Grandsons

 Ryan and Grady love each other.  When Grady got here the other day and saw Ryan was here, he got all excited and started kicking his feet and swinging his arms.  

Ryan hugs Grady and rubs his head.  He's so gentle with him.  They are just so adorable together!!  I can't wait until they're a little older and they can play cowboys and Indians or GI Joes together.

A New Garden

Gary tilled up a new garden spot for me Saturday night.  I was hoping to plant it this week.  That plan isn't going to work out so well.  We've had 5 or 6 inches of rain in the last 36 hours.  I guess we'll have a late garden this year.  Better late than never, I guess!!

Happy birthday, Lainey!

Today was Lainey's second birthday.  We went to the cemetery on the way home from church to release Lainey's birthday balloons.

Canal Park Field Trip

Today we went to Delphi, Indiana, to Canal Park.  It was a fabulous tour!!  We all learned so much!  The man that gave the tour grew up right there.  He pointed out the house he grew up in and still lives in while we were doing the walking tour.  He knew so much of the local history and made it so interesting.  They have restored part of the canal.  There is a museum & interpretive center there.  

 This is the canal boat that travels the canal every weekend for visitors to experience life as it was in the early 1800's.  It is in the storage shed right now.

 This is an old scale that someone donated.  Our guide, Dan McCain, had the whole group stand on the scale so he could weigh us.  We weighed 2,221 pounds.  They used a scale when the canal boats would dock to weigh their cargo, so this scale helped replicate what it was like during canal days.

 This is a kiln that was also donated.  The canal group volunteers took it apart piece by piece, and put it back together beside the canal.  They used the kiln to cook big pieces of limestone until they turned into powder.  

 Yet another donated item--this bridge.  The canal group took this apart piece by piece too.  Dan said there were 1000 bolts in the bridge.  We were able to walk across it.

 The water in the canal was actually this beautiful aqua color.  The quarry there in Delphi supplies the water for the canal, and the limestone makes the water this color.  Dan said sometimes it even sparkles.

 We saw two families of Canada Geese with their babies.  So cute!

 This is the source of the water for the canal.

 The girls said the water was cold!!

 The canal group had several log cabins and buildings that they had moved in and restored to create a pioneer village.

This is a canal boat for the kids to play in.  The girls said it had secret passages.  They had a blast playing in it.

This is the Museum & Interpretive Center.  The facade is made to look like the main street of Delphi in the 1850's.  Everything there was first class.  We're looking forward to going again and taking Dad with us!

Tippecanoe and Tyler too!!

Do you all know where that saying came from?  The campaign slogan for William Henry Harrison & his running mate, John Tyler, in the presidential election of 1840.

 We went to the Tippecanoe Battlefield Memorial and Museum today as part of our Indiana History class.  This is a picture of the girls in front of the memorial.  That's William Henry Harrison above them.

 After we toured the museum, we hiked one of the trails and found Burnett's Creek.  The girls hunted for rocks and treasures.

 We went to the nature center and the herb garden.  The nature center was small, but they had tons of real animals that had been stuffed.  (Is there a more correct name for that?)  They had every kind of squirrel, every kind of woodpecker, several hawks and owls, a bobcat, mink, beaver, skunk, opossum, river otter, raccoon, fox, and probably something else I'm forgetting.  They had a tree identification game and a footprint identification game.  It was a really fun place!

 We also walked down to a chapel that had been built in 1850.  They had restored it.  It was a beautiful little place with a delightful flower garden around it.  The lady working in the garden told us they have weddings there.  They don't usually have the chapel open for people to wander through, but she unlocked the door and let us go in.  The girls held a mock wedding while we were in there.

This was the entrance gate to the battlefield and the monument.

We had a fun day and the girls learned a lot.  Our next field trip is to the canal in Delphi.  Stay tuned!

Happy Mother's Day

 The girls got me a corsage for Mother's Day with 9 pink roses representing Autumn, Meagan, Krissy, Erin, Heather, Laura, Kara, Leah, & Nanna; 1 white rose for Lainey; and 2 yellow roses representing Ryan & Grady.  Isn't it beautiful and precious?  I wore it proudly this morning.

This is what Grady gave me for Mother's Day.  Isn't the butterfly made from his footprints adorable?

I got a beautiful bouquet of flowers from my husband, an orchid from Krissy, a ceramic beverage dispenser from Meagan, a necklace from Heather, a garden rock from Laura, many beautiful handmade cards, and Erin shampooed my carpets.  It was a very nice Mother's Day.  I hope yours was the same.

I spent part of my afternoon working on a project for our Mother Daughter Banquet.  While I was sitting there at my desk, all alone with my thoughts, my mind wandered all over the place.  One of my recurring thoughts was about how messed up our world is.  There is so much heartache.  People carry so many burdens.  Gary kept a little boy after Junior Church this morning because he was acting up, and Gary could tell there was something eating at him.  Once they were alone, the little boy started to cry.  He was upset because today was Mother's Day, and he doesn't have a mom.  She walked out on them when he was 2 years old.  

Lord, thank you for my not-so-normal-anymore family.  A mom and a dad that have been married for almost 26 years.  Never been married to anyone else.   All of our kids are ours together, not yours, mine, and ours.  We all have the same last name.  Dad is a farmer.  Mom & the kids work right along beside him.  We go to church together.  We eat supper together.  We don't smoke or drink.  How many of those kids in that Junior Church room this morning could say the same thing this morning?  Not many, if any.  

I was also thinking about moms today.  They carry so many burdens.  I've had it on my heart for several years to have a ladies' Bible study here at my house.  I've never done anything about it.  I'm too busy...Nobody would probably want to come...I'm certainly not qualified to lead a Bible study...No one has time for something like that.  But the desire is still there.  Please pray with me about it.

Farm Life

I'm so thankful we live on the farm!  It's a great place to raise our girls, to teach them the value of hard work and responsibility.  Every morning, 7 days a week, the girls get up and take turns going down to feed the calves.  Since Erin's been incapacitated, it's been Heather & Leah as a team and Laura & Kara as a team every other morning feeding the calves 5-gallon buckets of ground feed and square bales of hay from the haymow.  Life's a little easier now that it's spring and the calves are out on pasture.  They don't need the hay for roughage.  They don't always enjoy the work now, but I keep telling them, "One of these days, you'll appreciate having to work hard as a kid."

Freedom!

We haven't seen that leg for 4 weeks!!  It was dry and peel-y and very stiff!!  They took an x-ray of Erin's ankle.  The doctor said there was new bone growth, but it isn't completely finished healing.  She is wearing a brace for the next 4 weeks.  She says it's uncomfortable, but it's better than a cast.  At least she can take it off to shower and to sleep.  She is starting to work it a little to get the stiffness out of it.  One step at a time!

Grady's "Ride"

Autumn & Nathan got a bike trailer for Christmas.  Nathan got it all put together and connected to Autumn's bike.  Autumn & Nathan live just a little over a mile from our house.  Autumn likes to put Grady in the bike trailer & his diaper bag in the "trunk".  Sometimes they ride over and spend the afternoon or evening riding with Nathan in the tractor and eat supper with us.  Grady loves to ride and usually falls asleep.  Autumn loves the exercise and fresh air.  And Gammy loves to see Grady!

Planting Season

 We finally got some warm weather and sunshine this week.  The ground dried out enough to plant gardens.  We planted about 25 pounds of seed potatoes today in Grandma & Grandpa Cooper's garden.  

 Erin, Ryan, and Nanna watching the action from the swing

 The soil was just perfect after Gary worked it for us last night.  We sunk in past our ankles as we walked across it.

 Ryan liked sorting through the rocks while we planted.  

 After we planted potatoes, we planted a few flowers at Autumn & Nathan's house.  Grady was smelling a dandelion.  

Grady loves to be outside.  He doesn't even mind sitting in the prickly grass.

We went to Grandma & Grandpa Sanders' garden next.  We planted 32 tomato plants, 8 broccoli plants, 8 cabbage plants, and 4 pepper plants.  Then we planted a row of onions, carrots, beets, turnips, radishes, and 7 rows of green beans.

Both sets of grandparents live right around the corner from us and across the road from each other.  The girls help with odd jobs at both places quite a bit.