Autumn is here

No sever frost yet but we needed more blankets to stay warm last night. This morning the temp at 6 was about 40, too cold for me. I will soon need to turn on the under floor heat.

The trees have really started to change with the maples turning a beautiful red. We difinitely have four seasons.

The Women's History Education Committee met last night. I hope they felt it was productive. I had copied every fifth year of school census records from the stored records in the basement of the courthouse for genealogy purposed prior to the 2002 flood. This was not much of a help as they did not list teachers, which what they need, the women educators. We are now waiting for the Minnesota Historical Society to send back their portion of the agreement so we can have the records brought over to the museum. I will need to start moving things to make room for the several boxes of info. It may even be smart to place them in a file cabinet instead.
Yesterday, we had two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints come in and help me move some things in a wardrobe. We are now ready to take the wardrobe apart so we can make room for more items. I need to order shelving but haven't received the quote yet. We always have so many things to think of.

Today I am going to start hot tub and pool therapy for my tkr. Hopefully this will give me the range of motion I need and remove some of the stiffness. Hope it is as helpful as it appears to be.

Saturday, always a day of work!

I would love to sleep until 10 just one Saturday. I always wake up sometime during the night and finally at about 6:30 or 7 that built in alarm attacks my subconscious and destroys any additional sleep time.

I think the ultra-sound that I started in pt this last week finally did some good. I am able to finally ride my bike again, well not terrifically but after a couple of rounds, it goes quite well. I purchased a book on Amazon about TKR. Lots of very good information. I think it has given me some new hope. I hope that I can control the varicose vein problems without surgery and get the knee pain under control.

I watched the movie Hotel Rwanda this afternoon. Why were we so hesitant to go in there when we first heard of the genocide that was taking place? Over a million people lost their lives and who knows how many children were orphaned. Where was the UN and all of us who should have stepped to the plate to stop this? I know the US can't be every where but the UN needs to stand up to situations like this and stop it, and we are part of the UN.

We are starting to get some fall like weather. Yesterday felt quite cold, today wasn't bad but next week we will probably get frost. Most everyone in the area has their wheat and canola off. Ardmore has spent the past two days chisel plowing. He has covered the wheat field at home and the canola field north of Badger. He is on his second trip on the canola field. Hopefully he won't have to go over it again.

I spent the evening listening to Woman's Conference this evening. It was so good. Elder Uchtdorf gave a wonderful encouraging talk about how we as women should look at who we are. I called Michelle and encouraged her to go this evening. She is so fortunate;she is only about 2 minutes from her chapel and can walk, and it is a stake center.

I better close, we forgot to clean the church this week so I will have to go in with Ardmore to get it done before church starts.

Meetings and thiings to do

Our museum assistant and I attended a Minnesota's Historic Northwest consortium meeting today. We had a very good representation with about 13 people in attendance. Our organization was established through the efforts of one woman whose vision was to see the Historical Societies and Museums in Northwest Minnesota work together to establish a learning enviroment and promote the history of our area. This past year has really seen us do this, as we designed an exhibit as well as a book in celebration of Minnesota's sesquicentennial celebration. The book and exhibit contain 150 photos that show and tell the important aspects of NW MN. It was a long day that starte at 7:15 and ended at 5.

I drove and now I have a very sore swollen knee, nothing new. I iced it and headed for bed.

I had ordered a book shelf from Office Depot to put on my north wall. I plan to put mostly clothing on it but it will also hold books and several odds and ends that clutter my bedroom. We started to put it together this evening, but I got to tired to finish so we will do that tomorrow.

Fawns in the Field

Today, I went to visit a nearby friend. During our visit she reported that her husband had seen three fawns by the river behind their home. It reminded me of Friday evening when Ardmore and took the pickup out to the semi at about 9:30 pm. As we droved across the field the deer appeared one after another, the doe with her three fawns, a doe with no fawns, and another doe with two fawns. Ardmore told me they had must have bedded down in the wheat field as there were several areas where they had flattened the grain.

This is one of the advantages of living in our area, seeing deer and fawns up close and personal. These same deer often come into our yard and graze. We don't have a dog to drive them away, thank goodness, so they feel comfortable in our yard. I have woke up at night to see them grazing no farther than 10 feet from our bedroom window.

Watching the relationships between the mother and her fawns is sometimes enlightening. She would push them out of the way, if there was some grain to be found on the ground where we were loading the bins. It is like she was saying, you eat after I am full and not until then. Watching the fawns frolick in the yard has always been fun to watch. They jump and romp and push at each other.

Now that the wheat field is havested they will go into the soybeans, and then the CRP until we get snow, at which time they head to the forst and the protection from the cold and wind.

Our new High Councilman and his wife and two little children came to our branch today. Both gave great talks about taking care of the lost members.

I have found that I am having so much trouble getting Minnesota Public Radio on the radio, I have started to listen online more often. The internet is such a powerful tool. Today, our Family History leaders entered me into the new family search website as a consultant. I am excited about this. I never thought about it until an LDS couple came to the museum this past week and encouraged me to ask about being consultant. I have a waiting period before I can log on and become acquainted with the program. New things to learn again!

James put more photos on his Facebook website. In order to see them I had to sign up for Facebook, which I did. Some are very interesting. I am waiting to see his photos of harvest.

Michelle emailed me some photos of Damen with his parents and with grandma Michelle. I am going to post the one of Damen with Breanne and Josh right here.

The Wheat is Off!

We finished the wheat harvest last evening. It was so exhausting yesterday. Every time I had a truck unloaded, I headed for the field to find another truck loaded or Ardmore fast approaching with a loaded combine. Climbing up and down out of the truck and the tractor gave my knee and hip lots of exercise. Boy was I sore at the end of the day. I was happy to see Ardmore decide to take out the semi the last load. The only grain left now is the soybeans and that probably won't happened for at least two weeks. This will give Ardmore time to chisel plow the fields we are done with. The wheat ran fairly well, something over 60 b/acre.

I rode my bike for 15 minutes and iced the knee for another 15 minutes and headed for the shower and bed. The bed felt like heaven and I was sleeping in no time.

Harvest Continues

Yesterday turned out to be very nice, 80 and sunny. Ardmore took off the last of the canola and heading north to the home farm to continue with the wheat. Took a couple of hours to finally get rolling as we had to change combine headers. He had considered swathing but it was so nice he decided to just go with the straight header. Hurrah! I would have been the one on the swather and as much as I can entertain myself with my Ipod, hours and hours of going up and down on the swather gets monotonous, plus it is so much easier when we straight head the wheat. I think the wheat is running about 60 bushels to the acre this year. We took off 600 bushels in about 3 hours yesterday.

My Knee
Could I say I am less than happy with the tkr? Yes. It is painful. I think the biggest problem is that I have varicose veins behind my knee and they are giving me so much pain my range of motion is being limited. I wonder now if I would have done this replacement if I would have known this would have been a complication. Well, I guess I will have to see it to the end, whenever that will be, and see what the outcome is at six month, one year, etc. I hear it does get better. I sure hope so.

On September 8, we celebrated 46 years of marriage. Wow, 46 years with the same person seems like an awful long time! Yup, it is. Would I do things differently, perhaps and then perhaps not. I guess the old cliche "life is what you make it" rings true in a 46 year marriage.

What have I learned being married to someone for 46 years?

• You can't change them and they can't change you.
• Be independent.
• Always look for the good in any given situation.
• Have a life of your own and allow them the same.
• Take vacations alone periodically.
• Always remember the things you have in common and don't focus on the things you don't have in common, after all, you don't look alike, do you?
• Enjoy each day for what it brings.
• Last but not least, tell each other you love each other and show it