Pirate Day

I left last Saturday for a 7 day trip. I try to avoid these long trips but sometimes I just can’t. I’m an organizer so I try to have everything planned before I leave so the kids can continue to function without me. I put together crock pot meals for my Cowboy to start and I have all the favorite clothes washed up and a post on the fridge of what days need what- like Thursday is library day. 

Then on Monday I get the email that Friday is pirate day at school. Ugh- Pirate Day- really of all the days to have while I’m traveling! Cowboy could pull off princess day or school spirit day or even a specific color day (last week was strips- he could have done that) but not a complicated costume experience like pirates...

I talked to the crew on Tuesday and we discussed our options.  Miss O said she was fine with not dressing up like a pirate.  Miss R said she didn’t even like pirates.  So, I felt better with the whole experience and didn’t even bring it up to Cowboy. I checked again with the girls on Wednesday night and same story.  Yesterday I made the decision to grab an earlier flight and get home Thursday night instead of Friday night. Well the good Lord had other plans and we ended up missing my connecting into home last night.

To divert here- I was traveling with my cousin Kelli and a woman on our plane started to experience seizures and Kelli being a nurse was able to be with the woman while we had to make an emergency landing in Madison, Wisconsin. I had been shocked how easy we were able to switch our flights to a whole day earlier and now I why- we needed to be on the flight for Kelli to provide her gift to this woman. Thank God for his interference, Kelli was amazing and I believe made a difference for this woman and certainly the passengers of the plane.  

So, that all means no pirate costumes at school on Friday.  Now I’m sure my girls are not the only ones who were not dressed like pirates and they weren’t sad. But certainly this traveling mom feels bummed that I failed and no eye patches left my house. 

I have no pictures of my beautiful kids from Friday morning (forgot to ask Cowboy to take them).   But they probably fit in just fine - hair not combed, dirty wrinkled clothes and bad attitudes- Cowboy has been in charge for a week.  Maybe he is good at pirate costumes...

When I Grow Up...

Last week Miss R graduated from Kindergarden.

It's a big event in a young person's life and marking it with a party is very appropriate.

Something weird with my computer- but you get the picture

In our small community there is only one class of Kindergarden but Miss R's is a healthy size of 22 busy little people.  Miss Hammond & Miss Ogle have done an amazing job of keeping everyone moving in the same direction and everyone is moving onto 1st grade!

Let me just start off by saying Miss R wore an amazing outfit- I personally think it made it in the TOP 5 on her Kindergarden fashionista list. It had sparkles, flounce and matching flip flops. Plus it was a good hair day.

What really caught my attention at the event was this simple display of each child in Miss R's class holding a sign to complete this sentence:

7 out of the 10 boys in her class want to be farmers.  Wow, I'd say that is a pretty good percentage of future farmers in our community! I was a little surprised at that many kids who see their future in farming but on the other hand -- Proud that so many of our kids see themselves walking in their mom and dad's footsteps to carry on the tradition of raising food.  It would have been fun to dream about being a baseball player,  race car driver, police man, hunter-- all popular boy jobs.  But no, instead they want to be FARMERS! 

I can't wait to see how these kids grow and become their dream. 

Now for Miss R- the sign she is holding-  Ballerina. 

I was surprised by this, since for over a year now she has talked about being a Doctor. She goes into complete detail every time she talks about it; explaining that she wants to help people and make them better. When I questioned her about her profession change she said that she'll "make her final decision when she's 18"

...stay tuned, it could get interesting.

Where I Come From We Rode In Trucks

It’s no secret that I have a crush on Luke Bryan but I also relate with this song. Pickup’s have been an important role in my life. 

I learned to drive on an old Blue Chevy ranch pickup. My dad felt it was absolute must that all ranch girls learn to drive ‘stick’ before leaning automatic. I had to put my foot under the clutch peddle to lift it off the floor and shift with two hands all at the same time.  Oh, and the shifter knob had long been replaced with a cue ball so I really had concentrate to remember what gear I was in. 

Certainly I think my dad did have an alternative motive for teaching me to drive the ranch pickup. There were plenty of times he would make me drive the 1 ton dully with glass packs and sometimes a trailer to high school to run errands for him after school. There was nothing more embarrassing to a girl hiding from her cowgirl legacy then driving that thing to school. Letting off the gas and hearing that BROOOM, BROOOM, BROOOM noise always made me just cringe. 

When I got to college, my sorority sister drove a little pregnant roller skate manual car, I was the only other sister who knew how to drive it and at times when she had too much at the bar and I didn’t, I would drive us home. I was amazed at how much fun it could be to drive a manual...this was not the ranch pickup!   I impressed by many a boy at college with my driving abilities. 

I have to tell you that when I met my Cowboy it was probably his cool pickup that may have sealed the deal with us. I had never dated a boy who drove a pickup and although he didn’t let me drive it, I was still impressed. 

The pickup tradition continues with my children. This spring during breading season the kids spent many an hours entertaining themselves in the back of the truck. This particular day the girls with their cousins were pretending they were in a pirate ship sailing the 7 seas...

Young Mr. Hadrick has the farmer drive already down. He is allowed to move the pickup around the yard from time to time. Look at the casual arm out the window and one hand on the wheel. Must be a dominate gene in the male farmer, this can’t be taught, its natural ability. 

Sometimes we clean our pickups up and take them to town. It’s a common occurrence to see a ranch pickup pulling a float in the 4th of July parade.

We also use the pickup for our office on any given day and sometimes I feel we live in it. Here I’m using it as a prep station for breeding cattle this spring. We are out on the prairire, It may be crude but it gets the work done. 

To this day some of my favorite memories as a child is in that old blue Chevy pickup and there is always a smile on my face when I’m driving my Cowboys 1 ton Dodge pickup and I hear that turbo windup...

Hello Routine, My Old Friend...

This marks my first day of having routine back in my life for fall 2012.  I said goodbye to routine in late April and sure have missed her.  Summer always forces routine out of the house- there is just no room for her with the kids home.  I look back on the craziness of summer and I sure enjoyed it but because routine was absent, I felt like I was missing something. 

So, here I sit today on a Monday hanging out with routine again.  So far we've got through almost my whole to do list and a little more.  In fact I've done so well with routine this morning that I had time to do this blog post!

So the trade off of welcoming routine back into my life means that all three Hadrick children are in school this year.  Yep my baby is in Kindergarden!  

There she sits at her little kindergarden table, the last Hadrick kid to join the school ranks. Now, I have to share that this mom didn't get emotional this year as I got her settled at her spot. I'm not sure why there was no tears on my part, but more of a feeling of relief and excitement for her.  My cute little Kindergartner didn't really show emotion either. Not excited or sad, just accepting of her fate as full time school participant. 

Now, after her first 3 days, the verdict is still out about her new adventure. Her teacher indicated that she was the only child that didn't raise her hand when she asked at the end of the first day when she asked the students if they had fun.  When I asked Miss R why she didn't raise her hand. She said we had to raise our hand all day long I was just too tired to raise it again.

I believe Kindergarden will grow on her...because one things for sure, I really like routine hanging out with me and I'm not giving her up! 

The Great Easter Dress

In my quest to be mom of the year, I created the 'dress of her dreams' for Miss R's Easter outfit.  The truth be known the reason I had to go to this effort was because Easter sneaked up on me.  I had started early enough, we went to the 'big' town 6 weeks ago and found a dress for Miss O, but just could never find anything for Miss R.

By the time I got around to ordering one for Miss R I still couldn't find anything online that I was excited about and I wasn't sure it would be shipped in time.  Remember I live in rural South Dakota and sometimes the pony express is slow. So last week I made a quick trip to the 'big' town to find a dress. I came home with this little perfect cotton candy pink tutu style dress. I thought she would love it.  Instead her comment was "this dress is (picture thumbs down and tongue stuck out), plain" UGH.




So, the next morning we headed to one of our favorite places in town the Quilt shop to get some enhancements for this plain dress.  Here is what we came up with: Pearl buttons, Pink buttons with little sparkles in the middle, a yard of pink roses and some thread to sew it all on.

For the next few days I worked on the plain dress and it came together really well. This was the smile we saw on her face yesterday morning.  Yes, a few buttons fell off, but overall it looked so good and she was thrilled. Another happy customer...

Morgan, Teigen's 4-H Show Heifer is a mom! 

That was big news at our house. We all had been waiting very patiently for this baby to arrive. Morgan had been staying in the barn and being fed 'special' feed and being treated very well in her last days of pregnancy. We almost were at hour by hour updates from all the family members who were dropping in to check on her. Finally the day arrived and after the kids got home from school we headed to the barn as a family to see the new addition.  For all you wondering it was a- BOY! Teigen was excited and Miss O "knew it was a boy" she claims.

Morgan is a good mom. There is nothing like hearing a cow talk to her calf with their low sounds they make. I love to listen to that and it always makes me smile. It amazes me how a cow instantly knows that she is responsible for taking care of her baby and goes to work getting them cleaned and stands waiting for the calf to get up and take their first drink of milk.

Within the first day a calf is born on the ranch we tag them, give them a shot-a vaccine for common diseases that calves may be exposed to and monitor both mom and baby to make sure that they are ok. Teigen wanted to be a part of all the details when it came to Morgan.  Here he is putting the number on the calf tag. You can see his little sister paying close attention to detail. She can't wait for this to be her someday! When it came down to it- we all agree that dad should be the one to put the tag in the calf's ear and give the shot. We sorted Morgan off from the calf, into another pen where she could still see the calf and in less then 15 seconds the old pro had it done and mom and baby were reunited. We all thought it was cute how the new baby looked with his new clean ear tag.

I think Morgan the mom is going to have some new lessons for Teigen to learn and I'm excited to see how those unfold- I'll keep you posted.

Happy Hair, Happy Girls

I was blessed with two beautiful little girls, which meant I had to accept pink into my life and have considered investing in a make-up company.  Over the past 6 years I've acquired many new girl raising skills, but the one that still is my great nemesis is creating the cute hair styles my girls desire. Anyone who knows me, knows my favorite hair style is a pony tail.  I simply was not given the skills and patience to create even the simplest of hair creations.  As a little girl my Barbie dolls were dressed to the hilt but their hair was always in a pony tail.  Over the years I've bought all the hair gadgets, currently I have 2 flat irons, 3 curling irons, and dozens of hair sprays, mousse and products to do every which thing with hair and still I have limited hair fixing abilities.

My oldest daughter, O has long straight as a board hair and her dream is to have it to the floor.  My youngest daughter, R has curly curly hair that is manageable if we keep shorter.  My cowboy & I often laugh about seeing our girls in the future: O curling her hair and R straightening hers. For that reason we added extra plug in's to their bathroom when we built it. Needless to say I have two hair challenges.

My girls love to have their hair braided, I can braid but I can't do much more then that. R has been bagging me to french braid her hair for some time now, and I have been putting it off. This week she caught me at an adventurous moment- so with ipad in hand we headed to the bathroom for our tools.   Thank goodness for YouTube! After watching a great tutorial 3 times I made my first attempt at a french braid. I got started just fine and after 2 more times of watching the video and bagging her to stay very still, I was able to complete the task.

Here is my 2nd attempt! She made me take out the first one-not up to her standards. 

Look at this happy face, all worth acquiring my new skill.

So, I don't think I'm ready to enter into a braiding competition but I see trying a side braid in my future. As for my own hair, I have an appointment with Stacy (my hairdresser has my same name) and I can't wait to see her, because at least tomorrow my hair will look amazing!

Building A Blog- What's my Recipe?

As I launch my blog I'm thinking about the recipe I will follow.  The main ingredient I have in my blog is family.  I'm the mother of 3 growing children, Teigen, Olivia & Reese.  Although they are young we are busy with school, 4-H, and church.  I'm also married to my best friend, my cowboy.  My cowboy and I raise cattle & crops on the prairie.  We love where we live and appreciate the lifestyle we are raising our children in.
My recipe also includes my job beyond being a mom & wife. I have many 'paying' jobs that I will continue to share. I'm also an entrepreneur,  my cowboy & I have developed a business that we continue to build with all the challenges and joys of working with your spouse!
I also have a full cup of travel, I'm fortunate to have a job that gets me out of the tri-county area on a regular basis.  Add another cup of community. I'm involved as a 4-H & youth group leader and see those continuing to develop and keeping me running more.
Throw in a big dash of rural life on the prairie. I have to drive 65 miles to get to a town with shopping.  I'm an hour from WalMart, Starbucks and McDonalds.  This rural living makes me have to plan ahead for lots of things since my small town does not have many of the features most are use to having.
That's my recipe for my blog.  I look forward to connecting with people about the joys of my rural lifestyle.