Matt Mann on his steer….I don’t think they have a pleasure class in the steer show.

This is one of those priceless father-son shots. Gregg Hardy and his son Parker at the Michigan Summer show. I’d say Gregg is a little more intense, wouldn’t you?

With a little black and white, this photo looks really old, doesn’t it? I’m going to just play around with this new method of posting pictures.

It’s a beautiful morning here on the Knolltop. We’re getting summer weather again and I’m not complaining!

I was commenting to Bobby last night during milking that I hadn’t left the farm after chores at night for five days in a row! Now that’s unusual for me….but very, very nice. Tonight I will break that streak by going to Luke’s game. They play a tough team, so it should be a great game.

I’m fixing baked pork for dinner today, I should have a table full. He keeps bringing his football buddies home after school for dinner before they go back to the school for the game. That’s fine with me, but the first time he did it without warning and when I saw the extra boys pile out of the van I started scrambling for more food from the fridge! No one went away hungry that day, but today I’m better prepared.

That reminds me of something one of Luke’s buddies said. They were talking about an incident at school between a boy and a girl and one of the boys popped off and said, “She’s so ugly she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down!” Now I know that’s not very nice to say about anyone, but it really is funny. Bobby about drove off the road with laughter when he heard that from the back seat.

Well, I’ve got writing to do and errands to run!

It’s a cool, rainy day here on the Knolltop. I don’t mind the rain, I got my yard all mowed yesterday! Besides I could use a rainy day to take care of some inside projects, like the mess on the floor right behind me! It’s all that stuff that needs a place because it’s not in use all the time, but I can’t get rid of it. I hate that stuff because I don’t have a closet big enough to store it all and then close the door!

My laundry room is over flowing again, I don’t know how that happens so fast. It’s just so prolific! So I’ve got laundry to do and grapes on the vine that should be made into jelly and errands to run. So once again, I will get the urgent needs taken care of and leave the important stuff behind for another day…until we run out of underwear and socks!

Good cool morning from the Knolltop!

Do you ever have those days when everyone is in a talkative mood? It doesn’t matter where you go, everyone you meet wants to visit. That’s what happened yesterday when I left the house for a quick trip to Walmart and home. I got stuck in my car talking to someone while on my way to the bank. I didn’t want to do my banking while talking business, so I waited outside and in our small town, I’m sure everyone wondered what I was doing sitting in my van talking.

Off the phone with the first visitor I entered the bank and both tellers wanted to talk. They are fun to visit with especially when we talk about body fat percentages and muscle mass indexes. After 20 minutes, I finally got all my banking done and headed to the store. Wanting to get my oil changed and my tire fixed while I shopped, I took my car to Walmart’s tire and lube. I decided they had too much money or too much business as I bought my groceries and headed into the shop and saw my van sitting in the same place I parked it. When I starred at the kid who was standing behind the counter while the older manager was bickering on the phone over some meaningless point, the kid told the mechanic passing through to get that blue van done.

I watched as the mechanic meandered over to my van, bent over to look at the low tire and meandered back in to tell me they can’t fix it, something about not the right tire on the car, paying for it if something were to happen, don’t want to be responsible…sorry.

By this time, I’m about ready to shake every person in that shop because this could’ve been done while I was checking for cracked eggs and whining about the price of butter. They had no other cars to work on…mine was the only one…and it took them a half hour to bend over and look at one tire! I looked at Junior at the counter and he looked back at me with a pained face and said with a nasally, whiny tone, “You don’t want to get your oil changed still…do you?”

Well, heavens NO! Why would I want to get my oil changed? I came in here, asked you to change my oil, told you what package I wanted, told you how nice it was to have my oil changed while I shopped, gave you all kinds of positive reinforcement about what a great shop you had only to have you do NOTHING! Why would I want you to change my oil? I do this all the time, in fact I wake up every Monday morning, run out to my van, look at the mileage, check the oil change sticker in the corner of the windshield to see if it’s time to change the oil because I can’t wait to come in here and have you treat me like I’m asking you to bail out Wall Street with the change you have in your pocket! I LIVE FOR THIS!

No, I didn’t rant and rave, although they both deserved a good kick in the pants, I just said no thanks, I’ll be going now. And I walked out the door almost running into the older manager mumbling to himself about winning some battle with some other manager and high fiving every one he could get to raise their hand like he had just beat Michael Phelps in the 200 meters!

The day ended with sharing ice cream with homemade hot fudge with my parents after Sarah’s volleyball game. All’s well that ends well.

Good Morning from a Knolltop that has all it’s family members under one roof again!

After spending all day on Saturday glued to the internet, watching the Holstein show at World Dairy Expo, we then turned our attention to when JW might get home. He called and said he would be staying at Levi’s and coming home Sunday morning. Watching a movie in bed, I got up for a commercial break and went out to the kitchen. I saw a body on the couch, Luke, and a body on the floor that didn’t resemble Jake or Sarah. I had to really take a good look and when I did I saw it was JW! He had snuck in unannounced and crashed on the floor.

Last evening after a busy day he sat down and we visited about every detail of his week. It was so much fun to hear about his experience and even better to have him home!

Well the Planet Holstein averaged more this year than last on twice as many lots!

On 41 lots the sale average was $18,200 with the high seller Ralma Shottle Camouflage-ET consigned by Marlin J. Bontrager of Iowa bringing $101,000. She will make her new home north of the border in Canada.

Last year’s Planet Holstein sale offered 27 lots and was the second highest averaging Holstein sale of the year at $17,300.

A beautiful sunrise is peeking over the horizon here on the Knolltop and while we ate our hot sweetrolls this morning we noticed how pretty Miss Stanna’s tree was with the sun shining on it with the leaves just starting to turn.

Last evening Luke’s team beat Camden again. Luke had a much better game this week than last…of course he wasn’t getting up at the crack of dawn to milk cows at a county fair this week either, so his performance was much better. It was a cold game, but a good one.

When we got home we watched some of the Agriprize sale on the Internet, but we didn’t see JW. He called last night and sounded very tired. But he is excited about going to the World Classic sale tonight.

Wednesday there was a comment on the blog from someone, I don’t know who, but they said they saw Levi and JW and that they looked tired but were doing well. I thought about that comment and had a feeling of comfort as a mom knowing that my 17 year old is 600 miles from home and yet I still had a friend watching out for my child. It’s an amazing industry we work in when we can go just about anywhere in the country and have a friend just around the corner.

Thank you to whoever reported on JW! I sure do appreciate it!

If any of you were wondering why there was a picture on the top of the blog with no caption…it was because yesterday I was fooling around with Picasa, where my pictures are stored and it said, “Blog it” so I blogged that picture just to see how it worked. Then I never went back to see it.

So, that picture is at the fair last week when Bobby and JW were blowing up tops on all the cattle. I have to say it was nice to have JW on the scene, a first this year, as he and Bobby worked together to make the cattle look their best. It works out rather well because JW doesn’t enjoy showing near as much as Luke and Sarah do and Luke hates fitting the cows and really enjoys showing, so JW can fit the cattle while Sarah, Luke and Jake show them. And with JW helping Bobby with the fitting, I can actually try to watch the kids in the ring while keeping an eye on the cattle so they don’t get dirty.

Yesterday Dallas Burton called. I answered the phone and he hardly got hello out of his mouth before he said, “Now, don’t get worried, as soon as Ed and I get a couple of things done here at the sale site, we’re going straight over to the jail to get JW out.”

I replied, “No, you’d better leave him there for a while, he needs to think over the choices he’s made and the consequences he will be paying, a little jail time never hurt anybody.” A reply Mr. Burton, the wannabe comedian, didn’t expect to come out of my mouth. Trying to get a rise out of me every time he calls I haven’t talked to him once without some comment about JW acting like a juvenile delinquent. Monday night, while on the phone with me, he yelled across the sale arena, “JW, put that beer down and get to work!” He really thinks he’s funny. What he doesn’t know is that JW and Levi are being prayed over daily. Does he honestly think we’d allow these two teenagers to work a sale with a bunch of fitters who act like a bunch of fitters without being completely covered in prayer?

The sale is tonight and then the boys get to enjoy the show tomorrow and Saturday. We’ve been keeping up on the show by watching it online. It’s so much fun to watch and listen while I work around the house, I love hearing the organist play, or is it the accordion? I don’t know, anyway, hearing the music and the announcements makes me feel like I’m almost there!

Today I will finish mowing and Luke has a game tonight. Sarah’s team won last night, they beat Jackson Christian quite handily!