5 to 7 minutes is still not frequent enough to keep him dry between trips. By 10:30 today he was showing signs of getting stressed from being micromanaged, so I slacked off a bit. I just let him stay in the cloth diapers, and didn't try to throw him on the toilet quite so often.

Part of the problem is that by 9:00 a.m. yesterday, Paul had drunk at least 18 ounces of fluids. This morning it was at least 16 ounces. No wait, he had quite a bit of milk on his cereal. So today it was probably pretty close to 18 ounces too. That's a LOT of fluid for a little guy. And Paul evidently lacks any desire or mechanism to hold it.

Before lunch today, he had a couple of dry diapers, and was rewarded with chocolate yogurt covered raisins. And I'm hopeful that he will get annoyed by being wet and all the time and hassle it takes to change a cloth diaper. Or I was hopeful.

I suppose tomorrow we will do more of the same. Julia is getting so comfortable with time in the bathroom that she is starting to try to scale the toilet. I'm tempted to sit her on the potty and start training her. If she gets the knack of it first, maybe she can shame her brother into being potty trained.

Meanwhile, Steve will be out in the barn, moving the old hens into the new little add-on coop he's built. Then he needs to clean out the bigger coop for our not-so-little chicks.

One way or another, we're both going to be up to our elbows in it and shoveling as fast as we can.