Kansas Day

Kansas is 151 years old, and today was the day to celebrate it.  

 Kaufman Museum in North Newton celebrates Kansas Day each year with a big ol' event that touches on a pretty big variety of presentations and activities highlighting our past and present.

 The boys were pretty curious about the blacksmith - and were intrigued with the use of fire and big hammers.

 The event is spread out across the museum's campus. The only trouble was that it seems to be a VERY successful event with LOTS of people.  A good problem to have, really.  But, it did make it feel a bit chaotic at times.  Noah enjoyed helping make a new kind of paper airplane and seeing how far it would fly (his went 4 meters while Levi's went 5).

 We learned about beekeeping,

 and then made bee hats.

 We tried walking on cans,

 and fed goats - along with about 20 other sorts of activities.  It was a whopper of an afternoon and a great way to celebrate the state we call home.

Reminder

Levi brought home a little bit of "new life" from preschool this week.  It's a very welcome reminder that the blahs of winter will one day turn into the beauty of springtime.

Outside

The mild winter weather is allowing us to enjoy being outside more - don't let Levi's 2 hats, hood and mittens fool you.  It was like 50 degrees outside.

 Noah's learning about basketball in PE these days,

 which means he wants to play it all.the.time.  Levi was good with just kicking his basketball.

 The warm winter weather is good, but it's also leaving us wishing for some snow.

Failed

That's a jar of homemade dishwasher soap.  I was tired of buying expensive eco-friendly dishwasher soap.  And, I wasn't convinced of how eco-friendly it really was.  So, when I saw a recipe for soap that needed few ingredients I was excited to try it.
2 c. washing soda
2 c. borax
6 Tbsp. citric acid powder
25 drops grapefruit essential oils

Easy enough - between a local eco-friendly store and Dillons, I was able to buy what I needed.  The stuff smells AMAZING - it just leaves behind a film unlike anything I've ever experienced.
Ok, to tell you the truth I haven't ever had dishes come out of a dishwasher with a film.  I find this new development very troubling.  I have reduced the amount of soap I used from 2 Tbsp. per load, to 1 1/2 Tbsp. per load all the way down to 1 Tbsp.  But, the film is still there and the cleanliness of the dishes is coming more and more into question.
I was so hopeful that this new soap would be a fun, eco-friendly way to start cleaning in new ways this year.  But, I'm at the point where I have to admit, it failed.
Anyone have ideas for what I should do with this jar of soap now?

Fun Times

There is no shortage of goofiness around this farm.  We've got goof boys and 

 and a silly cousin that comes to visit.

 But most of all, our boys have one goofy, fun-loving dad.  The trouble is, Ben comes up with crazy games (this particular one is from his childhood) that the boys want to play every single moment their daddy is around.
Nachie - a Schrag family original.  Ben and his brother Andy (and Sara, too?) played Nachie as kids.  Ben and Andy came up with it - probably in the middle of a bleak Nebraska winter.  Each person playing has to have socks on (the taller the sock the better).  The goal of the game is to get the other person's socks off while they're trying to get your socks off.

 The boys thought this game was fantastic!

 Although there were some pretty serious whines when Ben got their socks off.

 All in all, I think it was the most laughter I had heard from the three of them in a long, long time.

Busted

Oh Axle.  Our poor dog is suffering through week two with this horrendous plastic cone around his head.  We've had to put several layers of duct tape on it already to keep it intact.  His stitched up cut was looking really, really good - until Axle got the cone off his head and licked the scab off it.  I know that's kind of gross, but we all know that scabs work best when left to fall off on their own, right?

 So, we Ben wrangled the cone back together and got it securely fastened to Axle's collar with some zip ties. Poor Axle.  For about an hour he had the freedom and joy of licking places on his body that he's been trying and failing to lick for an entire week.  Hopefully, he didn't do damage to his healing wound so the cone can officially come off on Friday.

The trouble with dogs...

is that humans quickly become attached to them.  The trouble with attachment is that we therefore have a terrible time allowing them to suffer.  And, the biggest problem with that is then the dog is pretty much equal to a human...  Or at least Axle is.  You see, on Monday evening Axle cut his leg (maybe on a piece of tin...we're not sure).  We came home to find our dog with a bloody leg...so after careful examination, visits from my dad and our friend Brian and all of us standing around looking at Axle...we decided we'd just let the farm vet take a look at in the morning.  Good enough.  Well, in the morning the farm vet was out, looked at Axle, snipped the small piece of flesh that was hanging and said, "He can lick it, he'll be fine."  Great!  That was cheap and easy - two words we like to hear.  Wrong.

 A day later Axle's leg was NOT looking good and he would NOT stop licking it.  We called our vet and took Axle in.  She said he needed stitches and a round of antibiotics to clear up the infection that was growing in his leg.  Great.  So, after a couple days at the vet, stitches and 2 kinds of antibiotics Axle is confined to this collar and inside for two weeks.

 He cannot run or jump for 2 weeks.  That plastic collar just might do us all in yet.  We'll see....
So, hanging around outside feels a little different without Axle running around with us. But, the boys and I had a nice time outside in the sunshine this morning.  

 One of the calf pens is empty at the moment so the boys decided to crawl all over the hay and explore where the calves sleep and so on.  It was great to spend time outside.  No TV, no computer, no fighting over who gets to play with this tractor or that tractor.

 And best of all, after they finished crawling around in the hay - they decided to go pretend to milk!

They were busy for nearly an hour "milking" in the barn.  I spent that time picking metal out of the burn pile.  I know, an hour to myself and I spent it picking through ashes....but it was a satisfying project.  The metal in the burn pile has been driving me nuts and now most of it is gone.  The pile is big and soon enough my dad will scoop it away and dump it elsewhere but it felt good to get some of the most noticeable bits out.  I also established a small fire ring for us to use for burning our trash.  Now if I could only get one line of a clothesline strung I'd really feel productive.
Fire rings and clotheslines...it truly is the small things in life that put a smile on this girls face.

Saturday morning

It was another beautiful morning on the farm.  Had Ben been home to watch the boys, I would have taken off on a long walk with Axle.  But, since he was off hunting for a deer I stayed much closer to home. 

Little 570 lives in the calf hutch nearest our house, isn't she cute? 

 Burning our trash might be one task that seems pretty simple, but is the one that makes me think and question more than any other.  All those bits of our life, gone - just like that.  The paper could have been recycled, but is it worth recycling something when it can be reduced to ashes in a couple seconds?  I'm 100% for recycling, but it seems to me (and I have no science to support this) that my carbon footprint would be larger if we did recycle the paper and cardboard.  I don't know.  I do know that anything that can be recycled beyond paper products does get recycled around here.  It's amazing to watch trash burn.  Even a little fire of castaways has a way of making me feel small.

 The hauling of poop was already underway when the boys and I got ourselves outside this morning.  

 Yes, the boys spent every moment they could being involved in this.  Nobody fell in that poop pool today, thank the good Lord!  But the smelly clothes just kept on coming. The washing machine has certainly earned its keep around here this weekend!

What if...

Farm life is good.  Just last night Ben said it's so refreshing to get out of the car and breath in this air, even if it literally smells like shit.  The cows are a stones throw away from our house, remember?

So as good as life is on the farm there are some particular dangers that if I let myself think about, I'd never let my kids out of the house. In many ways it's just as dangerous, or maybe much MORE dangerous, then living in town.  It just doesn't feel dangerous until something happens, or you think something's happened.  Let me explain....

A couple weeks ago, before 6am, Levi was up.  I was already at my parents' house exercising (yes, I get up pre-dawn to exercise in my old bedroom...call me crazy).  He didn't wake Ben up, instead he got dressed in pants, a t-shirt and his orange Crocs and walked outside to find me.  It was cold with crusty snow on the ground and he didn't have a coat on, he started to cry.  Ben woke up, from a dead slumber, hearing Levi crying and couldn't get his brain to figure out where it was coming from.  Levi wasn't in bed, he wasn't upstairs, he wasn't outside the house....so Ben came to find me.  While Ben was looking inside the house, Levi made it to me, thanks to my mom letting him in the house.  Not knowing Levi was safe and sound, Ben burst into my parents' house too and found Levi snuggled in my old bed watching me exercise.  It was very scary for Ben and the What If questions started to spin in our heads.

Later that same morning, Levi put his coat on and said he was going out to help Uncle Bruce grind a bale.  Ok we said, but then come back inside.  Well, while Ben, Noah and I were inside getting ready for the work/school day, Levi was wandering around from one area of farm action to another.  The sun wasn't up yet and big tractors were moving and little Levi should not have been out there.  My dad took Levi with him in the tractor to go mix up feed and thankfully brought him back when I needed to be leaving for work.  He told me they hadn't always known where he was and it was too dark for Levi to be out there.  Again, in the same morning, the What If questions started to spin.

Today, Levi told me he was going out to play on the skid steer.  Fine.  Ok.  Happens all the time.  He'd been gone for a while and I went out to check.  Oh, Uncle Bruce and Roger were busy clearing out the manure pit, Levi was riding along with Uncle Bruce.  Hauling poop ranks just under harvesting and hauling grain.  So, I went back inside for a while.  When I was ready to leave to go to story hour at the library with Levi I went outside again to see if I could coax him off the tractor.  Much to my surprise, he walked out of the milk barn with my dad soaked with water from head to toe.  Levi had fallen into the poop pit.  It's like a zero entry 7 or 8 foot deep poop pool.  He hadn't walked in the poop, he fell in the deep end.  Thankfully, they've been working at clearing it out for the past few days so there was only two or three feet of poop in it this morning.  And thankfully Roger was out there and actually heard Levi calling for help.  Thankfully, my dad was around to help him get cleaned off.  The What If questions haven't stopped spinning yet.  That poop pit has been one of my biggest fears on the farm for almost 6 years now.  Today it was for real life.

Boundaries and guidelines.  We need more boundaries and more guidelines or the What If questions are going to keep on spinning.

Christmas on the 30th

Well, while Levi's outside helping haul off cow manure, I'm going to (finally) wrap up my blog posts from Christmas.  

The weather was beautiful for the entire week between Christmas and New Years and lucky for us it's continued on for another week.

 We got to have Rylee out at the farm on my birthday.  It was fun to have her here and watch the three of them play together.

 I got a new lens for my camera from Ben for birthday.  It's very exciting because now with one lens I can shoot up close or far away!  For example, I was standing three feet away from Noah when I took this photo:

 and with the same lens, I opened the back door and took this photo of Bruce, Levi and dad from about 60 feet away.

 Later in the day, the Epp family gathered for our Christmas gathering.  As the sun was setting, the second cousins got a quick game of football going.

 And then once it was dark, but not quite everyone had arrived yet, we thought since all the kids were gathered we should take a group photo.  It was quite the challenge, but we got some decent photos and some good laughs.  One with smiles:

 and one silly photo (I love Delaney's belly in these photos - she'll appreciate that someday....):

 After a delicious meal and before opening presents the kids sang a few songs.  My boys actually agreed to sing a song together!  They sort of wanted to melt away into the floor from embarrassment, but with some added encouragement from grandma they made it all the way through. I think they sang "Away in a Manger" but it's been long enough ago that I can't quite remember.

 Then we had one cute Angel Band perform for us (who needs rhythm instruments when you can use cooking utensils?) :

 It was a wonderful evening and the children played really well.  There may have been some running and the house was unusually loud, but it was good to be together.

Leroy the 4 Year Old

Did you know Levi is often called Leroy around our house? Ben came up with it one day long ago and it stuck.  A week ago (time is flying) Levi turned 4!  Thankfully, it worked out for Tim and Sue to stay here long enough to celebrate with Levi.  And lucky for the rest of us, we ate Semmel (the s is said with a z sound) for supper.  

 Semmel is a simple bread made with yeast, flour, water and salt.  It bakes at a high temperature so the outside gets hard and the inside is chewy like sourdough.  It's a Beatrice, Nebraska tradition that continues within the Schrag family.  You eat them when they're fresh out of the oven, sliced open and filled with a slice each of cheddar cheese and summer sausage.  Or, slather it with butter and strawberry jam or honey.  Or just with cheese, or even with peanut butter.  They're very good and make a simple supper.

 From the flavor of the cake, to the candles and sprinkles Levi picked out his birthday cake.  He picked the cake mix and container of frosting at the store and told me how to "decorate" it.  It was fun to have him help and since I didn't have anything special planned for his cake it helped me out too.

 He also picked out Birthday Party ice cream - which was surprisingly good, despite all the blue goo swirled in the ice cream.

 Levi is a lucky boy. He had all 4 of his grandparents at his birthday party and got some great gifts.  A big front loader (check out that tough guy face he's making), a whiteboard and markers (whiteboards are all the rage in our house these days), a marble game

and a cowboy hat!

Levi is such a joy.  He is expressive, loves to sing, play with tractors (big and small), adores his brother, is an eager helper and is very opinionated.  We can't wait to see what the next year brings.