House Update

Saturday, Dec. 28 a parade of concrete mixer trucks, a pumper truck and a handful of construction guys did some impressive work. In reality, I think it's run-of-the-mill construction activity, but to me it was very impressive. 

 It's not everyday that this sort of thing happens around here!

 They started filling the forms of the safe room/bathroom. There were four guys working: one (in black below) worked the controls of the pumper truck (a joystick and a few buttons), one controlled the end of the pumper so the concrete went in the right places, one operated the vibrator/stinger (to help settle the concrete), and one troweled off the top.

 Harold ran all over the place, having a blast.

 The pumper truck and the expertise of the guys working made this all look very simple - I certainly admired how quickly and efficiently they proceeded with their work.

 Walking backwards on oil-slicked forms would have been enough to do me in, but these guys made it look easy.

 A couple days later the forms came down and now we have lovely concrete!

 Loads of sand started showing up and will wrap up today. It takes a lot of sand to fill in a garage, mudroom, safe room/bathroom and porch! I think at least ten semi-trucks of sand have drove on the yard, backed up, dumped, and drove off.

 Harold LOVES to run wild circles in the sand. But today, he ran off with plumbers tools a couple times so he got locked up. We hadn't thought about how his curiosity could cause trouble for the construction crews that will be working around here in the months to come. He has so many things to learn.

 Soon, this (the front porch) will be full of sand.

Next up is more concrete, but before that the weather's supposed to get pretty cold. So, we'll wait a few days for concrete while we wait for warmer temperatures.

My Baby's 6!

I have no idea how this has happened, but my little Levi is six! It's crazy. Super crazy. He's such a six year old. He's growing up in so many ways, but he often shows us that he's still just a little kid. 

His birthday gift from us was a keyboard. He has a love for music and we thought the keyboard would give him new and exciting ways to explore music.

 He requested cupcakes instead of a cake, so I baked and frosted them giving Levi the fun job of loading them with sprinkles. They had LOTS of sprinkles. :-)

 It was a nice day so my three farmers spent some time outside scraping the cow poop away. The boys had a GREAT time (of course, they are boys after all) and proudly showed me how much poop they had all over themselves.

 See....here's the shovel they were using....

 Ok, moving on from poop.....Levi requested a family bowling night so we headed to McPherson to do just that.

 Levi had some pretty good technique going on all by himself,

 that was sometimes quite successful, but often left him feeling frustrated.

 Noah did a pretty good job, too. We only bowl about once a year and it's interesting to see how much they improve (and how poorly I do!!!) each time.

 Eventually, Levi requested to use this fancy ramp:

 Ahhhh....it was highly successful!

We ate dinner out and then came home to watch Despicable Me 2.
Sunday we celebrated Levi's birthday and my birthday with my parents, sister, Miki and Rylee.
And just today, on his first day back at school, Levi took chocolate chip cookies to share with his classmates to celebrate. He asked that Ben and I be there and we were happy to make that happen. When his classmates sang happy birthday to him, Levi blushed like I've never seen him blush. It was pretty cute!

House Guest

Our dog-nephew Otto stayed at our house for a couple days around Christmas. He's Andy and Lia's 2-year old boxer. He stayed in our house, because he's used to being an indoor dog in Chicago, but he had a wonderful time running and running and running around the farm with Harold.  

 The two of them had a fantastic time playing together. It was hilarious to watch them go and go and go. I think Otto was relieved to be able to come inside just to get some rest.

 We weren't sure how Harold would react to a new dog on the yard but they sniffed each other out and became fast friends.

Christmas Gatherings

We spent Christmas day at my parents' house with my sister and niece. We enjoyed a wonderful meal of ham, potatoes, salad and zwiebach, had good laughs and even got to spend a chunk of time outside in the afternoon.

The kids put on a short "program" before we opened gifts.

 Rylee and Levi are quite the duo - we can't leave them alone for long because we just never know what they'll have come up with to do!

 There was no shortage of presents! :-) The cattle truck has been in use everyday since Christmas, the paper airplane launcher has flown many flights and there are lots of gifts that we simply haven't had enough time to enjoy yet!

 There was just enough snow hanging around for the kids to burn some energy outside.

 Then we spent a bunch of time playing with presents, putting gifts together and just hanging out.

The next day, we spent the day with Ben's family. We feasted on a delicious meal of rice and beans for lunch.

 Then the boys were antsy to start opening presents. They are the only grandchildren in that family (so far) and therefore score pretty well when it comes to Christmas gifts. The Wii was a highlight, but they've also spent a lot of time kicking field goals through the football goal post (while wearing their new football pants and cleats). Both of the boys seem to take turns using the new microphone and Noah was proud to wear his new boots to church on Sunday (no more falling apart boots causing him great embarrassment).

 Stick-on mustaches were worn for a little while. Mine was blond and quite "attractive", but it also tickled my nose endlessly!

 The trap set in the basement of Susan's house was a HUGE highlight for Levi. He asked for a drum set for Christmas and for the third year in a row did not receive it. This was an excellent (and short lived) substitute.

We had a wonderful time being with all of the Schrag's for a day. We hadn't done that since August when Andy and Lia got married and this time we were all able to simply hang out and enjoy visiting with each other. It was a very merry Christmas, indeed.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is a big deal at our church. It's the one night of the year the place fills up and the kids bring the story of Jesus' birth to life. 

 Levi worked on memorizing his speaking part and was nervous about it, but when it came to his turn he spoke clearly into the microphone and did a great job!

 Noah practiced "Away in a Manger" for a couple weeks to prepare for playing it by himself in front of the church during the children's sharing time.

 Then Levi and Delaney sang "Away in a Manger" together during sharing time (Ben was lucky enough to be the person in charge of introducing the kids for sharing time).

 The older children practiced for months to prepare a musical for the Christmas Eve program and did a great job. Noah is in that clump shepherds in brown.

 After church we headed home and opened presents - a tradition I grew up with and we felt the boys were old enough this year to make it work.

 The Mega Marble Run was the highlight of the gift opening. Unfortunately, one package didn't make it to us until a couple days later, but they've also really enjoyed playing with the new farm toys we bought them.

 Ben and Noah got busy building

 while I cleaned up the post-gift-opening-mess

 and Levi enjoyed his brand new construction paper and crayons.

Then it was off to bed for some much needed rest to prepare for all the festivities of Christmas day.

Kitten check-in

Remember the kittens we bottle fed back in August?

Four months later, four of the six kittens are alive and well. Little Alfalfa, the runt of the clan, has done a lot of growing and is always the first to try and sneak into the house. :-)

Snowy Sunday

Our first snow was on Oct. 18 this year. We decided to see if the old wives tale was true and count each snow this year to see if we get 18 of them. According to Noah's precise calendar records, the snow we got last night was "Snow 5". 

 Church was cancelled so there was plenty of time for playing in the snow.

 Harold was ecstatic to be outside with us.

 He tried to eat the sled rope but got tangled in it instead.

 He worked pretty hard at attacking the rope for quite a while and then finally got tired of it.

 Thank goodness for a four wheeler, rope and sled!

 I was completely fascinated by all the animal tracks I found in the snow. I don't know anything about identifying the tracks, but to see how many tracks were all around the farm was pretty interesting.

 The concrete forms look more interesting with the addition of snow.

 This little guy was at the end of one of the trails of tracks.

 Mmmmmm....yummy snow.

 We spent quite a bit of time outside enjoying the snow and taking in how the world is transformed when it's covered in snow.