Amanda and Winston

Brad’s cousin Amanda lives in Connecticut with her husband, Matt, and her son, Winston.  They were in town for a week to visit family.  We were able to see them a couple times.  Once at my in laws and once at our house.  Vincent loved Winston and had a lot of fun showing him around.  Joel and Cecilia had fun with him too.  At the farm Joel showed Winston how to climb in the rabbit cage.  They both ended up in there, it was kind of funny!

Joel and Winston in a rabbit cage.

At our house the kids were happy to give Winston a tour of the house and all of their toys.  Winston had fun but at first didn’t know what to think about these 3 kids that kept hugging him and wanting to be by him and drag him around and show him everything!  Vincent is already planning his next trip to CT to visit Winston!  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Vincent and Winston.

Cecilia and Winston.

Cecilia, Joel and Winston playing piano.

Church Movie Night

The Bible study group that I am a part of had the idea to host two movie nights this fall/winter.  We would have some snacks and a craft and have a free will offering.  We would then use that money toward Vacation Bible School.  The first movie was Robin Hood.  I wanted Joel to enjoy the movie with all the other kids and people there and not throw a fit because he didn’t like the movie.  No one owned the movie so I volunteered to buy it because I wanted Joel to watch it.  We mostly kept the movie in the car and watched it many times, so much that Joel started to really like it.  During the movie Joel was one of the few kids that sat and watched the whole movie.  The movie night went well, I don’t know how many of the kids actually watched the movie.  A lot of them did crafts too.

Kristy, Cecilia and Luke working on making sheep.

Our second movie was The Polar Express.  I never got around to forcing Joel to watch the movie because we didn’t have it on DVD only on Netflix.  I tried putting it on once and he told me to turn it off that he didn't want to watch it.  He managed to pay attention for 2/3 of the movie at church.  The last 1/3 he sort of watched and ran around checking everything out and ate cookies!  Vincent sat so still through the movie, he only got up a couple times and that was to get snacks and to tell me the movie was making him nervous. Once I told him that the ending was good he was fine!  I had never seen the movie before and I thought it was really good.

The movie nights have been a great family time for us and hopefully other families too.  We get to see friends and pretend like we are at a movie theater without the stress (and cost) of bringing three small children to the movie theater!

Farming: A spill and driving during rush hour.

One of the things I worried about when I was filling grain trucks this fall is that I would spill.  No one would ever let me forget about it if I made a mess and who really wants to clean up a mess in the field.  I have never had to help in the past when there had been spills, but I have had to hear about it and it didn’t sound fun.

I was filling Brad’s truck this fall, toward the end of harvest and as I moved from filling the front hopper to the back hopper I noticed that the hopper door was open and I quickly shut off the PTO.  There was a nice pile of corn under the truck.  Brad was in the tractor talking to me at the time.   I quickly pointed out that it wasn’t my fault and he should have made sure his hopper doors were shut.  He said I was supposed to double check.  Which may be true, but I didn’t.  He grabbed a shovel and started throwing corn up and over the side of the trailer.  He made it look easy and I decided I better start helping.  I told him I would agree to help if he agreed it wasn’t my fault we were shoveling corn.  He mostly agreed and said it was 95% his fault, which to me rounds up to 100%!

I grabbed a shovel too and started shoveling corn up and over the side of the trailer it kept raining back down on me.  Brad thought it was hilarious!  He said “don’t you know how to shovel corn?”  I told him clearly not!  It turns out there is a proper technique to shoveling corn and you stand parallel with the trailer and basically lift the shovel straight up and over your shoulder and the corn nicely falls into the trailer.  It works so much better than what I was trying!  It is pretty easy too once you get the hang of it.  Brad and I had fun shoveling corn together, as much as that is possible.  It was quite the workout!  I am glad I didn’t wait longer to shut off the PTO.

A big mess!

We were trying to hurry so nobody else noticed what happened, but they finished the field while we were shoveling and they all (Bob, Craig, Efren and Randy) saw our mess.  Bob and Craig walked up with smirks on their faces and I quickly told them it wasn’t my fault!  I thought they would give us a hard time, but they didn’t.  Craig just started helping us scoop up the last little bit while Bob got the combine ready to move to the next field.

Driving to the next field was quite the test on my road driving skills.  I had a general idea of where the field was and how to get there, but I wasn't 100% sure where the field entrance was.  It was 5pm when we were driving and we had to drive on some busy 2 lane roads to get there.  I was following the combine, but Bob drives faster than I do and with all the traffic I ended up far behind him.  At one point as I was sitting at a very busy 4 way stop, where no one thought they should actually let the large tractor turn left, I lost sight of Bob.  Right about then a nice older man let me finally turn left and off I went to find the field.  I have never been so happy to get to a field!  When you see a tractor on the road please remember they are trying to feed you and don't get so upset that they are slowing down your travels.  We don't love driving on the road with you, but we have a job to do!

Cecilia Goes Farming

This fall Cecilia came with farming a couple times.   Both times were because I didn’t have anyone to watch Cecilia until later in the day.   It was fun to have her along; she is a very good passenger!  The one day I was in a hurry and didn’t feel like moving her car seat into the tractor, so I just buckled her in the buddy seat with a seat belt.  She actually sat better than she did when she was in her car seat.  I think Uncle Bob liked seeing her happy face too!  She would wave at him.  

 

Mommy's littlest farmer.

Cecilia talked most of the time and also insisted on bringing her collection of animals, dolls and blankets with.  We had a full tractor!  She also had fun waving to Efren in the other grain cart.  After that day whenever we were talking about farming she would say “Where Efren?”  She loves farming!  Although she calls tractors and combines both combines, so we are going to have to work on that!

She would drive if I would let her.

Kennidy's Play

Kennidy was in the play Pinocchio at her school.  She wasn’t just in the play she was Pinocchio!  We took the kids and went to see the play one Sunday afternoon.  There were actually two plays and the first one was Rumpelstiltskin.  They were all at Kennidy’s high school which is also where I went to school.  Kasi was kind enough to watch Joel and Cecilia during the first play and then they joined us to watch Pinocchio.   All the high school students did a great job!  I liked the Rumpelstiltskin play the best.  That being said I thought Kennidy and Annie did a great job in Pinocchio!!!  I just didn’t like the story of Pinocchio as much. 

Kennidy!

The cast!

Vincent did a great job watching the plays.   Cecilia did pretty well but got restless toward the end, but that was understandable.  Joel did really well until  the end when he was just tired of the whole thing.  He was crawling under our chairs to the row behind us.  Luckily it was Candy and Zack back there and he knows them.  After spending 15 minutes crawling on the floor under my seat and Brad’s seat Joel tried to just crawl out toward the aisle.  In the process he said “I gotta get out of here!”  I didn’t think it was that loud, but Kennidy heard it up on stage!  My mom left with Joel since she had already seen the play twice.  The high school kids did a great job especially Kennidy! 

Annie.

The cast!

Fall Colors

I have enjoyed fall so much this year!  October was so beautiful by us with all of the fall colors.  Our house is surrounded by trees and the color was amazing.  I just couldn’t believe it.  I took a lot of pictures by they didn’t do the color any justice.

View from the back door.

View from the back patio.

Somewhere in the backyard.

Looking from the front door toward the road.

Joel's climbing tree in the backyard.

Front yard.

With a lot of trees, comes a lot of leaves and our yard was full of leaves!  At first it was so much fun because you could easily make a pile for the kids to jump in.  At our old house it was a struggle to get enough leaves to make it fun, especially when it was windy.  At our new house I made 5 very large piles in about 20 minutes!  We had piles under the tree that Joel likes to climb.  Brad even made a big pile at the bottom of the slide.  It was a blast falling into it!

Cecilia, Vincent, and Joel and a lot of leaves.

Cecilia, Vincent and Joel in 1 of my leaf piles.

A pile of kids in a pile of leaves.

Vincent.

That pile is huge and there are so many more leaves!

After a good week or two of having fun in the leaves Brad and I realized we had a big problem.  The leaves weren’t going to leave on their own.  Even the windy days we had were not moving many leaves.  They were so thick that you couldn’t find the grass or see the bricks on the patio.   Brad used a leaf blower and mower and made a good dent in the yard.  It is definitely a new experience for us!

Looking from the road toward the house.

View from the pasture toward the east.

The trees in the pasture.

The magnificent color toward the east.

Somewhere in the pasture...I just love the yellow.  It was so much better in person.

The Negotiator and Dawdler

Vincent is a morning person, but he doesn’t move fast in the morning.  He is a dawdler and is unaware of time or time constraints.  I spend a lot of my time in the morning keeping all the kids on task so they can get on the bus or to school on time.  It is not my favorite part of the day.  I do my best not to yell at them but I still end up yelling some mornings.  The other morning Vincent literally took 12 minutes to put his clothes on.  I already picked them out he just had to put them on.  He was distracted many times!

I told him in a stern voice that he was moving slowly.  He replied “What, like a snail?!”  I said “Yes”.  He retorted “well I think you are moving like a snail mommy!”  I told him that I was running around looking for his homework that was missing.  He said again that I was moving like a snail, so I told him he was losing a coin for back talking.  He didn’t seem to care and instead started to negotiate ways to get more coins “How about every day I am at school I get a coin?”  I told him I was not discussing new ways to earn coins because we needed to get ready to school.  I kept on his case about getting ready because we were becoming dangerously close to being late for school.  So for the next 5 minutes I was on his case about getting his coat and shoes on and getting his backpack.  We seemed to go even slower.  Monday thru Friday it is the same routine, with his coat and shoes and backpack all kept in the same areas, we do things in the same order, this should not be difficult.

As I was telling him that he had to put his shoes on quickly he turned to me and said “You are ruining my day.”  I was taken back and told him that I was not ruining his day or his morning but I was probably driving him a little crazy.  He agreed.  On the way to school I explained that if he needed more time in the morning to get ready he would have to wake up earlier.  He said ok but that he would need a Spiderman alarm clock and Spiderman underwear to make that happen.  I pointed out that underwear wouldn’t help wake him up and we have perfectly good alarm clocks he could use.  He wasn’t impressed.  Then we discussed where his homework could possibly be.  He was convinced that a secret agent snuck in the house and took his homework out of his backpack.  He wasn’t even trying to be funny or cute or just give a funny excuse he really thought that was a legitimate reason his homework was missing.  We got to school just as the door was getting closed and locked, which is later than usual.  Usually we are there 2 minutes before the door gets locked.

Part of me wants to let him be late for school and see if that would make a difference in his morning dawdling, but he loves walking through the school and seeing the older kids on the way to his classroom so I doubt it would help.  Our new plan is that if he is dressed and ready to go by the time Joel’s bus gets to our house he can play on my phone.  So far it is helping and we have a lot less dawdling in the morning.  I hope it lasts!

Bath time

Our children are spoiled when it comes to bath time.  We frequently let them use the big bathtub in our room.  Sometimes I let them because they ask nicely, sometimes because I know it will motivate them to take a bath, and sometimes because I need to put my laundry away and I can do it will I watch them take a bath.  It is one of the benefits of not having any walls separate your bedroom and bathroom.  Once in a while if they have been really good I will even let them watch TV while they take a bath.  It is another benefit of not having walls.

A movie and a bath...spoiled kids!

In the summer when I would give them baths in our big bathtub I would just step in the bathtub to scrub them up and rinse them off.  It was easy and it worked.  Then cold weather came along.  At first I would take off my pants and stand in the bathtub, but after a time or two I decided that wasn’t a good plan.  So now I stand on the bathtub by the window and use the sprayer to hose the kids off.  Brad thinks it is hilarious, but it works for us!

Notice the plant ledge to the left...seriously why is that necessary?!

I have also been known to put all three kids in our shower.  I then climb on the plant ledge (why do we even have a live plant in our bathroom…it came with the house) and hand them soap and direct them from the ledge.  The way our shower is designed if you open the doors while the water is on you will flood the bathroom.  If we are in a hurry I put them in the shower, throw soap to them and Vincent washes everyone up.  It isn’t the best job, but it works when we are in a hurry. 

Shower time.