Last Saturday! Last Hurrah!

Happy-cat has joined us in the main house. Carrie put her in the guest bedroom and now I get morning texts like this.

If Happy is pregnant, Carrie wants her in the house to give birth......and possibly for photo ops!

The other cats and the dog have all clued in there's a new resident, but they haven't loitered near the door much. I assume Happy smells them on the other side.

There have been a few days I've woken up (at the leisurely time of 7:45 AM) and didn't see my family. That's because they were snuggling in the maternity ward of condensed allergens.

That's okay, because I have to go out in the cold to let the dog pee. Loki loves me.

The barn has continued to upgrade. Carrie bought stall mats the other night (and aggravated her knee moving some of them instead of waiting for me!).

The mats are rubber 4' x 6's, an inch thick, and 100 lbs a piece. They helped me get in a good morning workout.

At first, Carrie and I were going to team lift because they're so unwieldy. I figured out it was faster to roll them so that I could carry them solo.

We laid them lengthwise down the main drag and planned for branches to go into the stalls.

Then Carrie thought it would be more effective to turn them around and redo it.

She was right, but it was still a fair amount of hustle and bustle. Hi diddly dee, it's a farmer's life for we.

Shane was inside for most of this. He came down at the end to wait for Erik and Henry. Erik had generously offered to take the boys out to Jump!

That left a quiet house......for me to grade in. Carrie had a few projects of her own she had to hop on the phone for.

If not for Loki, things would have stayed quiet. I took him for a walk around the property to get some of his energy (and poop) out.

Carrie and I went back out before evening feeding to cut notches in the floor mats going into the stalls. It turned out with all of our tools, we didn't have a good tool for the task. There was a lot of improvisation.

I finished the task with a steak knife, believe it or not.

I set a record for moving hay later on. I fit ten bales on the back without using the roof. That leaves more real estate for improvement!

Shane didn't help much. The more I try to grade, the more he tries to get underfoot. He wanted me to watch him play Mega Man X2 for the last half hour before he went to bed.

That gave me a short break to play Hearthstone on my phone. Then I put Shane to bed and graded until midnight. A lot of kids didn't turn work in and I started to get a couple of concerned emails about F's (That's new with being general ed. Instant emails of concern).

I didn't finish, but I did enough I plan on keeping my Sunday free (from school at least....parenting? husbandry? Both of horses and the house? Can't get away from those!).