FEM, the cardinals fledged in about 2 days! They're all already out of the nest! I was surprised how quick it was. I was a little disappointed I couldn't get any pictures of them after they were out of the nest, but the bush is so dense I couldn't see them!
@Britesea yes, it really is!!
I'm just glad that the week led to a 3 day weekend! WHEW.
I had to pick up KN from the airport on Fri night, he flight didn't arrive until almost 11. And my lesson was a 8, which meant leaving the house at 7. UGH. My lesson went GREAT, though, I rode for almost the entire hour, which was awesome. I left the barn and headed over to SH & GH's house to being the next phase of work on their place. The stone dust had been delivered on Friday, so we were set to start. I called the BF on the way over to find out where he was and discovered he was JUST leaving the house.
It was 9:30 at this point. I had left the house at 7. He was awake at 7.
I got there and started to take care of the horses and clean up the manure, and GH came out to say hello and give me the check for my pay for June. I noticed their truck was still in the driveway when I got there, and figured they'd been delayed. She and I chatted for a minute, and then she headed back to the house to finish getting ready to leave and the BF pulled in finally. He unhitched the trailer and we headed down to his work to pick up the tamper. He was supposed to have done that already that morning. Oh well. On our way back we decided to grab lunch, and then the truck wouldn't start back up again, so we ended up sitting in the parking lot to eat our lunch waiting on the truck to cool off.
Finally an hour later we were able to head back to GH's and get started. We grabbed the bobcat from KD's place around the corner and the BF got our tractor off the trailer and we got everything started up. He moved the hay feeder and I started driving the bobcat back and forth to get loads of stone dust. We ended up leveling it by hand because the machine cracked one of the boards trying to drive on and off the box. We'll have to replace that later. He tamped that down while I got more loads and spread them out. We finished that, finally, and dumped the first load of manure and called it quits. We decided to grab a new starter for the truck so that we wouldn't get stranded again on the way home. Got home and took showers, and then decided to go grab something to eat, and finally came home and fell into bed. I got sun burnt pretty bad across my shoulders and upper arms. The breeze was SO lovely, and I didn't notice how bad I was burned until it was too late.
Sunday morning I dropped the BF off at GH's and then ran up to the farm to get started on my chores. By the time I came back he had gotten the second load of manure off the pickup truck, and was attempting to start leveling the area where the new box was being built. It had rained a little overnight and it was SLIPPERY, and he was getting nowhere. When I got there we went over to get the bobcat again from KD's place, and he tried using that. He mostly just made a mess, and then the bobcat died on him due to a silly wiring harness that is attached to the seat belt. (It won't run unless your butt is in the seat and the seat belt is attached...). We decided to take a break, go home and get lunch, replace the starter in the pickup truck, grab a new wire harness to fix the bobcat, and pick up lumber and an auger from Home Depot so we could get the box built and maybe the ground would dry out enough while we were gone.
We finally got back (everything takes way longer than it should, right?!) and the ground has dried which is great. It takes the BF a while to get the wiring harness fixed, but he finally does, and so he finishes scraping the area for the box. We get ready to build the box, and he gets the first smaller box built, which is great. He was having a little trouble with the way the auger was running, but was working through it. It's hot (my truck said 90
) and I can tell he's getting fatigued, and running an auger like that is HARD. It jerks you around every time it hits a rock. We start on the first hole of 8 that have to be dug for the big box, and he auger gets stuck, and rips out of his hands. Instead of stopping, like it's supposed to, it just sits there and SPINS.
We're both standing there waffling between terrified and amused. I almost took a video with my phone, but was more concerned with how the heck we were going to get this thing SAFELY stopped. He couldn't grab it, it was going too fast. He finally pulled the pin out of the auger, and then managed to pull the thing up out of the ground WHILE THE TOP IS STILL SPINNING and threw the whole thing on the ground. Once it was on the ground, it quit spinning since he'd pulled out the pin. I'm SO grateful he didn't get hurt. They're supposed to have a safety in them that if you let go of the throttle the machine goes to idle. This one didn't. The throttle got stuck wide open. Which is DANGEROUS. At that point I'm pissed, and he's hot and tired. He started to fuss with trying to get the engine to work correctly, and I was like NO. We're not doing this. We PAID to rent this machine, and it wasn't cheap, and I'm NOT going to fight with it to get it to work right wasting the precious time we have in order to finish the work when we're already hot and exhausted. So we just packed everything up (which took almost 2 hours. in the heat.) and went back to Home Depot.
We go to return the machine and explain to the woman what happened, and she tried to just give us half off the rental. I said no way. Not only did it not work correctly, but it was a safety hazard on top of that. She did point out that we should have called when it happened, and I agreed with her, but I was still not going to pay for the rental. I get her point that I'm sure a lot of people come in there and try to say it didn't work, and they likely don't know what they're doing, but that's not us. She did give us the money back but she wasn't happy about it.
We finally left there and grabbed dinner. And of course we picked the restaurant which didn't have any a/c working. We finally got home and got in the shower and crashed. Thankfully we JUST beat the storms home. The bottom fell out AFTER we got in the house.
We took it easy yesterday. The BF went with me to the farm to turn out horses, and then we went down to GH's to take care of Cowboy and Coyote. It had rained pretty hard so even if we had wanted to work we really couldn't have. We had a nice brunch together after that and then headed home. I took a 2 hour nap, and then got up and we ran some errands, stopped by Cowboy and Coyote's again and then ate dinner. Thank goodness Chili's was open their regular hours on Memorial Day. All of our other picks were closed, especially at 6:30 when we were ready to eat.
The fun thing is that I picked up a seeding stand from SR. He got it from someone else, and wasn't using it, and tried to sell it but no one would take it, so he gave it to me. It's got 3 levels to it, the lower 2 have lights in them so you can start seeds in it. It will be nice to use, we were even talking about putting it in the house and growing greens in it through winter. We'll have to see how that works LOL. I'm grateful to have it, it's pretty nice.
I got wet this morning taking care of Cowboy and Coyote. I knew it was supposed to rain, but I didn't think it was going to until later, so I didn't put ON my jacket, I just had it in the car. Got down to their barn and was picking up poop and was about half finished when it started to rain pretty hard. I was not pleased!
At least it's only a 4 day week, even if today is a MondayTuesday.
We got really hot yesterday - heat index 101 for awhile. So not ready for that - but for me it's better than cold. Trips are fun - but it's nice to get back home.
to say the least. It's petty, but it feels like my sister's stuff is more important than my stuff. The BF isn't sure he can reschedule his vacation, or at least he's not sure that they'll be happy about it. He has basically said to just tell them to come and he'll see if he can get off when they're here later. I don't want to do that because they want to spend time with him and we wanted to go to the beach. If he doesn't take time off then we're probably not going to the beach with them. Of course, I'd rather take vacation with just the two of us, but I don't get to spend much time with my family either. 
