The days are long, but the years are short!

Spring of 2009...

Spring of 2016....

Same Field.... TOTALLY different on all other aspects!!! 

 Life has been good to us and we are grateful to God for the blessings and the hard times. Its a journey of trusting HIM and trusting the process. And also, trusting that my hair will never look the same in any 2 photos! 

Fruit Snacks....neither fruit, nor a snack.

Whosever child brought this to school last week and either gave it to my child to eat, or simply gave their trash to my child to bring home, I am sorry that this blog post may offend you. I plan to rip this apart to the full extent that I can make up material for. It really made my day, so for that, I thank you. I'm sure we are friends, and I really want to stay friends, but please let me make fun of you for a minute. I love you, OK? 

Let's start with the name: YumEarth. I want to let you all down easy on this one, but I don't see how to. These "fruit" snacks don't come from the earth. Not these fruit snacks, nor the non-organic fruit snacks. The earth doesn't produce these, farmers don't grow these, these aren't on the food pyramid, these aren't mentioned in any nutritional books as being a real food. They are a processed food in its purest form. Ok, that didn't come out right. They are a processed food in its purest non-pure form.  This my friends, is JUNK FOOD. 

And yes, our kids cry over these and beg for these, and we pay good money for them. #firstworldproblems anyone? 

Next issue.  The fruits are smiling. Actually, the fruits are laughing. DYING LAUGHING. All the way to the bank in fact. Because of the media and all the internet research done by all of us, we are told that if you buy Non GMO, "Natural" (this is in quotes because this word is not regulated in any way by the FDA/USDA and therefore means nothing when you see it on packaging. Anyone can put this word on any item), USDA Organic, locally sourced, blah blah blah.... if you buy these products- my friends, your entire life will get better. WHAT? Please don't tell me that you sleep better at night knowing that your child is eating YumEarth fruit snacks instead of Betty Crocker Shark Bites. I won't believe it for one second. If your child is eating these, they are eating junk food. (And to set the record straight, my kids eat these. I try not to buy them at every shopping trip but the begging and pleading and tantrums start and because I'm a great parent, I let them have what they want. I know it isn't real food. I know its junk.) Back to the laughing fruits- they know it's junk too. And they found a way for you to buy fruit snacks at a higher price. This is marketing. This is branding. This is business people, that's all this is. 

Last thing- I'm not going to get into the GMO argument in this post- that's for another time. I saw the 'Non-GMO' label on here and I had to laugh about it because, again, #firstworldproblems, but I want to challenge you....do you know what a GMO is? Do you really understand this issue? Or do you simply look for the label and buy it because someone told you they are bad and we need to stop buying products with GMO's in them. One step further....does that person/source you heard that from understand the issue and know what GMO's are? How are you sure? We've become way too accepting on who we get our information from. We are suddenly demanding that we will NOT BUY FRUIT SNACKS ANYMORE unless we can find the Non-GMO kind. Way to stand strong middle class America! (Too harsh? Ok, sorry.)

 Stay tuned later for a blog post on GMO's. Can't wait for the fireworks after that one! 

F6 + 2 Puppies =

Since I've taken a short break from the blog, (2 years is like one day in my life!) I have a few things to catch my 15 followers up on before I get to the stories that brought be back from my blog-sabbatical. 

• Shortly after we lost Sweetums, we decided it was time to let all the animals go to a new home, and thanks to the beauty of Craigslist, this was a very quick and painless process. Maxine and the 2 calves were loaded up with a nice retired man who wanted to start a small herd of dairy cows. I didn't cry when they left. It was time. Via con Dios, cows! 
• Stephen and I started our own farming business, after his Dad retired in 2014.  Its called Fulford 6 Farming Company..."like" us on Facebook! 
• We decided it was time to get a family dog in the Spring of 2015.  Mallory, our beloved Native-American Brown dog, had been gone for a few years and the kids were begging. Stephen has always wanted an Australian Cattle Dog aka "Blue Heeler", so we began our search.  And we found 2 litters of dogs born a few weeks apart. So what does an incredibly busy family of 6 do when faced with a choice between 2 litters of puppies? Get one from each of course! 

So last spring, we brought home a male from one litter, Buffalo Bill Cody, and a female from the other litter, Waiting on Teagan. We call them Cody and Teagan for short.  Oh, why did we get a male and female from two different litters you ask? So, funny story..... Stephen thought it would be a cute idea to have puppies! Yes, this is ALL.STEPHEN'S.IDEA.  I can blame him for this one because I take full responsibility on the whole can-I-please-get-a-milk-cow-and-you-do-all-the-work adventure.  Puppies....cuddly, cute, stinky breath, sleep in your lap, melt your heart puppies. Who can resist them? Not us! (update: I can totally resist a puppy now. Show me a puppy and i will show you my callused and non-compassionate heart) But seriously, Stephen thought it was a good idea to get dogs with the idea of breeding them and having at least 1 litter...you know, for our kids. Because kids love this sort of thing, and it enriches their childhood, and it's kind of farmish to have a litter of puppies, and Stephen says "We had several litters of puppies around the farm when I was a kid (and look how good he turned out!)", and because mainly, we are super bored, with nothing pressing to do and breeding dogs and caring for new born puppies and finding them homes just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. 

This is Cody at 8 weeks old. Can you even stand it? The black eye patch slays me. 

This is Teagan at just a few weeks old. We went to see her and her parents/litter when she could barely open her eyes! See what I'm talking about? Totes Adorbs as the kids these days say.

And here they are at a few months old, BFF's, soul mates, life partners. They really are precious together. I've tried to tell them  parenting is a hard and holy calling. Has it sunk in? Only time will tell.