A Series of Unfortunate Events

Every move/new adventure has its mishaps.  Things get broken or lost.  Nothing is on schedule or goes according to plan.  Lucky for us, we only ran one day behind our estimated departure date and only a few things showed up broken.

But that does not mean the move has been entirely smooth.   

Aside from "losing" our 2 year old Sean in the corn, battling ticks and cleaning out the cave, we have encountered a few other harrowing experiences this summer.  You may have heard about the long and unusually moist spring in the Midwest this year.  The rain extended much into June, washing away many crops and overflowing some rivers in northern Iowa.  Here is southern Iowa, we received much of the same rain and humidity, causing a host of problems in planting summer crops.  And mildew.  This was a biggie for us, as many of the boxes we moved from California were stacked up in the workshop, waiting to be unpacked.  Stroller and car seat covers had to be washed, furniture and appliances wiped down.  Can you imagine your child asking for some toast, so you grab the toaster box, then lo and behold when you pull it out, it's covered in mildew?  Thank goodness for soap! 

 

Next comes the runaway fire.  Hubby and I took some old siding down to the burn pit and he used a bit of gasoline to get the fire started.  Everything was nice and contained.  Until the gas can, that was apparently a little too close to the burn pit, overheated and caught fire.  We were unprepared for this.  There was no hose attached to the hydrant, but several ice cream buckets strewn about from the kids' water play would have to suffice.  I began running back and forth filling buckets with water, all the while thinking, I'm going to have to call mom and tell her we caught grandpa's farm on fire.  Fortunately, we were able to contain the fire, with only a bit of singed grass and a melted gas can left in it's wake.

burn pit

singed grass

hydrant and buckets

A couple weeks ago we bought a whole hog from hubby's coworker and had it butchered at a local shop (no we're not ready to butcher out own yet!).  The kids were super excited, they love pork.  The stand up freezer was cleaned, mostly cleared out and super cold.  Hubby and I picked up the meat - pork chops, bacon, cottage bacon, sausage, whole hams, hocks, pork belly and more!  The freezer was practically full of all this deliciousness.  Of course we had pork chops and collard greens cooked with bacon that night for dinner.  they were amazing.

Two days later the kids went to the freezer to get otter pops.  They came running up the stairs excitedly, yelling.  The otter pops were not frozen!  Immediately hubby and I jumped up to check the freezer.  The meat was mostly frozen, though thawing quickly. I grabbed a basket and started filling it with the precious cargo to fill the kitchen freezer.  A sigh of relief that the kitchen freezer only contained some ice cream, frozen fruit and a few enchiladas.  We tossed all the ice into a cooler and made as much room as we could for the pork.  I threw a nearly empty bucket of ice cream at the kids and maybe yelled eat it.  There was just enough room for all the meat, except some sausage, which we threw in the cooler.  After some investigation, we are pretty sure a little person gathering otter pops slammed the large freezer door causing it to bounce open, thus thawing our food.  It was a close call, but we managed to save all the pork.  It's a very good thing, because have you seen how much my four little kids eat?!

Summer is pretty much over, but I am sure the excitement isn't over yet.  I wonder how many more unfortunate events will cross our path?