Meyer Ranch Mini Makeover (Part 1)

This weekend we gave the Ranch a mini makeover.  I promised the boys a while ago I'd paint their room camouflage.  The original color was a mauve purplish color, not very fitting for a little boys room.  And Baby Sis' room was baby blue.  The two rooms were the opposite color schemes for the appropriate children, so this weekend Sherri and I rectified that...or at least took steps to rectify it.  We did manage to get the boys room completely painted and put back together.  There are a few finishing touches that I want to add, but I'm so excited with how it turned out I had to post pictures to.  I hope to finish up the 'finishing touches' later this month.  Baby Sis' room on the other hand is not put back together.  We painted the base colors, but didn't fully finish the details yet, so you'll have to wait for pictures of her room.  


Has anyone tried to paint an entire bedroom with a 2 year old and a 4 year old that are so eager to 'help' paint they've been talking about it for literally weeks?  Oh not to mention they didn't nap that day?  No...well let me tell you it's a real exercise in patience and understanding.  But I am proud to announce we've got NO paint on the carpet and only a few places where there's paint on the floor boards.  Go us!  And to be honest Logan actually did help.  I figured both the boys would lose interest after about 15 mins of painting, which of course Cody did, but Logan was there almost the whole time.  I had gotten him a little 3 inch roller and he LOVED it!  The only thing we told him he couldn't do was get his roller wet with paint again, and I think he only tried once to do it himself.  He was listening like a champ and was so proud of himself.  I was so proud of him and kept telling him how much of a big boy he was.  On Sunday he even helped Brian put together their new book shelf and toy bins.  He was using the hammer and the drill gun all by himself (with Brian watching closely of course).    It was both a heart warming and bittersweet weekend to be honest.  I'm so proud of him for listening so well and the pure joy and excitement on his face the whole weekend was contagious; yet at the same time it makes me incredibly sad.  My little man is growing up so fast.  It seems every day he needs his Mom less and less.  And while I know he'll always need his Mom, sometimes his independence is both incredibly rewarding and at the same time incredibly sad.  He told me on Sunday, when he was helping his Dad, that he was a 'Dad in training'.  I had to laugh and tell him not for a very long time yet. :-) 

Sherri and I Friday night at "the wall".  It took us 12 hours total to do just this one wall.  Our knees had carpet burn on them from kneeling so much and our necks, shoulders and backs were incredibly sore, but the look on my boys faces when they saw 'the wall' was priceless and so worth it!  They were so excited!

Sunday morning finishing up the second coat on 'the wall'.  We did unfortunately have to do 2 and even 3 coats on most of the sections.  I do realize I'm going to have to use an entire bucket of primer to paint over this wall some day...but again totally worth it for my two little hunters!

Logan up on the ladder painting in Baby Sis' room.  He was so excited to be on the ladder and like I said before did a fantastic job!  He had to wear this shirt too; you can't tell from this picture, but it says, "Mom's Handy Man" on it with pictures of paint buckets and brushes, etc.  It was his painting shirt.  


Here are some before and after pictures.  The 'before' pictures look even worse since the boys room was a total disaster (I didn't clean up just to take the before pictures since I was taking everything out of the room anyway).  Also I got a new camera so the 'after' pictures are better quality as well, which just help make the room look even better!  I also got a new bookshelf for their room.  We had an old TV stand that we were using as a bookshelf, but every time you'd take one book out about 10 books would fall out.  You couldn't read the titles or find anything if you were looking for it.  So hopefully this new bookshelf will help keep the books at least on the shelf.

My boys enjoying their new made-over room.

Special thanks to Sherri for all your help this weekend!  It was super fun and I can't wait to finish Baby Sis' room!!  

Ranch Hands

Monday Nicole and Frank Welsch came over to help on the Ranch. Unfortunately there wasn't too much to do since Brian had shown me how to do everything the day before, but we still found a few chores to do. We fed the sheep and pheasants and planted some pumpkins, weeded the garden a little bit and watered my flowers.

It was so great to see Frank and Nicole. Nicole thank you so much! You and I are literally two peas-in-a-pod and I'm so glad that our lives crosses paths and we became friends. You always know how to cheer me up and make me laugh! Plus you're just dead sexy in your farmer overalls!! :-)







A few pictures of the boys. Brian's aunt gave us a hamper with some bears painted on it and she must not have realized that her son Eric's pjs were still inside. Logan LOVED them though, since he's on a pj kick in general right now and always wants to wear his pajamas's all day long. The funny thing is Erc's like 8 or something so the pjs were size 6/7. Logan put them on right over his shorts and shirt and was running around like crazy! Nevermind the fact that it was 80-something outside and they were heavy winter jammies... :-)



MOM! These jammies are the BOMB! Look how fast they make me run!


HAHAHA! Logan you look ridiculous! HAHAHAH!


Mom stop taking pictures of me while I'm eating...seriously!


Yeah Mom we're eating our hotdogs...leave us alone!


We will defeat you if you don't stop it!


OK I'm done with my hotdog, but I'm annoyed with you so I won't smile...take that Mom.


Mom I can't wait until I can help dump the corn into the sheep feeder. I like my wagon, but feeding the sheep seems like more fun.


Baby of Steel! Cody loves to crawl around outside. He always wants to get down and play in the sand, in the mud, and even in the gravel on the driveway. He'll crawl right over the gravel without even flinching. He loves to play with the gravel in his hands and of course put the rocks in his mouth... :-)


Mom and the boys


Dirty little mouse legs!!




I've got a few more little videos I'll share later...

Father's Day

The strawberries have been AWESOME this year!! We've gotten so many strawberries from our patch since we moved it down by the pasture! Logan LOVES them and goes over to the plants and picks them himself and eats them. He even gets a ripe one every now and then...most the time he gets a white one that's just not quite ready and ends up spitting it out. The rest of the garden is coming along great and I can't wait until this fall when we've got fresh veggies for every meal!

Friday Logan was running down from the house to the shed and tripped in the gravel driveway and fell. This is I'm sure the first of many many many accidents that will happen at the Ranch. He did scrap his knee and hand up pretty good though. Here's a picture after we got him all bandaged up. He just looks sad. He was running back to the house to get his steering-wheel which you can sort of see in the picture.



Cody telling Logan to suck it up, baby.


Saturday we went over to Mikey and Debbie's cabin for an early Father's Day celebration. It was a ton of fun and really good to see everyone! I took a bunch of pictures of the cabin now that Mikey's finished remodeling it. I'm going to wait to try to fine my 'before' pictures so that you can see side-by-side the progress. It's AMAZING! Mike did such a fantastic job! The cabin is beautiful! Great work Mikey!

Here's a few pictures of the party though and a short video of Logan and Stella playing together.







Peter holding the pontoon in with just his big toe...tough guy! :-)




Mikey and Debbie have HUGE bull frogs at their place. It's kinda cool and Brian really wants to catch some of their tad-poles and transport them to the Ranch. We'll see how he does with that...although I know the boys would probably love to catch them later.




Double Trouble!! Logan was SO excited to see Stella on Saturday. He kept asking all day, "Go Stella's house?" They actually play really well together...although of course they are 2 so there's always the occasional fight...as you can see via the video below.








For the next two weeks at least I'll be a much more diligent blogger...I've got pictures of Logan and Cody from tonight I'll post tomorrow and some super cute videos.

Oh yay, Happy Father's Day Daddy! We love you and can't imagine a better Daddy! You are my hero already and I can't wait until I'm old enough for you to teach me everything you know. Love Logan and Cody!!

Good night!

Standing...but no proof...yet

As I said in the last post Cody is standing more and more these days...I spent about an hour after work one night chasing him around with a camera to get it on video with no success. I did get a bunch of cute little videos of the boys though so I'll post those along with some updated pictures of the club house.

OK...I have no idea if this is socially acceptable or not, but it's what happens on the Ranch and to be honest I'm not sure what to do about it. Lately Logan has been "boom booming" things with the Wii shotgun I got for Brian. He knows not to "boom boom" people and the dogs, but likes to "boom boom" the sheep as well as the deer and duck mounts on the porch...again...no idea if it's sociably acceptable for a two year old to walk around with a toy shotgun and pretend to kill things...I'm going to guess it's probably not, but Logan also doesn't understand what "boom boom" actually means either. Yes that is my attempt to rationalize what my son is doing...I'll blame his father...that's obviously where he has learned this behavior... :-)




These next couple of videos are of the boys playing in their club house. In the first one you can hear Logan yelling at Tank to get out. I wonder where he learned that from? :-)


This one is the closest I got to a video of Cody standing. He does it for about 2.45 seconds in this video and I swear he's done it WAY longer than that before. Of course Logan shoving him out of the way in this video doesn't help either...




A few pictures of the Clubhouse progress. The spiral slide is on and the rock wall is built we just don't have the rocks to put on it yet. Also Brian was working on the inside, putting the sub-floor down and building the counter top and cabinets. I warned you this clubhouse would be way way over the top! The counter top and cabinets are not complete, they're just sitting on the floor. Brian didn't get a chance to finish them on Sunday.






Pictures of Cody:


Pictures of Logan:

Sheep on the Ranch

Yup we've got sheep on the Ranch! There's 6 white ones and 1 black one. At first they wanted nothing to do with us and would hide down in the way back of the pasture...but now they're getting brave. They'll hang out in the upper pasture and don't even run away when we go whipping by with the 4-wheeler. Logan loves to say, "Good Morning 'eep" when he sees them out the window in the morning. I don't think we're going to get him to ride them though...he won't even hold the pheasants and they're cute and little.





The ball pit we got Logan and Cody for Christmas finally got a hole in it and deflated. So in the mean time until Mom can get another one we're just throwing the balls in a big tub we have. The other day this is what Brian found...from what he said Cody was the one the first tried to climb into the tub, he got about halfway in and then got stuck. Cody LOVED sitting in the balls and playing with them, so I totally believe that he tried to climb in the tub and would have LOVED to see him do it!