Luck of the Bluebird

(google image)
I read once long ago that Bluebirds are suppose to be a sign of good luck. As we've been watching for birds this spring we noticed a Bluebird couple looking for a place to build their nest. They chose the muffler of one of our tractors! That's just our kind of luck... Murphy's Law style! As I was cleaning out some of my old emails I stumbled across this bit of a funny....

MURPHY'S LESSER KNOWN LAWS

1. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

2. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

3. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

4. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.

5. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

6. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.

7 .If you lined up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try to pass them, five or six at a time, on a hill, in the fog.

8. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

9. The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first.

10. The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.

11. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

12. When you go into court, you are putting yourself into the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

*PHEW* A few days later Aragorn picked up a bird house and put it near the tractor and the bluebirds seemed to think that a nicer place to nest!

Birthday "Twins"

Aragorn and Pippin share a birthday today! Aragorn turning 40 and Pip turning 1. Pippin had a Pineapple Upside Down Cake from our church cookbook and Aragorn had chocolate cream pie.

Not sure why he is making that face but Pippin weighs in today at 23 pounds and 31 inches short. Long and skinny. Aragorn is still at the same 6'3" but declined the opportunity to jump on the scale!

Good for a Chuckle

There isn't much I enjoy more than a good laugh. A friend of mine sent this link to Ask Sister Mary Martha Blog . If you have a bit of a sense of humor you might enjoy it!

St. Joseph Altar

Every year our church has a St. Joseph Altar. We've never stayed because it's always so crowded but it is gorgeous!

The head table is the Holy Family table. Children dress up. I believe the 4th seat is for St. Patrick.

Look at all these cookies! There is also a spaghetti dinner I believe.

Sacred Heart Cake

Immaculate Heart Cake

Being an infamously bad cake froster... I was in awe!

Amazing or what!

March 11-17

Some of this week's extra-curricular activities...

Samwise has been busy putting down the wood floor in the room above the garage.

He's been using scrap flooring leftover from when we did the the rest of the house.

He's using alternate sizes, a row of skinny and a row of wider. It looks pretty good. This area is for sewing, crafts and Aragorn's *stuff*.

Since we haven't wanted Pippin involved in the flooring project and into the mess that is up there (a before and after picture will follow... in 10 years when we finish!), we didn't finish putting on the last few stairs. However as usual Pippin had other ideas.

Nothing is safe with Pippin around!

Galadriel and Eowyn bake completely alone for the first time. Their Maternal Grandmother's Yankee Cornbread. It's so nice to have "older" children who can now truly be a help... a bit of training goes a long ways. What may seem to take 10 times longer during the training time, pays off abundantly later!

Signs of Spring! (though we think this is just an icky tent worm)

BIRDS! This is actually only a turkey the children scared out of the woods and they've been here all winter but Aragorn and the children have seen the "first robin's of spring. *I* of course won't see one until closer to the middle of July. I never see them til summer is in full bloom. However as we were driving the other day Aragorn did halt the car to point to one in someone's yard... for my sake. That hardly counts!

Here are a couple deer up by the fence line. One is the "three-legged" deer that's been dragging his bad leg around.

CRANES! Now these are my favorites and I hope they will set up their nest at our place somewhere!

I love the sound they make. I'll even tolerate them in the wee sma's.

For St. Patrick's day we had green shamrock pancakes for breakfast.

And for dinner we had our annual Ruben's. I don't know that we'd ever sit down to a Corned Beef dinner with cooked cabbage *shivver* but we do like rubens! So that is our St. Patrick's Day food. We had some tortilla chips on the side which are very obviously *not* Irish but they were "Hint of Lime" so they did have slight bits of green on them! Ok, so we like tortilla chips! Incidentally home-made rye bread dyed green takes on a rather uncanny color!

UPDATE! Today March 22nd I saw *my* first Robin of Spring! For me this is a phenomonally early experience!

Spring Run Off

With all the snow we had the spring run-off has been really spectacular. Probably not as neat in pictures though.

There were trenches of water just flowing through the play area.

I find it fascinating how water will meander... this is usually a trickle at best.

Again, what is usually pretty much dry.

It was really roaring. You could hear it inside the house and this was across the street.... and we don't live right on the street.

This is usually just a small stream across the street from the other end of our property.

This is our side of the road and is at least several times as wide as usual.

This is where it rushed under the road to our property.

This is the shed that we built a couple years ago (the year before we moved in). The strangest part of it all was that it was so warm out but our feet were frozen.

Spring is Coming!

I think there is cold-blooded, warm-blooded and Wisconsin-blooded. It felt really warm out today so we all went outside to enjoy the great outdoors. There is still alot of snow out there. When I sat down to start this week's (boring) entry I check the temperature and it was only 48. But it was lovely!

Just because we enjoy having rather odd fun we hitched the Flintstone-Mobile to the back of a tractor.

Eleanor was napping so only 7 were aboard and Pippin fell asleep on the ride.

I'm the one who needs the exercise so I walked behind. It was such a lovely day out!

Our bees have started to wake up. More on how we got started with bees and our honey when Aragorn dons his bee-keeping get-up.

And MaryT this is for you. Here are our 62 solar panels. 32 on the garage and 30 on the steep roof of a shed. There are a few extras in front. On the side of the house the "windows" are for heating water but they aren't hooked up yet. And also you can see one of the two windmills.

Great Lenten Feast

Tanner's Annunciation 1898

The Church in her great wisdom knows her sheep. Right in the midst of our Great Lenten Fast, and most likely at a time we need it most, the Church sends us great saints' Feasts to celebrate. The most commonly celebrated Lenten Feasts fall nearly within one week of each other: St. Patrick, St. Joseph, St. Benedict and the Annunciation on March 17, 19, 21 and 25 respectively. Be sure to email me your bloggings, writings, special celebrations and saint stories and legends for these or any other saints. I will be pulling together a post for These Forty Days and would love to include your input as well.

Feb 25 - March 4

Based on our inexperience in measuring snow properly we think we've gotten almost 3 feet of snow (and some rain) since the big storm last weekend. I missed the best picturesque day with the trees full of snow, it was just gorgeous but I thought about the camera when I was no where near it.

Daddy and Samwise sledding after making a flattened trail with the Flintstone Mobile earlier

Galadriel surfing the snow.

Pippin likes the cat.

But it is questionable whether the cat appreciates the lovies of an 11 month old!

Pip relaxes in the snow.

Samwise making cheese. We have an abundance of milk these days so we are back to making cheese.

picture from NASA

Our biggest disappointment this week was not being able to view the total lunar eclipse due to clouds. We had been looking forward to this for weeks. Here is a neat site, Shadow and Substance, to check out for the Eclipses. Great animations of the eclipses. Here are some other neat photos!

The rest of the week was busy with school and various lenten projects. One of which includes major house cleaning. (sigh!) I wish I had taken some before and after pictures! A friend of mine had sent this:

From "Around the Year With the Trapp Family"According to old tradition, the first three days of Holy week- Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday - are dedicated to spring cleaning. In the days before the invention of the vacuum cleaner, this was a spectacular undertaking: sofas, chairs and all mattresses would be taken out of doors and beaten mercilessly. Walls were dusted, curtains were changed - a thorough domestic upheaval. There is little time for cooking and meals are made from leftovers. By Wednesday night the house looks spic and span.

However in our house 3 days is not nearly enough so our goal was the 40 days of Lent. But, after only 10 days of Lent I think that our spring cleaning is going to be a 6 months rotation (spring and fall cleaning!). I cannot believe how long it can take to clean out a cabinet!

Today we remember Fr. Alfred Kunz. May he rest in Peace.