Chatty Asher and 4H.

This has been a very busy week. Leah and Logan had their 4H skillathons Monday and Thursday evening and Leah had her non livestock judging Wednesday and Thursday. Plus, we meet over at our advisors house here in a couple hours to work on our fair booth. Throw into that White Park calves jumping the fence two different times and starting the timed AI's for our 3 White Park Mama's and well, it has been nuts this week. Oh and plus I got poison ivk/oak so badly that I had to go to the Dr. and get a script for an oral steriod. I feel like the steriod it just keeping the itching at bay and I think it is making my stomach upset and keeping me from sleeping well. So, there you have it, my very large "this week had been nuts" vent.

On the brighter side though, the poison is drying out, the calves are back in their pasture (for now), mama cows are experiencing their first breeding, at our hands, and pretty much the dreaded part of 4H is over for the kids (judging and skillathons). Now they have to show their animals at the fair which will be a new thing, especially for Logan, but that is fun also for them. And, the kids did great this week. We won't know their skillathon scores until fair, but they pretty much tell them how they did on all but a couple parts and Leah and Logan did great. Also, Leah won her nutrition project again for her yeast breads and will be going to the Ohio State Fair for the second time in a row. She really wanted that and worked really hard for it. Yeah Leah!

The 4 little kids, well, they unfortunately have been just drug everywhere this week. I feel bad for them, although they are troopers and did well to occupy themselves. It is a good thing Asher loves his car seat! I think we are going to take all the kids tubing down Mad River Sunday. It will be a great break from all this and sounds like so much fun!

Oh and speaking of Asher, he is turing into a little parrot. He repeats almost anything you tell him to. The little kids have great fun with this, especially Anna. She gets him going on about his nose, eyes, mouth, etc. I think sometimes she gives him a little too much info and it confuses him, but he loves it. He repeats pretty much anything we say now too. In general he just talks a LOT. For a while I just blew it of some as jibber jabber, but then I realized that if I really listened, he was saying a few real words in there. It is a hoot though to hear him carry on. Asher still loves to scream which can be nerve wracking and is proving to be difficult to break. He screams when he's sad, but he mostly screams when he is playing or happy. What do I do about that?

Asher adores daddy (who doesn't in this family) and totally on his own he has affiliated the Under Armour sign for daddy. I didn't believe it when I first saw him do it, but sure enough he is obsessed with it now. He sees the sign, points at it and yells, "see daddy, see daddy" all happy and excited. It is really, really funny and well, weird for lack of better words. I guess I didn't realize Ryan wore that much Under Armour gear. Asher will go nuts though when he sees that sign anywhere, not just on Ryan. :)

Well time to get out of bed and start my day. It will be a good day I am sure. You know even when my life seems crazy and stressed (which this week has really stressed me out), I am so grateful that when I take just a moment to reflect, it only takes half a second for God to remind me how blessed I am. I know that I live a blessed life, but sometimes in the midst of just living, I forget. Praise God that He reminds me. Praise God that I get to wake up to six beautiful kids every morning and a husband that I have adored now for over 20 years. Life is good, crazy, but good.

Julie