July went in a blur...

There are so many times I meant to sit down and write about the goings on with life and unfortunately time has just slipped away...here we are 2 days away from it being August and before I know it Gabe will be heading back to school, where has the summer gone?

July is a HUGE month for birthdays. We celebrated Tony's on the 6th, and I got him a gift of a game rental service similar to the netflix that we already enjoy, this one is called gamefly. We have tried out quite a few games that we were thinking about purchasing and are glad we did as they were not what we expected and this way the kids are getting to play games on the Wii we otherwise would have never considered before, we are finding this time of year we enjoy playing video games at night versus watching a movie so we downgraded our movie account for now and will pick it back up once the weather turns cooler in the fall. My Dad's birthday was on the 10th and we got him a new horseshoe set as over July 4th weekend we had a large family reunion here at the farm and he could not find all the pieces to the set he already had. Gabriel's 6th birthday was on the 16th and we decided in lieu of a birthday party and all the work that entailed that we would allow him to have a sleep-over with one friend and we took them out to play putt-putt golf in Hagerstown and then his friend joined us for Sunday School the following morning. Things went pretty smoothly, Sophia of course wanted to sleep with the boys and despite her best attempts she was the first one asleep! He did not receive any toys (thank goodness) but we have gotten him hooked on the "Magic Treehouse" book series.

I had contacted the magazine Country Woman over a year ago to see if they would be interested in running a story on our creamery and the editor Ann Kaiser contacted me back in June to see if she could come out and work alongside of me for her "Editor in the Country" feature of the magazine. We arranged a date and I was lucky enough that my best friend Erin was available to do the photo shoot for me. Ann flew in on a Tuesday and we worked together Tuesday afternoon and then part of Wednesday, and she stayed at my mom's house overnight. What a pure delight it was to meet her in person and also work alongside her and Erin over the course of the 2 days. The story will not be published until June of 2008. Erin ended up taking like 400 shots so I am anxiously awaiting the proofs...

We have gone to the movies more this month than we have in years, as Tony and Gabe wanted to see Transformers and I had absolutely no interest in seeing that one so Sophia and I ended up seeing Ratatouille. My one complaint was the fact that for 4 people to see a movie and get popcorn and soda it ran us around $50!!! I think it is completely absurd to go and see movies in the theatre for that price! Then just last week on a whim Erin invited me out to see Hairspray which I normally would have not seen, but was very enjoyable and it was fun to get away for a few hours from the hustle and bustle of every day life...that time I was only out $7.

At the creamery we have had some MAJOR shifts in employees. Tony had FINALLY had enough of the one processor that has been with us since 2001, so many things were not being done correctly and the processor was notorious for lying, so we finally let him go, and with this being our "slow season" things have been OK, but it has put additional stress on Tony to not only get all the processing done but also keep up on all the paperwork, call backs and other work he was already doing. We do have ads out in the paper right now to see if we can get some one hired to just process and clean-up which would free up a good portion of Tony's day so that he could manage all of his other responsibilities. In the office, my assistant and billing clerk of 2 years gave notice and we had hired someone out of the newspaper, but after working for 5 weeks and I still having to help her it was obvious it wasn't going to work out, so a girl who was helping us out in the store while she was looking for other employment, found out that she did not like her job she left us for; so we hired her back and she is doing a wonderful job with the billing and customer service.

I have still been fighting with whatever stomach problems I have. The doctors are continuing to run tests and blood work, she says a have a severe lactose intolerance although I am not completely convinced that is the case because on days I eat nothing with dairy and days that I do, yield the same results, and sometimes I can go weeks without any pain, and even taking the lactase pills prior to eating doesn't seem to help. She thinks I may have a celiac allergy but Tony and I are pretty sure that I have been tested for that before and it came back normal. All I know is that I wish whatever it is could be resolved so that I would not have to wake up in the mornings feeling so nauseated and in soo much pain!

Gabriel should be able to get his arm cast off on Tuesday and I look forward to being able to bath him minus plastic bags around his arm! I hope this is not a yearly summer tradition that he breaks his arm!

I sent Gabe to a week of Day camp at the local Rec center in Middletown. It was quite an eye-opening experience for him and I as he would come home absolutely exhausted and because of it I would have trouble getting him up in the morning. The hours were the same as what school hours will be in a few more weeks, so putting him in school all day will be a tad tiring on him, so maybe half day kindergarten wasn't such a bad idea after all. The theme of the camp was "earthology" so he made a volcano, planted seeds, learned about whirlpools, and did a rock exploration, for the $100 I spent I think he had an overall good time and made some new friends in the process.

Yesterday at the Vienna farmers market, Jim said he wasn't feeling good (and neither was I actually) but we were going to go anyway. He was complaining about being really sweaty and having bad indigestion, luckily we had my cousin Kirby along with us, because as the morning went on Jim was feeling worse and worse and nothing was seeming to help and a few of our regular customers noticed that he wasn't looking good and they happened to be cardiac nurses, so they started asking him lots of questions and before I knew it they were calling the ambulance because they thought he was having a heart attack! So Kirby and I along with some of the other market vendors shut down our stand and got packed up so that we could go to the hospital to be with Jim...meanwhile I am tiring to hold it together because for one I don't drive the milk trucks and two I had no idea where I was even going and the brakes on the truck were acting up on the way down to the market and I was scared to even drive the truck! My saving grace was one of the other market vendors volunteered to lead me from the market in Vienna down to the Inova Fairfax Hospital so that Kirby and I could be with Jim until Sue arrived from Westminster. I got myself to the hospital but I pretty much knew after that, that Tony was going to have to come down with another truck for me to drive home. Around 3:00 he arrived with his pick-up and straps in case we would need to tow it home and I followed him home, it was slow going but we FINALLY got home around 4:30...what a day! I spoke with Sue this morning and they are going to keep him there another night...he is still experiencing "episodes" but they are not sure what is causing them because the EKG tests are coming back normal, so please keep him in your prayers.

After weeks of getting no rain, we got hours of it overnight, a nice slow soaking rain, I think it is too late for the corn, but it may help the poor soybeans!