There's a new rule at our house!

Oh my goodness, yesterday was quite a day! 

I spent most of the day taking care of the kids' new chickens, 18 of them, and sanding and painting the cabinet and all the molding from our bathroom.  Which was a great project and I felt like I had accomplished something and had a good day, but the day got much more exciting later on!

But let me start way at the beginning.  Last week, Dick had planned to fix our leaking toilet, when he pulled it up to replace the wax ring, he found that the floor was rotting.  He thought at first he could just replace a small area right under the toilet and not have to replace the flooring, but as he got deeper into the project he realized that it was gonna be a pretty big piece he would have to replace to get all the rot out.  Well since we are gonna put new floor down, we might as well paint first.  And then since the walls are gonna be a new color, the cabinet won't match, so it needs to be painted too.  And the mouldings sure would look better painted white, rather than the same color as the walls.  (Kinda reminds me of the story, "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie!").  So anyway I fired up the sander and went to town on the cabinet and mouldings.

I was finishing up my project when the kids got home from school.  They went out to do their chores, while I was painting moulding in the house, in front of the wood stove.  They'd been gone a while and here comes Carter in the house, amazingly calm, and says "Mom, you need to go to the barn right now!"  I said, "Why, what's up?"  Carter says, "Because Walker is out there screaming like crazy and I don't know what is wrong with him."  So Carter and I ran out to the barn and about half way there I could here Walker's blood curdling scream!  I hurried into the barn and started yelling, "Walker, what's wrong, where are you?"  He screamed back, "I'm up on the hay, HELP ME!" 

So I hurried towards the hay pile and I could see him with his arm up in the air, and as I climbed up the stack I could see that his hand was stuck in the Come Along.  He had been yarding hay bales up with the Come Along (just for fun) and then feeding the cows.  So I got to him, but I didn't know how to release it, and it was hanging over a big drop off so there wasn't an easy place for me to stand and look at it to try to figure it out.  I tried one thing and he started screaming more, so I knew that wasn't right!  Pretty soon one of us wiggled something that released it and his hand was free!  His coat had been down over his hand so it was caught too, which is why the skin wasn't broken, but I could see indentations where each gear like thing had been pinching his poor wrist!  And it immediately turned blue and started swelling.  I took him back to the house and got him to ice it.  It's still pretty swollen and very sore, but I'm pretty sure he's gonna be okay and nothing is broken.  But what a scary ordeal!!  And if Carter hadn't happened to go to the barn to play after he finished his chores poor Walker could have been out there for awhile! =(  The dog was pretty concerned about him and didn't know what to do.  When he would scream she would bark, and when I got to the barn she was running up the hay bales to him and then back to the door where I was.  She amazes me sometimes at how much she loves the kids and tries to take care of them!!

So the new rule at our house is no playing in the barn alone!  And maybe we shouldn't play with the Come Along, at least till Daddy shows us exactly how to use it!!!