National donut day

So apparently today is national donut day...which means free donuts....unless you live in the country where the closest donut shop is 30 miles away! 

So...as is watched my husband's countenance fall and my kuds realize there would be no donuts today...I suddenly thought...I can make donuts...and hey, its summer break, they can help, it will get them out from in front of the tv!  Double win!

So the girls helped me make donuts.  Mk is pretty good at measuring out and Bria did a great job beating the eggs!  They each cut out half of the donuts and I fried them up!  Oh and they are good...the girls agreed!  For the glaze I made three different types: vanilla bean chocolate milk glaze, strawberry orange glaze, and orange glaze.  Mk requested chocolate...Bria requested strawberry...and I made the orange for Mike bc he loves orange and I love him!    I also dusted the donut holes with cinnamon and sugar...I didnt want to mess witg glazing those little things...too messy!

The orange glazed donuts

Strawberry glazed

Vanilla Bean Chocolate Milk glazed (note the black specks from the vanilla bean...yum!)

Good thing I will be doing my ab challenge tonight...its day 7 and I haven't missed a day and I have been feeling stronger!  

FYI HERE is the basic donut recipe that I used and then I just came up with the glazes...the donut is an Alton Brown recipe...I love his recipes because they are usually simple and straight forward and they are always GOOD!

Farming time

Well, It is summer now, school is out, and since it is early June, it is also planting time around here.  The farmers have until I think June 21st to get the cotton in the ground.  This wouldn't seem to be a big deal, but we got some heavy rain a couple weeks ago that stopped all field work for a couple days.  And we had a big rain on Wednesday night that also has stopped farmers.  Don't get me wrong...we all LOVE the rain and we have been blessed to get quite a bit of it lately...however, when the field is wet and muddy and there are puddles, large puddles all over it, you can't plant.  So they wait and will probably be working a couple 75 hour weeks next week and the week after....that sounds so crazy to me to work that many hours in one week, but it is what they do and it works!    

Here is a picture of the hail that we got the other night with that wed night storm.  I think we got around 2 inches over the course of the evening.  When the hail started it sounded like a horse race on our roof...it was insane!!!  We opened the door and watched...it got pretty big!  I saw some bigger ones fall, but they were a bit farther from the house and I wasn't going to trapse through the mud and in the rain in the dark to find those pieces of hail.  There was no shortage of hail this size close enough to the house.  Also, the outside pane of one of our double pane windows (that was just installed last fall) at the church was broken by the hail...it was no joke!!

The other day as I walked out of the church, I saw Bria run over to this historical marker out in front of the church and start holding on like she was plowing a field...it is an old plow after all.  It was super cute!  Maybe she's a little farm girl at heart....she is our little Texas baby!

Funny funny funny

If you have kids and need a good laugh, watch this!!! Hilarious!  I almost did a spit take with my coffee!

Watch "Jim Gaffigan: Mr. Universe - 4 KIDS" on YouTube

No power ....no problem

The power went off at our house again today.  It went off around 11 and after about an hour we decided we didn't want to stick around a hot house (its projected to be 103*) and we sure didn't want to lose any more food with our fridge not having power.

Sooooo...we packed up the contents of our fridge and the kids and Emery and headed over to Mrs Sheila's house.   Not only does it have an extra fridge to keep our food cold but she also has an awesome pool!  We turned lemons into lemonade and had a fun pool day!

Here are some pics of the girls and a couple videos...mk wanted me to video her doing a cannonball and bria wanted me to video her "stirring the pool" ..enjoy! 

Ps...just got word from the power company that our power is back on! 

Challenge extended...

I am trying not to get discouraged bc I haven't been out for a run in almost two weeks...life was absolutely insane the last two weeks.  I don't want to make excuses...I am mad at myself for not going.   I didn't go when I had a chance and then when I was ready to go something would come up and Mike wasn't around to watch the girls.  It comes down to having a better plan and sticking to it...planning the night before when I am going to go for a run and then going.  That is my goal.  

On a completely separate note but slightly related, someone posted a link to a June 30 day ab challenge...so I decided to do it!!!  We are 3 days in and I have done it every night.  I hope I can keep up with it but either way, I am just going to try my best and push myself to do more than I think I can!  Mike is doing it with me and that is nice.  Its not too late...you can do it too!  Then we can cheer each other on! 

Storms

Last week we had a supercell storm come through and direct hit Rotan.  We had a very small tornado or two and about 4 inches of rain fall in about an hour.  It was intense!  Here are the girls while we hunkered down in the guest room as a shelter!  They were troopers and loved it...we made it fun and brought blankets and snacks and played farkle!

When the storm was over we looked out the door and this is what we saw...the parking lot was flooded, the barditches were full and the road in front of out house was flooded!  I have never seen that before!  

The next day we drove around some to see more of the damage and flooding.  This is where part of a road was washed out by where some of our friends live.  They still have the road closed because it tore up so much of the road that it is not safe to drive even though the water is not high anymore.

Here is the main road coming out of town...it was completely flooded still in parts, but the night before most of it was underwater!

This was a field...now it looks like Lake Rotan

This is one of our friends' barn.  They parked their farm trucks under them to protect them from the hail...not sure if this turned out to be any better

We lost power through all of this starting around 5pm on Thursday evening.  We didn't get power back until Friday night around 10pm.  It made me so grateful for the privilege of living in the USA.  So often I take for granted power, the ability to take a hot shower bc of hot water heaters, the ability to keep perishable food in a refrigerator, air conditioning.  There are so many places in the world where these are luxuries and yet I was miserable bc I was without for 30 hours.  It definitely put things into perspective.  

Needless to say, when these guys showed up on Friday night to start fixing our poles, we were very excited!

Bffs

Last week, Cheyenne spent the week with her Nana in Abilene.  We weren't able to go out there til Friday, but we met them at the Abilene zoo...our zoo pass allows us to take in up to 6 which was perfect!  As soon as they saw each other there were big hugs!!!  

They walked around holding hands most of the day!!

I had Baby Emery with me...this is how we roll!!!

And you can't forget Dakota!!! She was so enamored with Emery....

...and the waterbottle!!

These girls are so precious!  I love them and I love that we live close enough to Abilene to meet up and stay in contact!  They are bff's and I think they always will be as long as we are able to stay in touch!  That shouldn't be a problem because I kinda like hanging out with her mom too!