Spring Break!

The morning after Ben's last basketball game we took off for Illinois! It was wonderful to get away. For life to slow down and to relax was so, so good for our family. 

It was also fantastic to see Ben's parents again! We hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving (the only bummer was Sue not feeling good...but she rallied and put on a good show!). 

Caterpillar is headquartered in Peoria, IL so we went up the road to check out their visitors center. 

 It was fascinating! Sue and Noah are standing in front of a dump truck. That's the real size of the truck. It's....HUGE. The tires are 14 feet tall. Doesn't Noah look like a shrimp next to them?

 The Illinois river flows by outside the visitor's center and since the sun was shining we enjoyed a picnic lunch by the river. I think food tastes better when it's consumed outside.

 Back at Grandma and Grandpa's house the boys kept busy flitting from one screen to another. But we also played croquet, baseball and helped clean up leaves making way for new spring growth. Noah enjoyed running cabbage through the food processor as he helped Sue make bierrocks.

 The playhouse got a thorough cleaning by Levi! He worked really hard with a bucket of water and some rags to clean up his "pizza kitchen".

 And then Noah joined him and they ran a very busy and successful pizza restaurant! They'd even make any kind of pop you wanted!

 It was so fun to watch and listen to them play together so nicely. It's a rarity for them to get along so well for such a long time.

 The next day, the weather cooled off and we made our way to Bass Pro in Peoria. They have a fun bowling alley in the store.

It was great! Plus we were the only people bowling - bonus!

 A shark spit our balls out for the ball return.

 The paint and lighting gave it a realistic look of being underwater. We even ordered mozzarella sticks, the boys had never had them before and thought they'd discovered one of the best foods ever!

 On a whim, we took Noah to watch Ben's old high school team play in the Illinois state tournament. Between the crowd and players, I think that was some of the best people watching I've done in a long, long time.

 We also enjoyed time catching up with Ben's grandparents who moved to Illinois in August. And we spent a few hours at the Mennonite Church of Normal playing basketball, soccer and volleyball. It helps to know the pastor. ;-)
And then suddenly, it was time for us to head for home. The nine hour car ride isn't a favorite for any of us, but each time we do it we're thankful that our boys are getting older. We no longer have to endure the stress of crying babies.

 When we got home, we were blessed with beautiful weather and Ben had a hankering for Funfetti cake. He really likes that cake and it cracks me up.

The day after we got home, my mom had reconstruction surgery. So I was in Wichita with my dad and sister most of the day. Surgery went well and mom has done a fantastic job recovering. She's amazing and I'm so proud of how she has walked the cancer journey.

 Saturday we planted trees around the farm,

 drilled bromegrass seeds

 and planted onions, spinach, lettuce and garlic in the garden!

 And then on Sunday, the weather was just right for Levi to get his new kite out! We gave him the kite for his birthday and he was excited to finally get to fly it.

It's a dinosaur, can you tell?

 He caught on very quickly and then spent a lot of time out by himself flying and flying his kite.

 I can't wait to see the bromegrass come up!

That was our spring break - lots of good stuff! It was tough to get back into the regular routine of school and work on Monday but we slowly got back in the swing of things.

Another season over

Ben has been a basketball official for our entire marriage. I've enjoyed watching his journey. 

 I haven't loved all the evenings of single parenting our boys, or being ships passing in the night. But I enjoy watching him grow and mature and excel as an official. I wouldn't be able to the job; I'd never blow my whistle and I'd cry or yell at the people hollering at me. Ben can handle it and I've seen how some of the skills he's learned as an official help make him a fantastic father.

 Just like last year, he was assigned to work the 4A State Tournament in Salina. One night he worked the boys semi-final and the next day he worked the girls final game.
I was going to get a great shot of him tossing the ball at the start of the boys game...but then someone walked right into my photo. Oh well.

 There's a lot of communicating that happens during a basketball game. I go to these games trying to watch Ben, but I always get distracted by the players and fans. But, afterwards he tells me about this interaction with a coach, and that interaction with a player, and talking this and that over with the other officials. And usually, I have missed just about all of it.

 I am proud of how hard he works, how passionate he is, how seriously he takes the job. My heart swelled when he told he was going to work a championship game.

And now the season is over. He worked over 100 games this year. Too many for all of us. The boys and I missed him from November-March and now we're all enjoying getting back into the swing of having him around in the evenings. 

New Life

We've got 37 new lady friends on the farm! 

By now they're actually 3 weeks old, so they've moved beyond this cute stage to the almost-awkward stage.

For their first few weeks they lived in our mudroom. They probably would have survived in the garage, but it was cold and we felt sorry for them. But now they've been moved to their own section of the chicken barn. The mudroom was getting dusty and smelly and it was clear that our house wasn't the right place for our new friends.

We've been planning out our new garden space and now it's just about time to plant potatoes!

The boys were happy to help with the tiller!

We were happy to see the lovely, mellow dirt that we turned up. Hopefully the potatoes like it too.

We didn't till the entire thing, just the section of our garden where potatoes and onions will go.

That leaves more tilling to do another day!

Around the Farm

It's March, it's over 70 degrees outside right now. And I keep reflecting on how weird winter was. 

Time flew, absolutely flew by this winter. Ben was busier than ever with basketball. My mom survived six chemo treatments and we never got enough snow to sled.

It was weird. I feel like I was barely outside, but I also feel like I barely had a chance to be outside. I like to go on walks on cold Sunday afternoons. I like the adventure of walking across a dark farm yard and seeing the stars. But I feel like that barely happened, but how and why?

Regardless, it keeps surprising me that it's March, and at the same time Christmas seems so long ago I can barely remember it. Time is a strange, strange thing.

In addition to officiating basketball (only two games left in the season!!) Ben's busy feeding cattle again this year.

This is the only cattle photo I've taken on my camera this year:

The farmers have also spent weeks unloading corn from the bins on the yard. 

The fourth bin is nearly empty, hopefully that job will wrap up soon. Just in time to start thinking about planting the next corn crop!

In many ways, I'm thrilled that winter seems to be winding down. But in other ways I'm sad. I didn't do as much baking as I thought I would. I didn't get to enjoy being outside in the crisp winter air as much. Playing with the boys out in the snow is always fun (at least for a little while ;-)) and working together as a family to clear out trees is too. But we didn't make time for tree work, and the snow didn't cooperate.

I suppose I'll just have to make the most of the season ahead of us and enjoy the warm sunshine. 

Skunk!

We've had no shortage of wildlife around our house this winter. Nothing big or unmanageable. Opossums are near the top of my list of horrid animals, but they're harmless. Coyotes are always around the farm...Ben's been able to get rid of several of them this winter. They're a real nuisance for us with our chickens. Skunks, though, are a bit more complicated. The eat mice and rats which is fantastic, but their ability to spray is a problem. 

Skunks living under our deck didn't work for me. Ben trapped a skunk outside our back door, put a brown blanket over it, took it to the far edge of the farm and let it go. Then he followed that skunk all the way back to our house and watched it go under the deck!

Commence, operation Get Rid of the Skunk!

Soon after he trapped another skunk outside our back door. He shot that one when he let it go.

Then he trapped another one! And finally, when the trap wasn't even baited with food he caught a third! 

Again, he covered the trap with a blanket, and took the trap out to open area

 uncovered it,

 the boys and I watched from our warm and cozy house,

 then Ben had to wait for the skunk to decide to come out........

 finally it emerged and BOOM.

So far, that seems to have been the end of the skunks living underneath our deck. I hope it is, shooting animals is not ideal in my opinion, especially ones that eat mice and rats. But we'd already had a skunk in our garage (which Ben got out without incident) but that was enough to put me on pins and needles.