Lost in the woods.

     We had a busy but fun Memorial weekend. We attended Warroad's graduation on Friday, and then attended four open houses over the long weekend. On our way to graduation on Friday evening we saw a pair of geese on the railroad tracks. Corey spotted some babies that seemed unable to get over the tracks to where mom and dad were, so we went back to check it out. There were six babies, some were in between the rails, and some were on the outside of the tracks and unable to get over. We made a guess as to which direction the parents were trying to go and caught the babies and reunited them with their parents on the north side of the tracks. Corey knew a pond was close and we figured that was where they were headed.

     Saturday we went to Warroad  for Gretta's graduation party, and we saw the geese again in the same spot, except they wanted to be on the south side of the tracks today. We stopped and moved the babies to the same side as their parents, except there were only three this time. As we drove away Corey said that they probably wouldn't survive as they were too far from water to be safe from predators, and I replied that maybe we should have taken them and raised them with our soon to be arriving chickens! During our conversation Corey mentioned that when he was a kid they sometimes took eggs from goose nests and raised the chicks.

     We didn't see the goose family again, so I guess we'll never know the outcome.

     Pey had been begging to go look for a geo cache for at least a week, so we decided on Monday to find one that was close to our house and then go look for morels. As it happened we found a morel within about four feet of the cache!

     Since we knew they were around, we headed to our favorite spot to find them. When we got there I took Nora and then we all split up and headed into the woods. It was too tough for Nora to walk, so I lugged her around until I tripped over a log and we both took a tumble. Since I hadn't found any mushrooms by then anyway I was over it and headed for the truck. Lauren showed up not long after me, and then Corey. At that point we started to worry that Pey was lost in the woods. We started yelling for her but got no response. That is such a terrible feeling. Corey took off on a four wheeler path through the woods to look for her, and Lauren and I walked the road yelling for her. After about a lifetime 20 minutes she walked out of the woods at the end of the road. She didn't run toward me or seem too upset, until I got to her and saw her little red-rimmed, tear filled eyes. The poor babe had been lost, and had been really afraid. As I grabbed her and hugged her, she said "be careful, Mom!" and showed me a small egg  in her hand. She had flushed a momma partridge off a nest of eggs and remembering her Dad's story of taking eggs, she took one to bring home and raise.

      We called a neighbor who has chickens and asked if they had an incubator, and they told us about a man who had gotten some chicken eggs from them and was incubating them. We went to his house and he put the partridge egg in with the others, and he'll give us a call if it hatches. I guess our baby chicks may have a wild friend after all.

     We also planted the garden, and there was only one battle over how to plant!  It may be a new record. We can make plans to travel across the country just fine, but don't even get us started on the proper way to plant a potato!!

The images in this post are from google, as the author is a tech moron and can't figure out how to get pics from cell phone to blog.

Superfun Saturday and the Bag of Poop.

I love my weekends off. I am required by my job to work every other weekend, so I'm fiercely protective of my weekends with my family. For much of the year we are running the kids to their sports so we don't get much time with all of us at home with time to find fun stuff to do. This weekend I was off work, the kids had no activities, and the weather was pretty nice. I wanted to do something fun as a family, but my request to go ice fishing got shot down since we didn't put our house out this year, and neither the husband or I could come up with anything else to do.  For some dumb reason I decided the kids needed to have clean rooms. Ha ha ha!!!! Wishful thinking. I helped Lauren clean her room for hours and after filling a garbage bag full of things to get rid of and another full of garbage it was starting to look a little better. We could see a few spots of bare carpet anyway. Then....I laid eyes on her massive backpack. She swears she doesn't have time to go to her locker, and she NEEDS all those textbooks at home every day. I drug her backpack downstairs and put it on the scale. 20 pounds. That is just crazy to me. After a brief rant about back injuries, we sat down to go through it. The main pocket was jammed full of the usual suspects. Textbooks, folders, loose papers, a hairbrush. The side bottle holder areas were full of candy and granola bar wrappers. Nothing unusual so far, so it never occurred to me to put on gloves and a mask. In side pocket number one I discovered one of my The North Face gloves. It was so covered in mold/mildew that it was grey instead of black. Nasty.  Side pocket number two produced a zip lock bag of what looked like chocolate pudding. Or poop. Oh man. The child had no clue how long it had been in there. She thinks it may have been "cumquats and chocolate", in which case it would have been in there since we got home from Florida in January. sigh. Post cleaning backpack weight was 18 pounds, not much of an improvement.
     Meanwhile, Pey found a ring in her room that we bought her in the keys last March. We had to buy it for her because she got it stuck on her finger in the store. We got it off when we got back to the house with the help of some dish soap. That was exactly a year ago so of course she forced it on again when she found it. Yes, it got very stuck. She tried all day Saturday to get it off with no luck. Her knuckle was getting sore and starting to swell which wasn't helping any. We soaked her hand in ice water for awhile and turned to our friend dish soap again and I eventually got it off. Pretty much sums up Saturday.

     Sunday the kids switched bedrooms so all the cleaning we did on Saturday was for absolutely nothing. The end.