Summer Fun

Summer seems to have finally arrived to Oregon with us hitting 80 degrees. Gunnar decided to use his raft as a multi-purpose pool. Here he is filling it up:

Grandma and Grandpa Pruitt are in town and we went to the Portland zoo. Here is Grandma giving G a boost to check out the napping otters:

One off the wish list

Nick and I got to check one off the ol' life wish list on Friday night when we went to see Willie Nelson in concert at Edgefield. We were joined by wonderful friends:



And Willie was amazing. With that many hits it was hard to imagine what he would play and he delivered the best. There were oldies, a tribute to Waylon, a Patsy cover and a few songs he had written recently about the life of an old troubadour. My parents were able to babysit Gunnar and it really was a night to remember. The man himself:

New Fave to Follow

Hi All:

I have been introduced to an amzing new, preemie baby mommy blog. Andrea and I went to highschool together and her journey is amazing! Feel free to check her out and give her the same love and support you have all given me.

http://www.charlottesweb2011.com/

On another note - what is 20.5lbs and a ray of sunshine? Mr G that's who! Gunnar finally hit the 20lb mark according to his papa this morning. Woo Hoo!

And that's a wrap

I will leave you with more Gunnar cuteness as I sign off:

Him dismounting from his walker. We don't give him any kid approved climbing toys so he makes do!

That boy loves his cat! Here they are at lunchtime:

All in a day's work

You know you are a mother when you get super excited when your girlfriend agrees to keep your kid so you can deep clean the house. Yesterday Gunnar stayed with my friend Jenny and her family. While they trekked around and played I did the grocery shopping, deep cleaned the fridge, cleaned both my ovens, spruced up the guest bathroom, cleaned the slop sink and began the enormous task of moving my bookshelf.

I don't know who was more pooped by the end of the day!

Gotcha

Nick has been on extra mole patrol while our neighbor is out of town. He got a record kill this week of THREE moles. His friends bought some new super fancy mole traps and they caught nothing. Very fun to rub that in. Yes, that is the excitement of farm life. I keep teasing Nick he needs to have a stole made from the pelts. He could be a pimp with a mole stole for Halloween!

For the birds

This morning we delivered the remaining brooded chickens that were not ours. The family they went to had done an amazing job with the coop. It had nicer windows than we have on our house! Lucky chickens! While we were there we got see the pigs they are raising. Hilarious! Our dog Truck really must be a pig mix as they rooted, snorted and pranced around just like he does. Gunnar was cracking up.

Here is a pic of the result of all of our hard chicken raising work - beer butt chicken. Delicious!

Wheeeee!

One of Gunnar's new favorite things at the park is the slide. He is able to crawl up by himself, turn around and then slide down on his belly. No slide is too big or too small!

Nick took the video on his phone and we have yet to figure out how to flip it. Hope you are on a laptop!

More Developments

We have lots of LIFE going around the farm as well. Nick is so amazing and it is all due to him that we have such a wonderful farm. Here you can see a lot of his hard work paying off.

Yesterday Nick did some yard work (blackberry pulling) for a friend who in turn paid him AND gave him a ton of starts from his green house. The garden is coming along beautifully with:

Bell peppers:

Baby upside down tomatoes:

Pole Beans:

Early giant tomatoes and basil:

Tomatoes and asparagus beans with cherry trees to the side:

Little giant corn:

Eating grapes ready to go in:

Those itty bitty strawberry plants are now the strawberry JUNGLE:

The new gorgeous compost bin to keep the cycle of life going:

And last but not least, all that grass seed we planted on the east side of the property has come in beautifully:

It will probably be ready for its first mow next weekend. So gorgeous back there. What an improvement from an overgrown thorn patch!

Chicken Process

Two weekends ago we went to our friend's farm to process our chickens. It was a long day of hard work but the end result (delicious chickens) was well worth it. Here are a few shots of the fun:

The before:

These chickens were BIG. They have clearly enjoyed their free range lifestyle and it paid off in some beautiful body weight. This photo was even taken a few weeks before we processed so you can imagine how big they got. Check out the chicken in the middle right!

We raised the chicks with our neighbor who came up with the perfect transport carrier. He and Nick loaded them into the bed of his little pick up, added some fencing and voila - they were ready for the ride to Corbett:

Of course upon arrival they probably should have weighed the pros and cons of that adventure. Step one everyone into the killing cone:

It was a family affair in every sense of the word. Here is Ray and his son Jake working on the cleaning:

Of course Gunnar joined in:


Gunnar and I took a break to walk around the property a bit. Laura has 40 beautiful acres filled with beautiful creatures.

Here are her Icelandic sheep enjoying the shade. As a labor trade Nick is back on her farm today to help get these guys sheared:

Her bull glaring at the cows below. "Just a few more weeks ladies" was clearly what he was trying to say with all his snorting:
All in all it was a long, hot, messy but productive day. Kudos to G for putting in a long napless day! We now have 20 gorgeous chickens in the deep freeze to get us through to next year. Nick grilled a "beer butt" chicken and the consensus was that it was DELICIOUS!