Some corn in the neighbors field

Weeding the garden.


Well, not quite everyone is helping!

Blake working on a transmission

This is a clutch plate. You want to now how I know?! ;)

Some days just go like this. This is a bearing! Well, what's left of a bearing! ;)

Blake showing mom how something works!!!

Blake and Dwayne! Hey, they have been working all day!!!



A few pictures Aud took yesterday evening.

Trip

This past weekend Dad, Aud and I went with friends down to Missouri for a wedding of another friend. It was a 12 hour drive both ways and we got quite tired of sitting as well as having a lot of fun!!!

We really didn't go this fast the whole way down there. :-)

Brenda being 'cool' in my glasses

Krista

After driving for so long you get kinda silly...

Sharla being VERY cool!!!

At the wedding...

Regina (one of the friends we went down with) was the photographer

Congratulations to Jake and Michaele!!!

The servers. Second, third and fourth from left are friends, Crystal, Delila and Twila

Brenda, Sharla and I playing with the wedding decorations

Brenda, a friend of hers and I in our wedding finery

mapping out our trip home

Load it up!!!

Dad

Brenda and Samuel watching for mile markers

Brenda and Elson playing uno

rest stop

ridin'...

Regina and Aud

more uno...

scenary is uh, quite interesting...

Ohio!!!

We stopped at an Amish style resturant about 2 hours from home. It was TONS of fun!!!

Sharla and I, tired, but still smiling, home at last!!!

~Maria

Potato Harvest

The other day as I was heading out to dress chickens I was giving last minute instructions to the girls on what I wanted them to put into the oven for lunch. They told me we were out of potatoes.

Originally I thought I'd run to the local bulk food store to pick up a bag, but then I remembered that the potatoes the little boys planted in the back yard were probably just about ready, so I checked with Paul's mom to see what she thought of me digging up a few potatoes.

I found her back tending her own little garden. It is here that she spends much time doting on her plants, moving a little dirt here, readjusting a gate there. It is a little sanctuary of sorts, I think, because it is so removed from the ordinary hustle and bustle of this place.

She agreed that the potato plants were starting to die down and it would be fine to dig up a bowlful. She lumbered over to her little garden shed in her usual hip-worn way to get the potato fork. Clearly she enjoys the harvest as much as the tending as I hadn't intended that *she* dig the potatoes, but it was silently agreed that she would.

Along about the time that we commenced digging, Clark arrived on the scene. I was amused at the two of them, a curious but perfectly matched team---an old and slow, work worn grandma and a tottery little fellow just setting out learning about life. They really didn't need me there, but I enjoyed watching the interaction.

As Grandma would pierce the ground with her fork and turn over rich brown earth, Clark would rush to wrap his chubby little hands around the golden brown potatoes that turned up. Even the smallest of small potatoes were important enough for him to pick up. They both ohhhhed and ahhhhhed each discovery as if it were the first. With plenty of Grandmotherly coaching, Clark soon had a bowl brimful of brandnew potatoes with bits of earth still clinging to them.

How good is this??? Fresh potatoes and Grandmothers and little sons.....

~Colleen

Traveling....

Miles, Clark, and I just (and I mean an hour ago) returned from a 100+ mile round trip to "the big city" to fix an order boo boo.

It was fairly blissful, the three of us riding along in our nearly empty 15 passenger van. There were no seats in save for the one I was sitting in, the vacant one beside me, and the furthest back seat on which Miles and Clark sat strapped into their carseats. They had both fallen asleep before I'd gone 20 miles from home. That was good.

Long about 40 miles from home on the return trip, Clark woke up and apparently thought he'd DIE if he had to sit another moment without a hug and a kiss from his mother. (I'm sure that's what it was......right?).

What's a mom to do in the dark of night in a van that huge with such a vast expanse of nothing between herself and her darling---but squawling---cherub?

She did what every sane mother would do. She stopped at the nearest milkshake place and instructed the 3 year old how to spoon feed shake into the 2 year old's mouth as they rode side by side in their car seats.

Raise your hand if you happen to know the sound of a plastic spoon falling to the floor of a van. I was truly hoping I was simply imagining it......but moments later, as I suspected, I heard the fateful, "Mommy, I dropped my spoon."

Sheesh. Being pretty much a LOT of miles from nowhere, I told him, "Just wait a little while."

And that worked. By the time "a little while" passed, Miles fell asleep again. Clark did not and he was, apparently, ready for another hug and kiss. This time I tried drowning it all out with the radio, which has by necessity to be played loudly anyway due to the front passenger window being lost within the door.

We're home now, none of us the worse for the wear. Clark, in true fashion, is not a bit tired because he had taken the snooze earlier. Since it is now some minutes past midnight, I believe I'm about to hasten the sand through his hourglass.....

Long about now, Paul, Maria, and Audrey are probably in central Missouri. They left early this afternoon with friends from church to attend a wedding planned for tomorrow.

~Colleen

So typical.....a three generation consultation under the hood....

Maria

Happy 17th Birthday Maria!!

Five of Maria's favorite things:
1.Favorite food: Donuts!
2.Favorite color: Lavender
3.Favorite book: Pride and Prejudice, and Anne of Green Gables
4.Favorite website to go to: friends blogs
5.Favorite movie: Anne of Avonlea





Five things a lot of people don't know about Maria:
1. She won 2 story contest that were published in a newspaper.
2. If she thinks a book looks boring she reads the end and if that is interesting she'll read the whole thing.
3. The only one in the family who has ever flown in a plane.
4. Taught herself piano.
5. She has only sewn one whole dress in her life. (pictured below)