The Computer Curse

Most of you know that I am in school and this is my second year. This year has been my most challenging so far. When I started school last year, Tony bought me a laptop to do all my work on since I was taking online classes as well as in class. It was a very nice computer and I loved it. Well 1 week before I started school this January, My laptop crashed! It is only 1 year old and 9 days out of warranty. Needless to say I had a major breakdown and had no idea how I was going to start school. Especially when the online class was a computer class on Office 2010!!!! So I race it down to the computer guy begging for help. He said it would take a few days. He called me several days later, we are now down to about 4 days till class, and said to come in because he thinks it is fixed. I get there and he turns the computer on to show me how well it works but the screen is black! Really?! I knew then that I was in trouble. He says he needs to keep it and look into it more.

Tony decides we will go buy another computer so I can start school and when my computer is fixed he will take it because he needs a computer to start back to school himself.So we go to Walmart to get a new one but this time get the extended warranty. Don't need anymore breakdowns for school!From day one I hate the computer, it just wasn't like my other one. 1 week later computer man calls and says to come get computer, it is not fixable because it could be 1 of 3 things and it would cost more than the computer cost us originally. Now I'm really freaked out because now Tony still needs a computer and that one was only a year old.

Well time allowed me to chill until my new computer, which is only 3 months old, crashes on me this week!!! I have 3 PowerPoint presentations due Friday and have a broken computer. I call the warranty, they send me to Dell and I get to talk to people that can barely speak English. They walk me through a bunch of tests and say the computer is fine. I just about lost it, the computer is not fine.They say they fixed it so today once again it has crashed. I made Tony do the call relay tonight, they found 5 crashes to the driver and now say it is fixed. We will see!!! I'm using it now so we will see if it can hold up.

So I am now sitting here waiting till midnight because fall registration opens the 4th and I need an online class that has only 27 openings.I really need this class!!!  I have 2 classes left and then I can apply for radiography. I am hoping the computer will be OK and allow me to register. Mean while we have ordered computer # 3 that will be deliver Thursday so I can at least finish this computer class, in the event this computer goes out again, and allow Tony to start back to school next month. I think I have for sure been slapped with the Computer Curse!!!!

New Horse

This is our new horse, Summer! Brooke needed a horse to move up to because she is getting too big for Willow and Ashlyn would like to have her pony back! HaHa! We have only had her for a week and she seems to be a very nice horse. It is a big adjustment for all of us because she is much younger than the other horses we have owned and she is also much bigger than our other horses. We are learning more and more about her everyday and are hoping she will be a nice horse for Brooke to grow with. The journey begins and hopefully it leads us into many wonderful things!

Sheep Show

So Saturday Night Brooke showed Lily in Showmanship. It is judged on the way the person handles the sheep and sometimes they ask them questions or feel for how clean they are.

She did a really good job. There were 41 kids so they split the class into 4 separate classes and just brought back the top 3 or 4 from all 4 classes do judge the final class. Brooke didn't get called back but she did receive a red ribbon and she will receive $40 for that class.

On Sunday we pretty much spent the day at the show ring. It was the day of the sheep show. They judge on the quality and the way the sheep are built. It started at 11 am so we just had to hang around till her class came about.

Lily waits patiently for her class!

Brooke is in the center with the white shirt.

Walking the sheep so the judge can see a side view.

Lily is one of the smaller sheep in the class

Brooke ended up with 7th out of 9 so she wasn't last. Lily just wasn't as big as the other sheep. Alot of them are pregnant so they do give the illusion that they are bigger. The judge did give her a blue ribbon so she will receive $50. Brooke had alot of fun!

While we waited, me and Tony took turns floating Ashlyn around the fair to look at things. Mostly the chicken barn and the milking parlor! There were alot of chickens for sale so she kept going over to tell me she wanted to buy another chicken. We have no more room for chickens so that would require a new coop. She says well just build one!!!

She liked watching the chicks hatch. They are so cute!

Alot of chickens to look at!!!!

We didn't get done till about 5pm so we ate dinner at the fair and headed home about 6:30. It was a very good trip and a wonderful experience for the girls.

Day Two at Fair

The second day at fair, Brooke didn't have to show till 5PM so we had the whole day to visit the fair. There was no way we could see everything but we tried. Ashlyn was fascinated with the milking parlor. Every couple hours they would bring cows in to milk them with machines. It is amazing how fast they can milk a cow. It only takes about 5 minutes to fill half of the containers hanging on the fence with milk.

(I have to say, Ashlyn was so happy about being at that fair. When we pulled off the interstate and she seen how big that fair was she was full of excitement. She said, "I'm so happy that my eyes are watering"! She had tears of joy over the fair.)

It wasn't bracelet day so the kids couldn't ride everything. There is over 100 rides there so it would have been a fortune. They went through $30 in tickets each in about 30 minutes!

After the rides we checked out cracker country. It has an old post office, church, school house and general store from the late 1800 to early 1900. They were really cool. I forgot to take pictures there! We then found a really neat petting zoo that had a giraffe! he was neat!

The kids thought the alpacas were cute. One had some really crazy teeth!!!

We then headed over to see the lawn mower races. That was very interesting! it was really muddy because we had severe rain there on Friday for hours. They were getting stuck alot.

So that was pretty much the end of our day before Brooke had to get ready for her Show at 5:00. That will be the next post.

Obstacle Course at State Fair

So we went to the state fair for 3 days. Brooke took her sheep Lily to show. She had alot of fun! It was alot going on and a very busy 3 days but we had a good time. I have alot of pictures of things going on so I will break it all up into different posts.

We left the house Friday morning at 5:30 AM to be at the fair grounds by 8 AM. That was the time that check in started. We waited in line for about an hour to have Lily checked by the inspectors to make sure she had a health certificate and then we went and found her a stall. She made friends right away with the baby next to her. At 12:30 we had a parent/exibitor meeting and had lunch. At 1:30 Brooke had to do her first competition which was a skill a thon, knowledge of sheep, and then a record book test, a test to see how well they can put a record book together. While she was doing that, Tony went to find our motel and me and Ashlyn watched a miniature donkey show. That was very funny! Brooke was done about 3:30 and then we walked around a bit before going back to the barn to get ready for the obstacle course that was at 5:00.

The obstacle course had things in it that the sheep had to get on or put up with and a judge scored on how well they did it and the speed.

The first obstacle was two tires that the sheep had to walk on. Lily just stepped around them!

Second was brooke had to tie her to the rail with a quick release knot. We had to have a crash course on that 5 minutes before it started! She did it perfect.

Third was jumping a jump. She practices that all the time so there was no problem there. I got the picture after the jump! Slow camera!

Fourth was a platform that Lily and Brooke had to walk over. Lily really wanted nothing to do with that but Brooke finally got her on it.

Fifth was Lily had to back up the length of a pole. It took alot of muscle on Brookes part but she made her do it.

Sixth one Lily had to walk on a mat and Brooke had to make her go through a hula hoop. I really thought she would not do that but she did it!

So she did really good! She didn't win anything but she had a good time doing it. She had 2 more shows that weekend but I will post those on another post. We don't know how she did on the tests that she did earlier that day. We are thinking they will send them when they send her premium money in the mail.

Social Studies Project

Brooke had to do a Social Studies project over Christmas break. We all were not happy about that! It was on the floods in TN in 2010 and she made a gameboard to go along with it. She got a perfect score on it from her teacher and then it was excepted to the social studies fair. She didn't win any awards at the fair but she got a certificate for competing. We are very proud of her!

Valentine cards

 Me and Ashlyn went on the Internet and found some cute Valentine cards to make for her friends and her teachers. We are doing a few of them a day so it is not so overwhelming. The teacher cards are popcorn and the kids cards are lollipops. She is having a good time making them!

Brooke doesn't want to make any. I guess she is too old for that now!!!! I'm so glad there is so many years between them so I can hang on to the fun kid moments a little longer.

Here are some close up shots of the Valentine cards taken off the website:

We found them on the Family Fun website if anyone is interested!!