Demolition Man (and Woman)

Zachary and I recently demoed the dining room. Since the kitchen project borders the dining room and offered no good clean break, we decided to add it on in the project.
The walls and ceiling were covered in plaster and lathe. A dusty, dirty job.

Dorm Life

The summer heat has arrived in our neck of the woods. The last few days the temperatures have ranged from 90F to 100F with high humidity. We don't have air conditioning in our house, but we do have a room AC unit we install in our bedroom in the summertime. Yesterday Zachary installed the window unit and while basking in our chilled room, we wanted to watch some TV and be on the computer. But all that is located down in the living room, where it is hot. Compelled by the cold air, we decided to move part of our living room to the other half of our bedroom for the summer.
It is a little reminiscent of our college days. We just need a mini-fridge and we would be set. The other main reason for the move is this summer we will be doing more dusty remodeling downstairs and this way our electronics are cool and protected. It is a little strange when the nephews come over to play video games, but I guess it is prepping them for the college life.

Finding Garden and Sheep

This morning I decided the veggie garden needed some attention. Yes, there are rows somewhere in there.
Fired up the old trusty tiller.
What's this? Looks like a food plot. After tilling, my sister in law Karen helped me hand weed around the rows. We have some lettuce and spinach ready for cutting. The strawberries are bearing fruit too.
Excuse the poor photography, camera issues... The sheep have made it to the pasture. This afternoon we mended the fence, again and brought out the sheep, again. We have done this two other times and they managed to find ways out of the pasture. As of this post, they have been out there for 5 hours and haven't escaped. (knock on wood...) 

After sheep wrangling, we went down to the river with Jordan for some fishing and swimming with Maggie.

Dirt Baths

The chickens have been designating a few places around the farm as bathing areas. They enjoy the spot in front of the wood chute on the house. Good thing there is nothing planted there.
And when it rains, baths are held under the coop.

Rain and Shine

Today we went for a paddle on the Wolf River. We put in Shawano and ended up near the Cloverleaf Lakes. Our river boats got their first ride of the season on the Subaru.
As we were putting the boat in the water, we could see some dark clouds rolling in. A couple hundred feet down the river we heard thunder. Shortly after that, it started to sprinkle, then quickly transitioning to downpour. It rained for about 15 minutes. Here is a saturated Zachary under the highway 29 bridge.
After the downpour, the sun came out and the clouds rolled away. We had our fishing gear with us and we did some casting, but no luck. We did get lucky later fishing at my parents' house, with Zachary getting a few panfish, and landing a large mouth bass myself.

Five Years In

Friday was our five year wedding anniversary. It is hard to imagine that was five years ago already.

On a whim, I left work at noon and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening with Zachary. We went to Appleton and saw Land of the Lost. Our take: Okay. Nothing too special, but it was entertaining.After some aimless driving and exploring, we ended up by the other big theater in the Appleton area and decided to have a doubleheader. We saw Up. This movie made us forget about Land of the Lost. It was inventive, original, funny, and touching. We always thought Wall•E was the best Pixar flick, but Up sure challenges that thought. If you ever wondered what goes through a dog’s mind, this movie nails it. (Squirrel!) This one is definitely one of our favorites of the year. I think we both got teary eyed about three times. It really was a cute movie to see on our anniversary.
Extra bonus about Up was the short before the movie started, called Partly Cloudy. It was so adorable.We had a marinading pork tenderloin at home waiting for us to be grilled, but we were too wiped out to cook it, so we had our dinner for lunch on Saturday. We also had red potatoes with butter and thyme in a foil packet on the grill and steamed asparagus. It turned out perfect. Who knew pork could be moist? Thanks again Alton Brown.

Will vs. Bear

We are big Discovery Channel fans and watch a lot of it's programming. One of our favorites is Man vs. Wild. Bear Grylls is usually alone in the wilderness (with a camera crew), demonstrating survival techniques. Last nights episode was extra special. He had comedian/actor Will Ferrell join him for 48 hours in the mountains of Sweden. We had our nephews over to watch the event. It was great (and funny) to see the two polar opposites interact with each other. Grilled Reindeer eyeball anyone?

Donuts in Bed

Saturday morning we woke up at 5:45am to Maggie barking. We heard a gentle knocking at the front door. Zachary crawled out of bed, went downstairs, and answered the door. He returned with a bag full of glazed donuts! The local high school FFA dropped them off to show appreciation for area dairy farmers for June Dairy Month. This happened last year as well, but last year we were out in the barn at that time, being dairy farmers. Oh well. I am sure we were not the only non-dairy farmers that got them this year too. A tasty surprise anyhow.