this week in iPhone photos {sept. 21, 2015 and maybe the last couple of weeks too}

This week, we wished it was nap time. Like, every day. Cooler fall weather, lots of sunshine, bellies full of apple fritters from a local apple festival thanks to kind folks . . . and we were ready to nap for DAYS.

But there's a baby on the way, so there's really no time for napping. I'd say there might be time for a snooze or two after baby arrives, but let's not kid ourselves here. 

So instead Chris chopped the second round of silage and I went for long walks in what had been--just days before--a field full of corn. The heifers in the nearby pasture kept their distance. Puppies and loud noises have that effect on these girls. 

We went in for an ultrasound at the crack of dawn and found out that we're having . . . a baby! So that's reassuring. 

I took a little work trip to Washington, D.C., where I sat a lot, let people cart my luggage around, got a nice case of swollen ankles and met the awesomeness that is Drs. Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis and caught up with--albeit quickly--Mollie Hemingway and Scott Murray. 

And it was good.  

Chris and the guys rounded out silage season--not without some hilarious exchanges over the radios--and drove the choppers and trucks off into the sunset. And we gave thanks that nobody tipped a truck over or backed into each other or drove over the chopper. It's the little things. 

The puppies learned how to bark and howl at nearby neighbor dogs, and yet they still choose to stick together like the Three Musketeers instead of meeting their brother, whose bark from the neighbor's house stopped them all in their tracks.

Literally.

To top it off, Winchester christened the new feed truck by sniffing it, surveying it and curling up next to it . . . for a nap. 

And now, since we've come full circle--all the way back to naps and just the way we like it--I think we're done here.  

ordering chickens

When I was six, I slipped in a pile of wet chicken poop, and my middle sister Lauren laughed at me.

It was raining, and our seventy-five chickens were in their fenced-in little yard, pecking around in the dirt outside the chicken house. “Get outside,” Mom ordered us. “Run those chickens in.” 

Nobody wants to deal with muddy, wet, sad birds. Nobody. It’s just downright pitiful.

they're alive

Gardening is not for those individuals who don't like angst and sweat. 

You spend days wondering if your carrots are going to take off or survive or die or get eaten by rabbits or trampled by dogs, and then, when they do grow, you spend days wondering why you thought it was a good idea to plant them in the first place, because now you're sitting outside on black dirt in the heat of July pulling weeds, when you could be buying carrots for 99 cents at the air-conditioned grocery store. 

Like I said, angst and sweat. 

starting spring planting inside

Earlier this week, it was 70 degrees here in Missouri. 

SEVENTY DEGREES. 

This is a big deal when you're a Northern girl who lived through Iowa and Wisconsin winters that had a tendency to still be going strong in May.