9 Hours Later

It took us 9 hours to drive to Illinois on Tuesday afternoon/evening and when the boys got up on Wednesday morning, they were READY TO GO!  It's exciting to be at Grandpa and Grandma Schrag's house.  There's always lots to see and do.

First things first, help grandma in the kitchen.

 They helped Sue mix up Sourdough bread.

 And then Ben and I took the boys to the Children's Museum.  As soon as we told the boys we'd be traveling to Illinois, they asked to go to the Children's Museum.  So, we put it at the top of the priority list.

 I think we spent about an hour in the farm section.  The museum has a wonderful set up of combine, grain cart, auger, bins, feeding troughs and grain elevator all connected by tubes. The grain are the little green balls you see below.  Air flows through the tubes, so when you put a green ball in, the air whisks it away to the next place grain goes.

 The boys fed the cows, made the grain go up the auger, gathered more grain in their buckets, 

 then they'd run their full buckets to the cows, 

 and run their empty buckets back to the grain auger.  

 They spent time picking corn on the combine and then they were finally ready to move on.

 We spent quality time in the painting area.  I could tell they were a year older than the last time we'd been to  the museum.  They both painted their names, rainbows and shapes instead of randomly brushing paint on and spending most of the time washing it off.

 At the pretend stage, Noah got involved by operating the curtain and lights.  He wasn't interested in putting on a costume and acting in the show the other kids were putting together.  

 Levi wasn't interested in the big stage, but did have a good time with the hand puppets.

We had a great time and thanks to the Amtrak train just outside the museum, we were able to lure our kids out so we could go eat lunch.  Without that train, I'm not sure when we would have got them to quit making pretend pizzas.

Axle

 Meet Axle.  He'll join our family in December, when we move out to the farm.  The other night we got to meet him and the wonderful family he's been living with.  They live in town and decided to give him away since they don't have the time or space to let Axle run and be the dog he wants to be.  

I think that's right....I don't know...I've never owned a dog before...so most of this is brand new to me.

They had great things to say about him, so we're hopeful that Axle will do well with us and have a good life out on the farm.

Busy

So, if you can't tell by the absence of blog posts in the past couple weeks, our life is busy.  See, we're moving.  We sold our house and now we're moving out to the farm.  We're excited to move out to farm, to adjust to country life, to be closer to church, school and Ben's work.  

 We managed to move our compost, thanks to my dad, his truck and pitch fork.

And now, I'm busy packing boxes and moving them out to the farm one carload at a time.  We have the benefit of moving at our own pace.  Maybe it's a curse...one box at a time, for weeks at a time might be the death of me.

And there's talk of a dog.  Oh my.

Halloween festivities

 On Thursday, Levi's preschool class visited Bethesda to give a short program and show the residents their costumes. We dropped a couple "jack-o-lanterns" off at Great Grandma Schmidt's room for her to enjoy.

 Levi was not his usual self at Bethesda that day.  He was very shy and he never seemed very comfortable, which is highly unusual for him when we visit Bethesda!  

 He was one shy motocross driver.

 But lucky for the preschoolers, Levi's daddy works at Bethesda and handed out candy to each one of them as they left for their walk back to preschool.

 On Halloween, Bethesda hosted a Carnival for all the kids in the community.  It was a ton of fun! They had a lot of the residents there too, so they could watch the kids playing games and having fun. 

 Ben was in charge of the bowling game, so that was our first stop.  Can you guess what Noah's costume is?  He decided to dress up as Grandpa Schrag.  He was very handsome and even had a name tag, just like Grandpa Schrag wears at his church.

 The cowboy boots were Noah's own spin on things...

 Levi's preschool teacher Gayle had amazing hair and tons of tattoos! 

 After the boys won 2 liters of pop, ate popcorn, got lots of candy and had played each game at Bethesda at least once, we headed out to the farm to trick-or-treat. 

 The funny thing about our boys is that they like to change costumes.  Levi caught on that Noah was dressing  up at school as grandpa Schrag.  So, Levi wanted to wear a costume to Debbie's, too.  But he'd already worn his motocross outfit on Thursday so he could not wear that again.  Finally, he decided to dress like grandpa Schrag too.  So, he put on his church pants, white button-down shirt and church shoes.  But, I grabbed his motocross outfit before leaving the house that morning hoping he'd change his mind.  He did.  So, he's got his motocross outfit over his grandpa Schrag outfit.  Just after supper, Noah decided to be his other grandpa for trick-or-treating up and down our street. 

 And surprise!  Ben dressed up too.  At Bethesda they all dress up for Halloween so he took advantage of his reddish beard and went Scottish for the day.

 And, now that Halloween itself is over with...I can start throwing candy away.  Candy causes lots of problems at our house, so I just slowly get rid of it.  And, interestingly enough, after getting home this evening they never once asked about their Halloween candy.  Maybe I should just dump it all before they remember!

Arkansas Weekend

The boys and I went to Bella Vista, Arkansas with my parents, sister and niece for the weekend.  It was such a nice get-away - except that Ben couldn't come with us.  He needed to save a vacation day for our upcoming trip to Illinois for Thanksgiving.  So, the rest of us took off on Friday morning.  I quick long 5 hour drive later we arrived at our destination.  

 We got right to work playing football.  The house we stayed in didn't have much of a yard.  Most of it was on a steep downhill slope and all of it was covered with rocks.  Noah was just about in a crying fit when I finally got him to hear me saying, "There's a grassy area just down the street.  We can go play there!"  Phew!  We played LOTS of football - hours worth of football over the weekend.

My dad worked with Noah on learning to tie his shoes (or in this photo the drawstring on his pants).  The difference in the size of their fingers is pretty amazing.  My dad has fantastic big farmer fingers.

 The leaves on and off the trees were gorgeous.  The weather was absolutely perfect for spending every possible hour outside and we did our best to enjoy all of it.  

 Saturday we walked on the nature trail, checked out some lakes,

 the waterfall and tried to take in all the small things that we so easily pass by without noticing.

 I let Noah walk with me right next to the waterfall, where the rocks were slippery and the water splashed on us - he thought it was "really cool!"

 We made and ate wonderful food, we laughed, told stories and spent good time connecting and relaxing together.