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Princess Kaiulani – Movie Monday

Posted by html404 on April 28, 2014
in Entertainment, Family Stuff, Movie Monday, Movie Review Monday, Movie Reviews, Movies, Uncategorized

We watched the movie Princess Kaiulani on Amazon Prime a couple of weeks ago. It was available free with our Prime membership. Amazon describes the movie like this:

This gorgeous, sweeping historical epic tells the story of the final days of Hawaiian independence and how one young princess stood up to the impending takeover of her nation.

Wikipedia says, “This is a 2009 movie based on the life of Princess Kaʻiulani (1875–1899).”

B’s Review of Princess Kaiulani

B is our 15 year old daughter.

I’ve always liked and respected Princess Kaiulani (ka-e-oo-lani). She is a great role model for young girls. I have read about her countless times, including her biography.

I went into this movie knowing it was a Hollywood film and that it would be different. It turns out it was pretty accurate.

I had a couple of problems:

1. The romance. There really was no romance in the princess’ life. In the movie on the other hand, I felt romance was the focus. They did not need a romance in the movie. More of her past, her relationships with her family members and her fight for her country would have been nice.

2. Princess Kaiulani was a Christian and her faith was a big part of her life and her fight. In the movie, this was not so. Her faith was downplayed, I found that pretty disappointing.

There were many smaller details, but I will overlook them for now.

I really enjoyed seeing the movie. Princess Kaiulani is one of my heroes and I loved being able to see her story come to life on the screen. They did a great job with the movie and I loved the period costumes.

I loved that they filmed in Hawaii as well as LA. It was fun to see which scenes were in Hawaii.

All in all it was a pretty good movie.

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Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Review – Smiley360

Posted by Brande on April 21, 2014
in Cleaning, Eco Friendly Products, Family Stuff, Home, News Worthy, Products for Dad, Products for Mom, Reviews, Uncategorized

I received this product for free from Smiley360 in exchange for my honest review. You can join Smiley360 here!”

Cleaning just started smelling better in my house! Many thanks to Mrs. Meyer’s brand cleaners, I no longer have a harsh chemical smell my kitchen. It now smells of geraniums and it’s so refreshing! All of Mrs. Meyer’s products are “cruelty free, not tested on animals and are all biodegradable. “

I was happy to test of the following products all are scented in geranium:

Mrs. Meyer’s Liquid Dish Soap – At least 97% of the ingredients are naturally derived. It has essential oils that get the grim off dishes. Yet it is safe for you and our environment.

Mrs. Meyer’s Liquid Hand Soap – The hand soap also has essential oils that are easy and soft of your hands and it smells great!

Mrs. Meyers’s Counter Top Spray – Just spray this product on no-porous counter tops and whip away the dirt.

Mrs. Meyer’s has a wonderful line of products to choose from, including household cleaners, hand & body, laundry, and air fresheners. You can choose from 14 different scents, ranging from radish to baby blossom.

I really enjoyed these products no only do they smell good, they clean really well also.

Mrs. Meyer’s is available online as well as your grocery store. Head over to Mrs. Meyer’s Facebook page for great tips!

Happy Cleaning!

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Week #18 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on April 19, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Humor, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Slowly getting back on track with our Saturday Top Five Laughs and joining Mel over at The Mommyhood Chronicles for week #18 (for us) in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

6. This will probably sound really bad but here it goes….B and I were out grocery shopping and stopped to get gas. At the gas station there was a group of male bicyclists. Now I wasn’t being naughty or anything but happened to look at the behind of one of them as he stood up to cycle. I noticed something on his butt and couldn’t figure out what it was so I looked at the other bikers’ behinds as they all rode off. Then it dawned on me, “They have a padding on their butts!” I exclaimed to B. B said, “Shhh Mum the window is open!” I turned to her, her face is beet red and she was covering her face with her book. I said, “Why are you red?” You didn’t say anything, I did! Apparently, I had embarrassed her! I didn’t know you could buy shorts with padding! Yeah, I’m from the dark ages, can’t you tell?!

5. Jr. said, “Super Jr.!” (Proceeds to put underwear on his head! What is it with boys and underwear on their heads? Although, our girls did the same thing!?) Our six year old said the same thing about himself, minus the underwear on the head. I think he had a blanket around his shoulders.

4. Escapees. Annabeth is an escape artist and we had to finally put up cow panels around the rest of the goats pasture. Poor Hazel is just too pregnant to do much escaping! Thanks to the goats stellar example the sheep are becoming quite adept at escaping as well.

3. Selene one of our kittens was at the newspaper warehouse this morning when we came out to load up the car! We figure she must have been somewhere under the car or on something under the hood. Smart kitty to stay put for a 6 mile drive! B liked having her company on the route.

2. Last weekend I took six of the children to see Captain America (a certain birthday girl decided she wanted to see this movie over going to the mall 😉 ). We were a few minutes late, nothing new there for our family, so we were in a hurry to find our theater and take our seats. We went in and sat down with the movie already in progress. I felt completely lost and the movie quality was awful. I ended up checking emails and Facebook on my phone wishing I had sent my husband! Soon my oldest was nudging me to look at the credits. It was over. 40 minutes into the show! Come to find out we had entered the 3D show! Argh. Thankfully it all worked out and we caught the later show. Not without my husband having to come pick up B so she could go home to milk and bring her back. She made it just as the movie started the opening scene. But talk about feeling like an idiot! lol!

1. This wasn’t as funny for us (it will be to you!) as it was annoying. Jr. somehow got the voice on our Kindle on for the visually impaired. It took us 2-3 weeks to finally get it off. I must not have used the right words in my search to turn it off because my husband found it by searching for “can’t get my Kindle to stop talking” on our Amazon account. Hubby said other people searched “Kindle won’t shut up” lol!

What funnies happened to you this week?

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Buying a Cow

Posted by html404 on April 17, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Uncategorized

Did you know that many of our animals we did not set out to buy? They sort of just happened at the right time and place (seller). Guess what? We bought another cow. Yes, another cow. Heifer actually since she has not yet had her first calf. It’s an investment really. You see, Eclipse (a.k.a.) Miss Moo is struggling to carry a calf. We are pretty sure she’s been successfully AI’d (artificially inseminate) twice now but has lost both calves early in pregnancy. We AI’d her again last Tuesday with a Dutch Belted cow (oreo cookie cows! 🙂 ). Due to the trouble we’ve been having with her, I’ve been in touch with the farmer who had Miss Moo before the man we bought her from last spring. That farmer, farmer J, has been very helpful and resourceful in answering my questions and giving me more of Miss Moo’s history. When I reached out to farmer J a few weeks ago after Miss Moo’s most recent pregnancy loss, farmer J shared she was about to put Miss Moo’s daughter up for sale. This cow has the same calm temperament, is purebred Guernsey and is just going on three years old – due to calf in September with a Guernsey/Jersey cross! This cow wasn’t even been named yet so B got to name her Comet. Comet was delivered to our farm on Friday night.

Another reason to buying a cow (or another cow in this case) is because when you have more than one cow it is easier to document their heat cycles. Now B has been very good at noticing Miss Moo’s cycles but with our less than stellar success rate in getting her bred/carrying a calf, another cow could help us in that process. Plus, we’ve wanted a calf from Miss Moo and this guarantees we have one, in case we continue to fail in breeding Miss Moo. We have a nice retirement plan in place for Miss Moo if that happens.

Things we look for when buying a cow:

– Temperament is the most important to us. Yes, even more than production at this point. If our children are going to be the ones handling 1200 pound animals they’ve gotta have a calm disposition.

– Udder. We look at her udder. Though in Miss Moo’s daughter’s case, she hasn’t produced milk yet but B will want to check her teats etc. to see how she looks and will be like to milk. Otherwise we would try milking her to see how well she stands etc. We missed seeing Comet has a fifth teat, but that won’t affect her milking since it is behind all the rest. This would be important if she was being showed, but she won’t be.

– Body condition, though we didn’t know anything about this when buying Miss Moo, I didn’t suspect it would be a problem since she is coming from a good farm. But we are still learning about body condition for heifers so what do I really know?

– Halter and leading. We halter Miss Moo and lead her with a lead rope. Comet has not been led or haltered so we had an interesting time of it on Saturday the day after she was delivered. I was quickly reminded why I was so hesitant to buy a young heifer! Comet has not been handled much at all since birth as she was put out to pasture with the herd until she was bred and ready for sale. I am happy to say she is slowly getting better.

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Week #17 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on April 12, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Humor, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

Getting back on track with our Saturday Top Five Laughs and joining Mel over at The Mommyhood Chronicles for week #17 (for us) in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week. I’ve gone back to trying to keep track of little things that happen each day so I don’t forget so many of them. I lost a couple of pieces of paper over the last two months when I neglected to put them down right here on the blog!

5. Padfoot was gun shy of water in his inflatable pool. Go figure. Yet Pumpkin, one of our cats, was discovered in Padfoot’s pool one afternoon!

4. A couple Mondays ago, in the evening, our 30 year old horse showed off 2 year old antics!

The girls say he’s obsessed with Miss Moo. The girls took the cow in first and Blaze was whinning up a storm. So while one of the girls was in the hay loft getting hay, the other girl starts yelling get back here because…..guess what Blaze did? He took off running in a canter around the house, down our road, then turned west down at our crossroads, turned aroundd waited at the gate on that road, which is locked. The girls think he was showing off for the cow. He’s going on 30 but think he’s 2!

The cars drove on the opposite side of the road. One guy stopped to see if the girls needed help, laughing all the while.

Apparently he got past O when she was closing the gate to his pasture.

Thankfully he’s ok and we can all laugh about it now but sheesh! Certainly didn’t expect him to ever do that!

3. We bought a used Ford Expedition nearly a month ago and the children nicknamed it “Hulk” because it’s big and green. Our eight year old daughter calls it “Hunk”! 😉

2. The photo below speaks for itself. 😉

1. For some reason my husband either threatened or took dessert away from our three year old last night…..what does Jr. do? He blackmails us with/about pull-ups . He stalked off and said he wasn’t using his potty he was going to put on a pull-up and he did! Hubby forgot to put the pull-ups out of reach this morning or last night! But our son is a little stinker! What he didn’t realize is his daddy still wouldn’t give him dessert.

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Cow Trouble – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on April 2, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Yes, we’ve been having a bit of cow trouble. Some might thing our cow “honeymoon” is over but that’s not really the case. Though we have the following cow trouble, we still adore Miss Moo (a.k.a. Eclipse).

Cow Trouble

Head stuck in a gate/stall. Very serious but by the time the vet got here she was perfectly fine. Figures, right?

Mites or else she’s rubbing the hair off her neck when she puts her head through her gate.

Getting out of her stall.

Getting into cat food….eeeewww! Not exactly what I want to eat via her milk. :0

Getting out of her pasture through the little bungie gate. It’s electrified but she was getting out. We think it was being ground out somehow. She’s been good this week but we will be shoring up that gate to prevent her from getting out anymore.

She lost another calf two weeks ago. 🙁

Yet we love her.

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Week #16 Saturday Top Five Laughs

Posted by html404 on March 29, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Humor, Kids Stuff, Saturday Top Five Laughs, Uncategorized

I knew once I missed on Saturday Top Five Laughs, it would be hard to get back to getting them done, but we are getting back on the bandwagon and joining Mel over at The Mommyhood Chronicles for week #16 (for us) in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week. Granted most of them are about the animals!

5. Our goats got out of their stall this morning. They have been working on this for three weeks and finally succeeded! They wreaked havoc in the barn and made more of a mess than our cow or horse has ever done! That was a few weeks ago and they’ve had a lots more escapades! Thankfully due to their trust in B and O the goats are fairly easy to catch….most of the time.

4. We went to see a heifer (young female cow who has not calved) yesterday and while we were visiting with her and her owners she sniffed around a pile of manure then proceeded to do her business on top of that! I looked at her owner and said, “You trained her well.”

3. Jr. took a red marker and put these red lines on his feet and said he was Iron Man. (He’s very into super heros.)

2. Jr. one evening this week had a pen and paper. First he said, “Mommy, me love you sooo much.” Then he said, “Dear Mommy, Dear Daddy, Me love you soo much!” Heart throbs!

1. We were all outside today since it was warmer (in the 40’s) and sunny. So we all gathered around one of the hay racks our hay guy left in the field. We were just sitting there shooting the breeze, petting the cats and dog. I was giving the dog some lovins and B was next to me with one of the kittens. Padfoot wasn’t doing anything but enjoying my petting him and Freckles wigged out and scratched Padfoot on the nose! Padfoot yelped, then offended barked but backed away and came to my other side for love. Previous to this, Badger, our black and white kitten, had royally hissed at Padfoot for simply looking at him! Guess Padfoot probably deserved it for all the times he has tormented them, but still he was being a good dog today.

What has made you laugh this week?

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DIY Goat Stall from Wood Pallets

Posted by html404 on March 26, 2014
in Animals, DIY Projects, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Free Stuff, Saving Money, Uncategorized

You all know we are on this farming journey. Well, it is not yet a profitable venture, so we try to conserve, save and reuse. Someone suggested a DIY goat stall from wood pallets. Usually wood pallets are easy enough to find and many times are even free. Gotta love free stuff! There’s a subdivision not far from us on a busy road, which we pass all the time. One house has had a pile of wood pallets there for what seems like years. My husband decided to drop buy and ask if he could have some….just a few days before the goats were due to arrive home! To our delight the man said yes and gave them to us for free! I don’t remember how many pallets my husband and son brought home but they’ve built two stalls so far and have a couple more yet to build. These photos are not the greatest since our barn is so dark but it gives you and idea of how hubby did it. It was our oldest son’s idea to have the goat stall gate swing two ways to save on building another gate.

We just found another source for free wood pallets and we are hoping they still have some left! With the warmer weather coming this weekend (we hope!) it would be nice to get a little pasture fenced off for the goats, another stall done for the sheep and ?????

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God’s Not Dead – Movie Monday

Posted by Rosemarie Pagano on March 24, 2014
in Entertainment, Family Stuff, Movie Monday, Movie Review Monday, Movie Reviews, Movies, Reviews, Uncategorized

“God’s Not Dead” 2014

Director: Harold Cronk

A Drama, Produced by Pure Flix, a Christian film studio.

Rated: PG 1hr 53min

Or go to www.GodsNotDeadtheMovie.com to view the trailer.

I have pretty much given up going to the movies, not interested in the selection of films offered, so I was intrigued by the little known, small budget film, “God’s Not Dead” which
opened March 21, 2014. It grossed $ 9.2 million, the first weekend, and as I watched the trailer, I immediately made plans to see this movie aimed towards Evangelical Christians.

Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper), a pre-law student, signs up for a philosophy class with an aggressive professor. Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) is an atheist who demands that everyone declare and write on a sheet of paper that ‘God is dead.’ Josh, a Christian, refuses which causes the professor to challenge him to prove God’s existence. He is given the
opportunity to present his defense, in front of the class, and if he is unable to do this, he will fail the class. There are several story threads, woven through the movie, that capture the struggles, heartbreak and challenges that believers and those questioning their faith face.

One intriguing character is an elderly woman who is visited by her absentee son (Dean Cain). He is a successful businessman annoyed and impatient with her dependence and deteriorating state of dementia. He angrily questions her faith and she, in a moment of clarity, tells him about the consequences of sin. There are a few surprising twists and special appearances by Newsboys and “Duck Dynasty’s” Willie and Korie Robertson.

I recommend this movie because it encourages Evangelical Christians to stand up for their faith. It also invites those questioning their faith to ask questions about God. I am sick and
tired of offensive language and the blatant attempts of the media to shock and offend with their disrespectful comments. In this movie, the name of our Precious Savior Jesus Christ was spoken with reverence and praise. It has been a really long time since I’ve heard that in a movie. Also, another important concept, about this movie, was that it was based on actual court cases where students, like Josh Wheaton, defended their faith in an academic setting. The ending credits list the students and universities.

The responses to this film are, as expected, strongly divided. I think this quote by Paul Levinson, media critic and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York sums up the movie very well. He states, “The success of ‘God’s Not Dead’ shows at least three things: Big budgets are not necessary to make popular movies, there is a significant part of the population that cherishes faith-based movies, and students like narratives about arrogant professors who get their due.”

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White Chinese Geese

Posted by html404 on March 19, 2014
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Uncategorized

We were given a pair of White Chinese Geese on Friday. They came from the same farm as our goats. We wanted to try having geese as they are good watchdogs or sentinels. We thought they would announce anything on the west side of our barn, as well as help alert the hens to hawks. So we shall see.

The children call the geese Mr. Squak and Mrs. Squeek! 🙂

About White Chinese Geese

They are very loud, as you will note from the video above, which we took in January at our friend’s farm. They were announcing our arrival.

Like most geese they stay with the same mate for life.

Their eggs are edible. They can lay 40-100 eggs per year. Our female goose already laid an egg but due to the low temperatures the other night, it exploded. 🙁

This type of goose is good for weeding. When I found that out I tucked the information away in my mind to use once we have our garden done.

White Chinese Geese are on The Livestock Conservancy watch list so we will be helping increase their numbers if we allow our geese to raise some goslings.

Geese can be quite aggressive and have very strong wings. This is a bit of concern with young children so right now we have the geese in a stall until the ground thaws enough to put fencing up for them. As it was, over the weekend the male goose (gander) hissed at my husband when he was freeing Annabeth (goat) in the next stall from getting her head wedged in her stall gate.

Our geese upset our whole barn with their honking. Not sure if the other animals have got used to them or not.

Just another interesting animal addition to our farm!

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