Sorry, no pictures! My eyes are still too blurry from a week of taking Tom to college, Wil starting 7th grade and Mike's birthday.

Oh, and I shouldn't leave out that Wil had to have a tetanus booster! The nurse had to stick him twice cause he jumped and he's covered with bruises from us trying to hold him still. Yuck!

But, that is our week in a nutshell. I just wanted to let you know that we've survived and expect it to get better from here. Or at least we're getting tougher so we can endure better.

Did I mention that I hate back to school time? LOL I should have home schooled long ago and forced my children to stay home locked in the closet!

I love summer!

Lisa wanted to see pictures of my plants and stuff, so I thought I might as well show off a little. The plants have grown alot this summer and are enjoying their setting.







I also included a shot of the rock work I've been doing. Its hard to describe it and have people not just think I've lost my mind. So here's a picture of what I've been talking about. I plan to have a ground cover growing up in between the rocks, but the seeds haven't started to grow yet.
And BTW, that represents A LOT more work than it looks like it does. I deserve some credit here! :)

New School!

I thought you might like to see some pictures of the new school we're trying to buy.

Its really hard to get the whole thing at once and have it look good, so this is as good as this photographer can do. But the clouds look cool, at least!

Gma's say the funniest things

Okay, here we go again.



So, we're sitting in the Dr.'s office and he says,


"Now that you're 89, it time to make a few decisions. If something should happen to you like a stroke or a heart attack, would you want to be put on machines or just wave to the angels on your way out?"

Her response,

"I guess that would depend on how old I got!"

First time for everything

Hey! I mowed the grass for the first time! Yeah!

Okay, I know it doesn't look very good yet, but its coming.
Just imagine a circular drive through that weedy part and you've got it.

Funny Grandma

I have been working on getting Gma and Gpa Wickham to outline their programs for their funerals. I know it sounds weird, but you know I'll have to figure it all out, and they have their own ideas about how it should go... so, I'm trying to get a head start.

Gma gave me the names of 2 songs that she wants sung at her funeral. They are very old and have been VERY hard to find sheet music for since they're both out of print. So, I finally found the song "Trees" online and ordered it. There was only one and it was used but its the only one I've found. So when it arrived in the mail, I called Gma to tell her the good news. "Good news! I found Trees! The bad news is that it doesn't have any words with it." And she said....... "That's ok. I know the words!"

Tom's a muddy kid!

I needed to post this awhile ago, but here ya go!


Out at the "lower ranch" we water the animals by sucking water out of a hole Tom dug with a sump pump attached to a hose. It works very well, actually. It didn't start out that way and it has gone through an interesting evolutionary process to get where it is right now.

At first Chris rigged an auto water pump to a stationary bicycle with a hose down in the hole and another hose coming off the pump. That worked fairly well, but it had some structural problems and the pump tended to get plugged up with the not so clean water. Every so often, the hole would need revising and it would become enlarged in the process. Before long, the "well" was quite an impressive hole in the ground and contained a large amount of water. They had put a piece of plywood over the hole to keep things, and small pigs, and clumsy people out of the water.

That was all great for a time, but as one thing leads to another, this leads me to the story that I was going to tell.


Tom went out to water one afternoon and found that his well had been invaded by a very large sow and her babies. (There's no sheet of plywood in the world that can stand up to a 600 pound thirsty sow.) Chris was also there, and between them (I'm not really sure about the finer points of this part) they managed to cut a step in the side of the well that allowed the sow to scramble her way out of the hole. Unfortunately, there were 3 of her babies drowned at some point in the process. But, considering the situation, I think we got off lucky!

Now, the sow having been rescued, there was the well to consider. As you can imagine, the sow had totally thrashed the hole in her efforts to escape. But Tom, was not discouraged! He climbed right in there and started cleaning it out with his trusty shovel. He made it bigger and better, completely cleaned out and straightened up. He and Chris set the sump pump back up in the bottom of the well with a bucket for protection, and covered it over with big old logs, and plywood. It looks great. It works great too. Now anyone can go out, turn on the switch on the generator, pull one time to start the generator and water pours forth from the hose with great efficiency! Its awesome. (And Tom showered up just fine!)