Thousand Word Thursday

Yesterday, as I was looking out my office window, I noticed a small group of school children playing on the three little hills in the area used for outdoor concerts. There was lots of running up and down the hills, but these two little girls found something much more fun to do. To be a carefree child again...

Stop by Cheaper than Therapy to check out other Thousand Word Thursday participants.

Wordless Wednesday

Afternoon Walk

While Ron was planting corn yesterday, Abbey I ventured out for an afternoon walk when I got home from work. Don't you just love the colors of spring?

Thousand Word Thursday

Thousand Word Thursday usually focuses on meaningful photos to you. Maybe it's the warm, spring day, but today I feel more like posting something humorous than sentimental.


Some days you just feel like that white fish in the middle. But you know what, I thoroughly enjoyed eating everything I did :)

Want to join the fun? Stop by Cheaper than Therapy, grab the button, add your name to the list and share some photos! Don't forget to check out the others...

Wordless Wednesday

Full Swing

Whew...survived the weekend and a whirlwind of activity. I drove home for the weekend for Jackson's baptism. After some family time on Saturday, Jackson was baptized on Sunday morning and then I was back on the road to Champaign.



Ron stayed here to work over the weekend. With rain in the forecast for Sunday through Tuesday, time in the field would be a premium. They were able to get a couple of trials planted Saturday and can officially include themselves in the 1% of the Illinois corn acres that have been planted.

I got back into Champaign just in time for the skills assessment and player draft for the girls fastpitch league. In between rain showers I got my team drafted and we'll start practice in a couple of weeks. Lucky for us, our game Sunday night was canceled...After standing in the rain all afternoon, I was not ready to do the same that evening. Hopefully more interesting news this week...we are now in full spring mode!

Thousand Word Thursday

Earlier this week while looking for some photos I found some from a trip to Canada a couple of years ago. While I'm a tried and true country girl, I can appreciate landscapes of a different nature. The city lights and setting sun make this a photo favorite.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, right? Want to join the fun? Stop by Cheaper than Therapy, grab the button, add your name to the list and share some photos!

Family Photos

Last weekend, while home celebrating Easter, we also took time out to have some family photos taken. We had Morrison native Jan Scott take our photos. She did a wonderful job getting all of us in some fantastic photos. We had such a fun time (despite it being a little chilly) and highly recommend contacting her if you are thinking about getting some photos done.

You can check out a few of our photos here. I wish you could see them all--its going to be hard choosing our favorites! And please disregard the photos of us and our dog...she did not want to cooperate that day :)

Show Me Your Teeth

No need to ask Madison to say cheese....it doesn't always work. But if you want a nice big smile, just tell her to show her teeth. Here's a self portrait we took this last weekend. She wanted to share her extra pair of sunglasses with me.



It's a crappy, overcast day here. Hopefully we'll be able to use those shades later this week

Happy Birthday Stacy!

Birthday wishes to little sister Stacy....turning the big 2-5 today! She knows how to celebrate!

Sunday Stills: The Color Red

This week's challenge for Sunday Stills was the color red. An interesting challenge and I think I found some interesting photos this week.

Here's some red paint and moss on our barn-barns are some of my favorite photos.
These other two photos I took right after a spring snow here. Bleeding hearts in my front yard-
and snow snow on our fence.
Have a great Easter everyone!

Research Trials

Remember I promised to tell you a little more about the the hubby does? Well, his official title is the Coordinator of the Insect Management and Insecticide Evaluation Program -- a little long and hard to get out of your mouth in casual conversation.

Part of his responsibilities is to work with chemical companies to put out unbiased trials of their products. Some of these trials compare products in head-to-head evaluations and others are testing new products in the field.

What are they evaluating you might ask? They are seeing how well an insecticide or transgenic hybrid works against insects they are supposed to protect the plant against. His research focuses on corn and soybeans along with some alfalfa and sweet corn trials.

The major insects he's tracking down all summer long? Western corn rootworms and soybean aphids. Throw in some Japanese beetles, corn earworm, fall armyworm, potato leafhopper, and a few others and its quite a busy time of year.

Right now they're getting ready for planting. First trials to go out -- the standard corn rootworm trials. These trials test products for control of the western corn rootworm. The western corn rootworm larvae hatch in late May and feed on the roots of corn. Thus, its important to get the corn in the ground and planted so they insects will have something to feed on.


The products being tested are supposed to protect the plant roots against the rootworm larvae from feeding on them. When there are a lot of larvae feeding on a plant root, with no protection, it could end up looking like the root on the right...


It's no wonder that if you have that kind of injury in a field, the corn plants would have trouble standing and that is money laying on the ground.

Travel Bug

While we're a family that's constantly on the go and definitely needs some time at home (there's tons of projects that need to be done), my photo from this morning definitely puts a little bit of the travel bug back in me. There's lots of places we've been that I'd love to go back to but there's so many places I'd like to go to for the first time as well-

• Riviera Maya, Mexico
• The Black Hills/Mt. Rushmore
• Niagra Falls
  
• Sequoia National Park
  
• White Sands, New Mexico
  

What are five places you'd like to visit?

Thousand Word Thursday

The Smoky Mountains are one of our favorite places to visit. We'd love to take a trip during the spring and see the trees starting to turn green and the wildflowers in bloom.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, right? Want to join the fun? Stop by Cheaper than Therapy, grab the button, add your name to the list and share some photos!

Build A Better Blog: Exercise 1

Several of the blogs I follow are participating in "Build a Better Blog in 31 Days" hosted by ProBlogger. While this blog is mainly for fun and family updates, I do have another blog I use for work. While I think it will be fun to learn new things about blogging, I think I'll pick up a lot of useful tips for both.

Now, I'm a couple days behind, but I'll slowly catch up as I go. The first task was to develop an elevator pitch for your blog.

This is much harder than you may think...so after thinking about this for awhile, here it is (drumroll, please) -

This blog is a journal (of sorts) sharing stories and photos with our family, friends, and whoever else may stop by as we go through this thing we call life.

Maybe not the most eye-catching pitch you'll read, but it really makes you stop and think about what you blog about and maybe where you'd like your blog to go. I wonder how this pitch would change over the course of a few months???

It's What We Do

With spring comes cranky, stressed out farmers. Because, if you didn't know, as soon as the snow melts away, temperatures begin to rise, and the grass gets greener, they start thinking about planting.

Around these parts, everyone is getting locked and loaded for planting. Word is that a few people around Springfield have gotten some corn in the ground. With the exception of a warm week in March, its still been pretty chilly and quite wet around our area. Never fear, I'm sure planters will be rolling through the fields in the upcoming weeks.

Our house is no exception to planting mayhem - although ours tends to be that of a different kind. Ron's preparing to plant research trials. Soon he'll be off to all corners of the state planting trials to test different hybrids, seed treatments, and insecticides. All with this 4-row research planter...


In the coming days hopefully we'll breakdown the different functions of this planter to shed some light research plots. We'll probably have to beg Ron to help though...

I think this photo may be just about right to represent how I'm feeling this morning -- a little bit droopy and cold. We had a great weekend although fairly busy. That generally makes for a tired Monday morning. We got a bunch of errands ran, while being able to spend some time together, and spend some time with friends, which has been lacking lately as we've been out of town quite a bit. We woke up this morning to wet, fluffy snow covering our yard. Good news is they say it won't last long and the weather is supposed to warm up by mid-week. Let's hope so.

Sunday Stills

For Sunday Stills this week, the challenge was Animals of Husbandry. A few of my favorites...

Thousand Word Thursday

Spring 2008 - Planters will soon be rolling across central Illinois. This is one of my favorite photos from last spring.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, right? Want to join the fun? Stop by Cheaper than Therapy, grab the button, add your name to the list and share some photos!

Bragging Rights

What a little smartypants!