Buckin' Bull

For what seems like months, every night the boys have begged Ben to play Buckin' Bull with them.

 At some point, after the rodeo we went to this summer, the boys came up with this idea and Ben went along with it.  I have never been a fan and had never actually watched the activity until the evening I snapped these photos.  Please prepare your eyes for blurry photos - clearly, I have a thing or two to learn about taking action shots in low light.  But, I couldn't miss the chance to document this nightly event because already it's popularity is waning.  Ben and I are both perfectly happy with that.

 Levi holds on for dear life

 counting the whole time

 trying to stay on for 8 seconds

 Noah's turn!

 It takes some serious strength to hold on while Ben bucks like a bull

 Getting ready for another ride (they check themselves out in the bathroom mirror...).

 Ready for another ride

 thankfully, this bull smiles at the end of an 8 second ride.

Rain Play

Does life get any better than when your mom says you can go out to play in the rain?  

Saturday was Fall Fest at Bethel and we squeaked in the essential parts of that (New Year's Cookies, playing in the kids area, visiting with friends and eating vernike) before rain drops started falling.  In the afternoon, the boys and I played out in the rain.  It certainly is more fun to draw with sidewalk chalk when it's wet.   

It goes down easier

and the colors are much brighter!

The boys kept busy with all sorts of activities in the rain/drizzle while I headed back inside.  

Thankfully, they have learned the skill of washing cars with water and paintbrushes.  It's an important life skill, right? 

Ben's car got a thorough washing on Saturday afternoon thanks to Levi and Noah's handiwork.  

Writing

 Noah is getting more and more interested in writing out his name.  The other night, after he was in bed, he kept coming out of his room asking about how to spell his name.  Finally, I decided to write it out for him on paper so he could follow that.  Here's what he showed me in the morning:

Farm Work

 Last weekend, the boys supervised Grandpa while he re-loaded the air seeder to continue sowing wheat.

 The boys love to watch the fertilizer and seeds go into the yellow air seeder bins.

 In between air seeder excitement and various other activities around the farm, we worked on clearing out these overgrown hedge trees.

 We cleared out a lot of old, overgrown and fallen down trees.  We made pile after pile of these branches and in the end they all got pushed into a big burn pile.

 That part at the end is what remains for us to do.  We're hoping that the boys will use this space for exploring and climbing and making pretend worlds.  So far, there's been some farming - not much of a surprise, but it's certainly a start!

Harvest Festival

Saturday morning we took in some of the activities in the Goessel Harvest Festival. Ben and I walked/ran in the 5k.  Then we ate blueberry pancakes at the Fireman Pancake Breakfast.

 They were delicious!

 But the best part, was that they could put on real firefighting gear.

 Levi was so loaded down with gear that he actually toppled over.  Noah tried to help him out but Levi turned out to be way too heavy.  I even had trouble getting Levi back upright.

 Then we headed outside so the boys could jump on inflatables.

 Noah and his friend Jake raced on these bouncing horses.  They had horses for adults to race with, but after attempting to run and then filling up with pancakes, Ben and I decided against a horse race.

There were lots of other activities around town during the day, but we headed out to the farm once we the horse races wrapped up.

Sunflower Harvest

 We planted giant sunflowers in the spring, watched them grow and bloom and then turn brow and ugly.  We finally decided to cut them down and harvest the seeds.  In the end, we filled that bucket about halfway.

 We even took our pile of seeds over to great grandpa and grandma's to clean them up a bit.  When it cools off a bit more, we'll put our seeds out for the birds to eat.