Sunday Snippits

Five or six years ago, I found that having a beer on a warm afternoon after working hard around the house and then immediately getting on a riding mower to spend the next two hours going in circles on a vibrating machine is not a good idea. Unless you like a very bloated gassy stomach sort of feeling.
Unfortunately, over the last few years my life has changed ALOT! So I forget little details like that one.
So yesterday, about 15 minutes into mowing the back yard (see turkey picture, that is a LITTLE bit of my back yard) I remembered how the drinking a beer then mowing is a not so good of an idea.
(burp!)
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Yesterday I decided to change the oil in my truck. So while running around in town, I bought filters, oil (four gallons for that oil hog) and then after supper, I drove the truck to town and back to heat the oil and prepared to drain the oil.
Just then, the garage door opened.
"Your daughter would like you to SAVE her."
From who? From Mommy, it seemed.
Excuse me? It seems that to delay bedtime, she told Wife she was hungry. No surprise, since she ate two spoonfuls of applesauce and a cracker, ignoring her tater tot casserole that Wife experimented with for our supper.
Just then Kat, wearing nothing but a pull up, came running into the garage. Arms raised she scurried over to me. I picked her up in a hug. I asked if she was hungry. "yessss" she replied. "Lets get you some GOOD supper!"
So I took her inside and we sat down next to her chair. I put a slice of cheese over her tater tot casserole and tried to trick her into eating it. Once she saw what I was doing, she wanted off my lap in the worst way. She didn't eat much, just what little amount I could slather with cheese.
After changing the oil, I thanked Jill for the much needed chuckle. "Your daughter would like you to SAVE her" then the little sprite running towards me for protection from a funny looking supper.
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Last weekend we packed up the kids and went to my MIL for Easter dinner. I knew, heading down there that she had some chores for me to do. Namely, cut up some trees that had come down. They were in part of the pasture that will be THICK in wild rose and if we don't get the trees out now, we won't get them until December.
So I put the saws, oil, and gas in the loader tractor and followed her instructions. "Three trees are down where the two electric fences meet at the top of that hill."
I went up and found two hickory trees and an oak. The oak had to have come down 10 years ago, but had landed on another log so I just dried hard, it didn't rot.
I spent the next two hours cutting logs up and stacking wood. Then I walked back to the house for dinner, having worked up an appetite. After dinner, I knew if I didn't head right back up, I would fall asleep. So out and back up I went. I had saved the biggest log for last. 40+ feet of hickory. I started small and worked my way back to the trunk. After about 15 feet the log pinched my chainsaw so I got to walk back to the house for another saw. I hate it when that happens.
Walked back, carrying the medium chainsaw and got back to work.
The trunk was probably 20" across and in really good shape. This tree had probably come down in the last 2-3 years and had at least a truckload of good wood.
I then had the joy of stacking all of the wood so that it would not be lost in the wild rose, rag weed and nettles. Then I loaded the loader bucket with the trunk and oak logs to take back to the house and chained the two saws, gas and oil to the bucket and went to leave.
Problem.
It seems that I had enought weight on the front of the tractor that I had no traction on the back of the tractor to back up the hill. I dug two ruts as wide as a tractor tire and about three feet long.
So I walked back to the house and asked MIL to get the cab tractor and come get me out... I would walk back up and unload the bucket of the hickory trunk and the oak, then we could chain the two together and she could pull me out.
By the time she got up there, I was ready for her. She hopped out of the cab of her tractor and looked around. "What are you doing over here?" Well she could plainly see that I had been cutting up trees, so I told her that I had been getting the tractor stuck. "Yes, but why here?"
This wasn't really funny and I was pretty tired. Didn't she want me to cut up three trees where the electric fences met in the upper pasture? Isn't that where we are right now with a stuck tractor? What is her point she is trying to make?
"Oh," She said, "I meant where this electric fence meets the other electric fence. Over there about 100 yards. You cut up the wrong trees in the wrong place. I did not even know these trees were back here."
"You will need to come back next week end and get those trees over there."

So it seems I had a very nice, tiring, afternoon in the woods, communing with nature, cutting up the wrong trees.
I am going back up this morning to do the job over. Hopefully, without getting the tractor stuck.
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The BOY is a dancer. He loves the rhythm and beat of the music from the 80s and will stand up and dance. He likes Paula Abdul, Ace of Bass, Robert Palmer, (loves) Weird Al, Michael Jackson, RHCP, B52s, Devo, and John Denver.
(Disclaimer, this is Wife's Play list from her iPod, don't look funny at me.)
I have noticed tho, he has the same dance no matter the beat or the song.
The Boy is also an aspiring musician. We have a toy electric keyboard that is his FAVORITE toy. He plays on that thing every single evening and all weekend long. It is a hand me down, but Kat is not getting it back.
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On that note. (get it? early Sunday humor) Wife intends to enroll the kids in Musical appreciation this summer. 45 minutes each Saturday for an hour the two will go and be exposed to different instruments, dance, and in general learn to appreciate music. Kat will be 3 years old and Kyle will be 18mos.
I am looking for feedback from you, my half dozen readers. Is this a little young to be enrolling them in music class? We expect Kat to get the most from it, but they have a half off sibling offer, so they will both be there.
Let me know what you think. Would I be better off just letting them listen to their mother's iPod? Or better yet, taking them to Loren's for piano lessons?