We've Been Busy...

The summer has once again flown by.  And we've been pretty busy.

We took a trip to the Tulsa Zoo.

Squish got into a bit of a sticky situation ;)

A pic of the kids in the rain forest area.  My parents traveled to Peru to see the Mayan ruins and we just went to Tulsa.

The farm has been growing...

Six new baby chicks.  We now have 33 chickens (and 3 ducks).

We've had 2 litters of bunnies...  11 kits between the two.  This is a picture of Spot.  We'll be keeping this one =)

Progress has been made on the house.

Now the hard part (for us)- filling in the walls with cordwood...  But first we need to chop down and debark a bunch of trees =)

Girly made her first quilt.

I finished up a cardigan.  Now to wait for winter so I can wear it =)

We've Been Busy...

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at Camp Berger.  Between my parents visiting and Squish's birthday, there has been plenty of things to do and food to eat.

While my parents were here, my dad and I had a chance to run a local 5k race.  The race was run on a Friday night in conjunction with the local Balloon Fest.  The weather didn't really cooperate for us.  A couple minutes before the gun went off, the rain started coming down.  But that didn't keep us from running a good race.

My dad took second in his age group (4 seconds behind 1st) and I took 1st female.  The medals were really cool laser engraved wood.

On Saturday we spent the entire day at the festival and then went out to eat at a local restaurant.  And there was a little bit of excitement.

We were able to watch one of the balloons crash land in the parking lot across the road.  Thankfully everyone was okay.

Since my parents were here, we decided to celebrate Squish's birthday a few days early.  He requested a construction cake, and this is what I came up with.

I think he was more excited that he got to play with the decorations after the cake was gone =)

Papa spent some time fixing up the kids' bikes...  And then took one of them for a spin. (anyone else hearing the clown college theme song?)

Safety first!

Papa built the kids some new toys.

Sweet Pea took a break reading a book.

Out of the seven eggs we wanted to hatch, we got five chicks.  Sweet Pea wasn't too sure about them and tried to keep her distance. 

Sarge picked up a new cooking toy.

We filled it up with some meat, potatoes, carrots...

And set it to cook.

It was delicious and was more than enough for the 12 people who ate that day =)

So, you can see that I've been keeping pretty busy.  I'm hoping that things start slowing down just a bit so I can catch up on all the chores that have gotten missed the last couple weeks (the kids don't really need clean clothes, do they?)

Wister Lake

This last weekend Sarge's uncle and aunt came down for a visit.  He's an avid fisherman, so we took him out to go fishing.  We found a beautiful spot over by Wister Lake.

The kids were excited to get started.

He didn't care what he caught, as long as he had his boots and glasses.

Learning from the pro.

After a little bit, we headed over to the docks.  This one had a sign posted that said "No swimming, no wading and no shin allowed."  We think it meant no fishing, but since we all still have our shins we decided to move over to the other dock ;)

By this point she was really bored and didn't want to be fishing anymore.  But since I don't have a license, I have to have a kid by me to pretend I'm fishing.

She finally cheered up when we headed over to the playground.  It was full of things that spin (and make you dizzy and nauseous)

This one was easy to get stuck in and hard to stop spinning.  I had to have Junior help me stop it and let me out.

I'm so thankful we live in an area that has so much to offer for family fun.

The Snake Incident

It was bound to happen.  I mean, I live in OK.  There's suppose to be snakes all over the place.  And I've seen them dead on the side of the road.

I just wasn't expecting to see it right outside my door.

So, sit right back and I'll tell you a tale of the zombie snake.

Monday evening we headed back up to the camper a bit earlier than normal.  The kids had a new movie they wanted to watch and I had agreed to make them popcorn.

A few minutes after the first batched was popped, I heard the mutt barking outside.  Then I realized he was barking AT the camper.  That wasn't normal.  So I opened the door to see what he was barking at.

And there it was.  Four feet from the front door.  Right next to the pallet walkway.  Yeah, the one we walked on about 15 minutes before to get into the camper.

I slammed the door shut and started to panic.  What was I going to do?  How do I convince the dog to leave it alone long enough to let it get away?  How do I keep the mutt from getting bitten?

Feeling a bit braver, I opened the door again and (hung out the door) snapped a picture so the kids could see what the dog was barking at.  They thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Still shaking, I tried to think rationally.  It can't stay there all night, right?  Maybe I should try to get the dog away from it.  Nope, mutt's too intent on protecting his family and isn't going to stop barking.  Hmm, maybe I can scare it away.

So I grabbed my .22 pistol.  Hung out the camper door again and fired. Again. Again. Again. Again and again.  Maybe I'm shaking a bit too much to be able to aim with a pistol...

Back inside to grab the Davy Cricket.  It's only a single shot.  Better grab some extra ammo.

Still shaking, I opened the door and very carefully stepped down onto the deck.  Rifle to shoulder I fired.  And the snake started moving.  I tried to reload to get another shot off, but yup, you guessed it.  Still shaking too much to be able to get the ammo in.

I watched the snake slither under the camper and realized that I had actually hit it that time.  Great, now I have an injured rattlesnake under the camper and a dog (now on the backside of the camper) still intent on not letting it get away.

I decided there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I let the dog bark and hoped he wouldn't get bitten.  After about an hour, he finally stopped barking and came back around to his rug by the front door.

(I should add a note in here about the text messages I was sending Sarge...  That he was getting out of order without pictures.  And the ensuing panicked phone call to the main house at 10pm to try and figure out if he needed to come home early from work.)

I hoped this was the end of the snake incident, but I was wrong.

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Early the next morning I poked my head out to have a look around.  Didn't see anything, so I stepped onto the deck to look under the camper.  Oh good.  I didn't see the snake.  So I went out for a run.  Making sure I was extra vigilant about what was around me.

Back from my run and the kids were starting to stir.  Of course, the first thing they wanted to know was where the snake was.  So I told them.  I have no idea.  

A bit later I (half jokingly) told Junior to go out and fill up the water tank.  And he looked out the back window and said "There's the snake!"

And there was the mutt laying right next to it.  

We watched him for a bit nose the snake, roll over and play dead next to it and then lose interest and walk away.

He looked a little like this, except with a dead rattlesnake laying next to him.

I knew at this point I was going to have to go out and move the snake away from the camper.  So I pulled on my cowboy boots and headed out to grab the pooper scooper.

Except the snake wasn't where it had been...

It had moved.

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My heart kind of jumped into my throat as a looked around panicked thinking I should have grabbed the gun and not the pooper scooper.

But then I saw it.  About 6 feet away, flipped over on it's back.  The mutt must have decided to try to play with it and then realized it was too heavy/ no fun when it was dead.

I picked it up and decided I was going to play a joke on Sarge.  I placed it on top of the burn barrel (as coiled up as I could get it without having to touch it) and put the screen back over the top.

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We finished up our school work and got ready to head down to the main house for lunch.  As we're walking out the door, Squish asked to see the snake, so I picked him up and walked over to the burn barrel to show him the snake.  

Except it wasn't there.

I stopped in a panic and slowly backed away from the barrel.  

Thankfully I turned around when I did, or I would have stepped on the snake...  Laying on the ground...  Out of the barrel...

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Closest I can figure is that the mutt tried one last time to play with the snake.

As we were walking in the main house, the phone started ringing.  It was Sarge.  Just a bit panicked.  After receiving text messages that made no sense and then not being able to reach me (my phone is very spotty at the camper).  He was ready to drive home and make sure everything was ok.

I filled him in on what had happened (and why we were down later than we normally are).  

And then I got the riot act =)

When that was finished, he asked if I had cut the rattles off and put the rest of it in the maggot bucket for the chickens.

I love Sarge.  He's the best =)