Yesterday we headed into Tomahawk for Fourth of July festivities. The rain started just as the first firetrucks in the parade went by, fortunatly we had come prepared with umbrellas,
and rainjackets.
Even with the rain the parade was a success, Ivy collected a huge bag of candy and we got to see this:
We suspect it is only in a northern Wisconsin parade that you can see men riding barstools in cheese-head cowboy hats, carrying an American Flag.
This is what comes off my kitchen floor in 48 hours. 
This does not include the small sweepings around the highchair that happen after every meal. (Sorry if you were eating or anything, but I thought a visual was in order.)
Add to this dirt one crawling kid.
Then add one large dog water bowl.
Imagine the dog bowl is on the floor, you know, so the dogs can drink out of it and stuff.
Now imagine what happens when you add to the large pile of dirt a large pile of water, because nothing gets Clara moving faster than a good dish of water to dump. Now I hear you saying, “Water doesn’t pile Jessie.” And you are absolutely right, it runs, all the way across the floor of my crooked, crooked house.
Now imagine what happens when a small girl crawls through the resulting quagmire, which is of course unavoidable because of the aforementioned crookedness and waters lack of pile-ing ability.
Yup, you guessed it, laundry…
The thing I disliked about reading this book was also what I loved about reading this book. The flipping from first person narrator to omniscient bothered me because the “constant princess” is well, a princess. Really, who wants to know exactly what a young princess is thinking, she was sort of exasperating to say the least. Filled with the intrigue of court life, Spanish politics, romance, religion, consummation and wars it all takes a backseat to watching Catalina Infanta of Spain grow up into Katherine of Aragon Queen of England and that was really well done. I realize that we had to get through the annoying princess stage to get to the end result but that doesn’t’ mean I liked reading it at the time!
Would I recommend it? Yes, but don’t read it first, I’d hate for you to be put off a great author by a silly princess. Read one of her others like The Virgin’s Lover first, then, when you love it come back for this one later.
Ivy has been taking pictures with my camera lately. Most of them I won’t show you, partly because I’ve learned that Ivy height pictures are not my most flattering, and partly because you don’t need to see blurry kitchen appliances, Clara crawling out of the frame (those look just like mine) or random items in the yard. However I did like this one.
It’s something about the pink toenail polish on my sad beat up deck boards (the other item in need of a paint job is my porch swing). Or maybe it has nothing to do with the picture and it’s just because she is so careful with the camera and tries so hard to take nice pictures. Whatever the reason I like it, after all it sure beats all the pictures with a view up my nose!
Sometimes I feel that my days need some sort of middle ground.
For instance this morning-
Hurry up:
get up way to early, get Clara back to sleep, go back to bed, wake up, breakfast, clean up breakfast, check on sheep, collect duck eggs, feed dogs, shower myself and both girls, comfort Clara after she falls and bites tongue, clean up blood, get dressed, get girls dressed, put Clara down for a nap, pack truck up, get everyone in truck
Wait:
drive truck, think about all the things I could be doing if I wasn’t driving, find my road is closed and think about more things I would rather be doing than driving even further
Hurry up:
go to feed mill, go to gas station, go to Dadant and Son’s bee supply, make an unscheduled McDonalds stop (how did it get to be after noon!?)
Wait:
drive home, think about more things I would like to be doing instead of driving
Hurry up:
get unloaded, feed Clara, let out dogs, clean up Clara, clean up Ivy who peed on herself while going to bathroom, put Ivy in shower, water plants, discover Clara ripped all her wipes to shreds, clean up wipes, help Ivy wipe off poop, finish watering plants, change diaper, change laundry, answer three phone calls that all come within a ten minute period, realize Ivy is out of the shower but the shower is still running, turn it off, prod Ivy into getting dressed, drag both girls upstairs, read to Ivy, threaten her with a fate worse than death if she dares move off her bed or makes noise, put Clara down
And Wait:
sit at computer standing guard until Ivy actually falls asleep or she will know that I left the house and pop out of bed and run around, wonder how on earth it got to be quarter to three, plan for my next hurry up session, and write a blog post…
This is my currently my favorite picture book. I found it in the library last year and we have checked it out many times since then. I love this book so much I’m not even sure what to say about it. I do know that it is currently out of print, a little googling has taught me that Riddell has many other books but I have not yet read any of them.
In this book Katya lives in a forest where it is always summer with her friend Brown (he’s the bear).
Then one day she wakes up to snow. This is Johns favorite picture:
I love the illustrations.
Katya discovers Jack Frost is in her forest,
and this part where she confronts him has made me cry a dozen times. 
Either I am completely ridiculous or it’s a really, really good book.
Would I recommend it? Yes!
This is my husband, he kills chickens…
…he is a mess, but he’s still smiling! 
*the headless chicken has been cut out of picture for you delicate types*
Last week our sheep grew bored with things around here and six of them went on a little walkabout. A very nice farmer up the road (two miles up the road) found them and helped to get them back. Since then we’ve been beefing up fences and keeping a closer eye on them. 
To be totally correct Ivy has been keeping a closer eye on them. Her new job is to check to make sure the sheep are still here. The first few days every hour or so I would ask if the sheep were still here and she would go running out the door to check. Now I don’t even have to say anything, she just wanders over to the gate and looks for sheep. In addition to that she usually stays on the gate contentedly visiting with the sheep for a long time before coming back with her report.
Ivy’s new job makes me happy becuase it gets Ivy out of the house doing something by herself. Fortunately Ivy likes her new job too. It is important to know if your sheep are where you left them and Ivy feels special that she’s been given an important job. Perhaps it makes the sheep happy too, I’m not sure. Do they like bubbles?
Ever see a movie and then realize you saw all the good parts in the trailer? Well, I read a lot on this book at one point because I was thinking about choosing it for my book club to read, turns out I read about all the good parts in the reviews. Chalk that up to reason number 37 I don’t like to read about a book first!
In this book a woman goes back to her Mennonite roots after a bad accident and divorce, which is good because her mother is the best part of the whole book. She’s funny in a lets have a conversation on if marrying a pothead or your first cousin would be worse while standing in a checkout line sort of way. I’m going to risk going into more detail than I’d like in my little reviews and tell you my big problem with the book. It starts out humorous, author seems able to laugh at the fact that her husband left her for a guy she met on gay.com. Then you hit some serious chapters where you find out that he was bipolar, abusive, they had been on and off (divorced and remarried!) for fifteen years, he had been in a previous relation ship with a man and gay.com “Bob” had been calling the house. That is not funny. I was almost offended by the fact that the situation was originally put in such a humorous light. You could call it making lemonade from lemons, but I think sometimes lemons that have gone bad shouldn’t be made into lemonade.
Would I recommend it? No. Got to the library/bookstore. Read chapter one about first cousin Waldemar. Then resist the temptation to read the rest of the book, and put it back. That first chapter is really good, some of the rest of it is good, but it’s not cohesive and really once you debate between first cousin and pot head for potential husband material it’s all down hill from there.
Behind the Willows 