Haircut time

Finally, the boys actually get excited when we tell them it's time to get haircuts. What a relief!

Dan's painting for dad

On a whim a while ago, I contacted Ben's good friend and artist Dan Brown to see if he'd consider painting a tractor for my dad. Dan does this all the time with older cars and his work is pretty amazing. He said he'd love to paint a tractor, he just needed a photo to work from. My mom had to do some detective work to get my dad to tell her what tractor had the most meaning to him. He immediately thought of the first tractor he learned to drive, the John Deer 3010. So, I found some time and went to visit my grandma and looked through photos with her all to find the perfect photo for the painting! I scanned it and sent it to Dan. He touched it up a bit and a couple weeks (if even that long) later, my sister picked up the finished art in Wichita.

So, on Sunday when the Epp family was gathered to celebrate birthdays it was finally time to let dad see the painting!

It was a hit! And the painting is amazing, it's just perfect. Dan did a wonderful job and he's a lot of fun to work with.

After dad opened it, we took it inside for safe keeping. With 8 little ones in the bunch, we thought it best to take it out of sight from dirty and curious fingers.

Happy 58th birthday dad!

Determination

Levi is a child with a lot of determination. He likes to climb up on almost anything, "By himself." Here's how that goes on a tractor.

Preschool Time Again

Noah's waited all summer for it to be time to go back to preschool. He's really, really excited that he gets to go to kindergarten next year. Each time we would talk about preschool he would remind us that next year he'll go to kindergarten and Levi will go to preschool.

Here are Cambry and Noah on the first day of preschool playing up in the loft. I couldn't take Noah on the first day because of a meeting at work, but thanks to Megan for sharing a couple photos with me!

Last Friday, we went to the preschool Open House. A casual event to help get everyone ready for the regular preschool routine.

Paint!

I'm not sure what got into me, but I decided the boys would have more fun painting with poster paint rather than watercolors. So, a week ago, we tried it out.

It went well, but it was hard for them to remember that they only needed to put their brush in the water to change colors - unlike with watercolors.

It was fun, and they enjoyed seeing more vivid colors and learning about mixing colors to make new colors.

The Creek Round 2

The boys LOVE to play and walk in the creek that runs through the Bethel campus. This time we went in boots...which was slightly problematic since some of the water was a little too deep for their boots.

We found the jaw bone of some small critter. I told the boys it was probably from a raccoon, but that was a total guess.

Carrot Harvest 2010

We planted some carrot seeds months ago and finally we decided it was time to dig them up. Noah has been asking for weeks to dig them up.

We washed them,

and gave them a try, but Noah immediately declared they tasted awful.

Oh well, at least it was fun to grow them!