Our Journey

Ben and I celebrated our 6th Wedding Anniversary on Sunday. Six years feels good.

We walk through this life together

two people, raising our children

through the ups and downs

still discovering who the other is

and who we are becoming.

So on Sunday....we saw Ben Folds (please follow the link, it's to a You Tube video from the concert that features Ben at the piano and the 2 people that opened the show for him) in concert and he rocked! It was absolutely the best thing we've done in a long time, something different, something that we decided to do on a whim, something that was refreshing, inspiring and completely enjoyable.

John Deere + Pumpkins

My dad and I took the boys to the John Deere store, officially known as Prairie Land Partners, in McPherson on Saturday morning. Boy oh boy were they in John Deere heaven (if you watch JD DVDs you'll even know the song....sigh...). I shopped for a 1/64 size loader tractor to replace the one the boys broke a few weekends ago. It's hard to pretend farm without all the proper equipment. The boys climbed on the toy tractors, drove them around the store, parked them, drove them, hooked up trailers to them, pretended to mow and trim, ate popcorn and climbed on the real equipment outside.

Levi's expression just cracks me up in this photo, we see this face all too often at our house.

These two goofballs wouldn't sit and smile at me for a photo, go figure.

Noah's not interested in this, he'd rather be on a tractor.

And he's out, done with this silly picture thing.

Check out the digger Grandpa bought the boys to play with. It digs/scoops/dumps and lives at Grandpa and Grandma's house, thanks Grandpa!

Then we went to Papa's Pumpkin Patch in the afternoon. We had a great time, but it was a little hectic and I don't have any pictures with pumpkins. I intended to get cute pictures of the boys picking out pumpkins but that just didn't happen. We headed out toward the pumpkin patch without a wagon or a cutter-thingy. Thankfully, some nice people let us have their cutter after they had loaded up their wagon with pumpkins. But, that left us with two kids, a camera, two pumpkins, a cutter-thingy, a pretty long walk with some good-sized mud puddles...needless to say pictures were simply not going to get taken. Next year we'll snag a wagon first thing, lesson learned.

The slide is so simple and so great, we had to drag the boys away from it.

You can check out Papa's Pumpkin Patch online or find them on Facebook.

Harvest at Grandpa & Grandma's

My dad is always optimistic and ultra reasonable when he speaks about the crops he farms. The weather will do what the weather will do and there's nothing he can do about it, at least that's what he says. So, this fall with cooler than usual temperatures in September and too much rain in October fall harvest has been off to a frustratingly slow start.

Tuesday night, after our family took pictures at church for the pictorial directory (always a good time), we drove straight to the farm for combine rides! It just so happened that dad finished up the corn and drove on the yard with the combine to switch headers as we finished eating our supper. Noah "helped" Grandpa switch headers and then he and I rode along for a couple of rounds of soybean harvest.


My dad, always quick with a smile for his grandsons!




Seriously studying the combine.





There's the header dad uses for soybeans and milo - it has a fancy name like flex-something-something-something. At our house it's called "milo header".














Getting ready for the header switch...


"Milo Header" on...




Getting the header ready to cut beans...


Waiting...


Cutting beans!

Picking Corn

Does doing something twice make it a tradition? If so, then we've got ourselves a nice little tradition! This past weekend, we made our traditional trip to Nebraska to visit our friends Brad, Kara and Braden. Last year we went earlier in the fall, but this year we planned it to be during corn harvest!

There was just one snag in our master plan...fevers. Both Noah and Levi developed fevers as we drove to Henderson on Friday afternoon. Thankfully, Kara and Brad were still willing to host us.

Saturday morning we were up bright and early waiting for Brad to let us know when they were going to start picking. In the mean time, the boys played on the kitchen floor.

Braden's just a few months younger then Levi and we exposed him to lots of toy tractors. See, last year he wasn't crawling yet when we visited, but Levi was and poor Braden would get attacked by Levi and he didn't seem to appreciate it. This year, there were many fewer attacks, but the boys did show him how to fight over a tractor and we worked on boosting his immune system, too.

The funniest thing is that he pretty much carried around the toy combine all day on Saturday, he just loved it!

Their dog, Ellie, would often appear at the living room windows, wanting to know what we were up to. Noah and Levi thought this was terribly exciting, they would always announce when they spotted her!

Finally, Brad called and like busy bees we got ourselves bundled up and out to the field.

While we waited for the combine, tractor and grain cart to get to our end of the field Ben checked out the corn. It was impressive corn.

Levi, with his medicated fever, wasn't too sure about the chilly wind and tall corn.

Ben and Noah waited in the car to stay warm. Do you see the corn dust on the car? I knew nothing about corn dust until this weekend. It looked like red snow...kind of.

I believe this is a flail chopper, or so I've learned from watching John Deere DVD's with the boys. Brad calls it a shredder. John Deere's website calls it a Flail Shredder, which means we're both right! It chops down the corn stalks that the combine leaves behind.

Brad's dad Royce in the combine while Brad operates the tractor.

This is serious harvesting, a well-oiled-family-farm operation. Brad, his dad Royce, his brother JD and his cousin Kevin work the fields. The women in the family do their share of work too by bringing hot meals to the field at lunch and dinner every day. This farm girl was fascinated.

It takes them about 6 weeks to complete fall harvest.

Ben, Levi and Brad driving over to the trucks to unload the grain cart.

I realized when I got home and looked through my pictures that I didn't have a picture of Kara, at all! What a shame! But, I did have this photo with Brad in it, so I'm posting it. Brad hates having his picture taken, so I know he'll appreciate this candid shot. Right Brad?

This photo is blurry (I'm still figuring out how to take a good picture when there isn't adequate lighting) but this is my best photo of little Braden. He's talking quite a bit these days and his words were so crisp and a little sing-songy, very cute!

Kara and Brad - thanks so much for hosting us and our fevers in your house! We had a wonderful time. All the best as you continue through harvest season!