Miss Nora showing us one of her many talents.
There has been a lot of activity within the household! Graduation was on May 14 and it’s already June 6.
Because the wheat harvest journey was next to happen, that’s what was focused on after the graduation party was cleaned up. And speaking of the graduation party, I’d like to thank everyone who came. Everything turned out nice, including the weather – just enough chilly to enjoy the awesome fire pit Jim and Mark built.
Callie and Kara have been best friends since kindergarten. They finished their school career off with a BANG! Callie was Valedictorian and Kara was Salutatorian. I asked Callie if there ever seemed to be competition between them and she said, “No, we helped each other”. Good job girls!! Please make sure to take that attribute with you the rest of your life! Eliminate competition and replace it with helping each other.
And just like that…it was over.
It started the fall of 1991. It ended on Saturday. The school schedule has controlled what we’ve done, where we we’ve gone, and has been a major piece of the game called life. I’ve been so focused on getting through each day that I never really thought about it being over. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I knew it would one day but that was so far into the future. Well, the future is here.
You know, some days just seem to start out a bit more of a struggle than others. Today was one of those struggle days. Struggle to accept changes that are being thrown at me. Struggle just to get started with what’s on my list of “to do’s”. Just a struggle. I really hate days like this. Mostly because it takes hold of your very soul and seems to try to back you into a corner and not let you out. The tears that have been pushed back for so long seem to flow easily and won’t quit.
Why is it so hard to accept the fact that you’re not quite as tough as you’d like the rest of the world believe you are?
We don’t live on a farm. The last link to the farm for our immediate family belongs to Jim’s sister, Maureen, and her husband, Harvey. They plant corn and soybeans and raise cattle. They used to have pigs, as well, but gave up on that quite a few years ago already. Diversified operation. Recently, I’ve come to appreciate them and the connection much more. Prior to this appreciation, it was taken for granted.
Throughout my many days of sitting behind the steering wheel of a combine, you see lots of “things” in the field…old machinery parts, oil buckets, seed bags, dead animals, deer antlers, swimming pools and even kids’ outdoor toys. Most of the machinery parts were lost during the working of the ground or planting of the crop. The rest can be attributed to the wind – except for the dead animals, of course.
I’ve seen a number of helium balloons. Some fields and locations within our harvest journey seem to collect more than usual. It’s almost as if those locations are on some sort of helium balloon jet stream. In my mind, I imagine that after balloons have been set free from the hands who have held them, they make their way into this helium balloon jet stream which carries them as far as it will allow. Then, the balloon that had been gracefully floating through the sky, hits some sort of cloud wall or turbulence, tumbles back to earth and lands in a field.
The fields we cut in Eastern Colorado must be in the direct balloons-falling-back-to-earth path. I used to get excited when I first saw a balloon here or there (I don’t know why). Sometimes I would stop to see what sort of celebration might have been happening at the time the balloon was allowed to enter the balloon jet stream. Birthdays and congratulations seem to make the top of the list.
On one particular September afternoon, while rolling through the millet field, a bouquet of red balloons caught my eye. “Interesting!”, I thought. “This is something you don’t see as often as the typical mylar balloon”. I kept going. Something entered my head, though, that made me back up, stop and get out of the Beast. I wanted to see what it was that made this find so different from the others.
Spending a bit of time with these goofballs while we were home was the best!
I’m usually amazed at just how fast the days and weeks go while we’re on harvest. Not so much right now.
I think it’s a combination of a couple of things. I think the #1 reason it’s dragging is the fact that most of the family unit is at home. Well…sort of. Jenna is busy with farm shows (Farm Progress in Decatur, IL right now) and won’t be “home, home” for a while yet. The rest of the family keeps me informed of what’s going on with Snapchat, Twitter and a text here and there. It isn’t the same as being there! I don’t care how wonderful Facetime is…it’s just not the same as being there.
Thanks for sharing your picture, Taylor! This little guy loves the equipment!!!
Sitting here waiting for my fingers to move and my mind to shift gears to writing is the reason I fail at keeping a journal. It’s not the writing that I fail at – it’s the getting behind and trying to catch up. When this happens, I become overwhelmed with the amount of time that has passed and then I just don’t even want to do it. Once I’m caught up again, I tell myself I’m not going to let that happen again. Guess what…I generally do let it happen again. I’ll start catching you up and if need be, I’ll just have to make it a continuing story. Otherwise, I’m certain you’ll lose interest.
All pictures are thanks to Taylor Zeorian Photography.
Palm Sunday brought our family and Jim’s side of the family together. This is our only link to the farm – a real farm. We visit farms with our business but Harv and Maureen’s farm is the only one left in our family unit. I was excited for Eli to visit the farm and even more excited that it was a beautiful day!
One of the highlights of the day was getting to bottle feed the calf named Ruby. As long as I’ve known Harv and Maureen (and that’s a long time), they’ve had cattle. They used to have quite a few hogs, too, but sold out after prices went too low to justify keeping them. At least when you visit the farm now, it’s a bit less stinky! Anyway…back to Ruby. Harvey and Maureen’s grandson, Harvey Jr., has the chore of feeding Ruby every day. So, on this particular day when it was time to feed her, we tagged along.
I guess I’m still a kid at heart! I love Christmas and I love receiving boxes in the mail! So, when I received my box from my “Secret Santa”, I couldn’t wait to open it!
Thanks to some lovely ladies, my second year of participating in the Christmas In the Country was a success! These gals certainly know how to organize and create a fun activity during the Christmas season! Thank you Laurie, Jamie, Robyn and Erin! You gals are the best! And…Merry Christmas to you – all of you! It seems like the holiday was a year ago already but my Christmas tree and decorations remind me that it really wasn’t THAT long ago (no, I still haven’t taken any of it down)!
So, to give you a bit of an idea of what this is all about, I agreed to be a part of the gift exchange in November. Those gals that I just mentioned gathered names of people wanting to participate (from all walks of life) and then matched us with another blogger. The name I was given was Amber whose blog is, “A Gentle Word“. I, of course, had to visit her blog when I was trying to figure out what to send her and realized that she is way younger than me, has way younger children than me and yet we share some same similarities and life experiences. Her blog was something I needed at the time. Her writing provided my crazy soul with a bit of peace that it needed! I didn’t take any pictures of what I sent to her. However, I did send her an angel like the ones I had made for my girls and for some of my close friends:
This is my angel.
“Hi Mama! It’s nice to finally see your beautiful face!” (picture credit to Auntie Taylor)
I’ve got one hour. One hour before the entire year of 2014 is in the history books.