Meet My Brother...

This is my brother Jansen. He is only 5 years younger than me, give or take a few months, but is truly a kid at heart. One of his favorite Christmas movies is "A Christmas Story" (see t-shirt at left) and he and Damian (see hand waiving in cropped picture at left) share very similar senses of humor. Needless to say Jansen's wife, Kim, and I are not always laughing along with them! :-)






This is Jansen and Kim...don't they look sweet together? (Sorry Jans, I couldn't resist.)











This is probably how my brother prefers to be pictured. Harassing one of his nieces and sporting a blue mohawk. The hairdo is to show his support for the Wichita Thunder hockey team...he's a BIG fan! Someday this will go over big when he comes and watches his nieces and nephew play at Bluestem, since our colors are blue and gold.

Occasionally he likes to surprise us with a festive, holiday hairdo.








This is their daughter, Shye, one of Brooklyn's very favorite friends! She is about 11 months younger and they have a ball playing together!

I forgot to mention that in addition to his sense of unique style, my brother is super smart and a talented writer. He plays guitar and writes various works, mainly just for something to do. I thought I'd share something of his that I particularly like...

A letter to my dearest love...

Minutes pass like days as I await the moment when I can again hold you. To feel the subtle weight of your delicate frame as you hang onto my neck. To caress your graceful curves – the very essence of femininity. To have my fingers dance along your slender neck.

Every time I find myself in your presence, a beauty of such perfection startles me; surely, it must have been crafted by God’s own hand. Even the harmonious voice with which you sing to me stirs emotions in me that have long lain dormant within my heart.

They say with love comes a price, and truly, I feel that I shall forever be in your debt just for the opportunity to be with you. My heart swells with pride when I see the way others look at you; the way they envy me, and the disappointment they must feel on the realization that we’ll never part.

I still remember the pain that I felt in longing for you and fearing that you would never be mine, and I can’t begin to describe how fortunate I feel knowing that you are there waiting for me. I can only hope that I am able to prove myself worthy of your grace, your beauty, and your elegance.

I’ve often heard that there is no accounting for taste, but I know in my heart that there is none more perfect than you - My Fender Stratocaster: The World’s Greatest Guitar.

Moody Blue Monday...

This morning Damian made Brooklyn oatmeal for breakfast. It is his special recipe and all the kids love it...not me. :-) He takes quick oats, adds enough water to cover the oats, nukes it in the microwave for 30 seconds, then sprinkles with semi-sweet chocolate chips.

This PARTICULAR morning he made a SMILEY face out of the chocolate chips...all HIS idea...totally something a MOM would do, but this was ALL him! It was so cute, that I told him I wanted to take a picture of Brooklyn with her cheery bowl of oatmeal when she got up to the bar to eat it.

Can you guess how LOVELY our morning was??

Ag Education

Today we hosted a group approximately 50 people from eleven different states on an agriculture tour with Kansas Farm Bureau. Damian and his brother Dallas are both very passionate about agriculture and take every opportunity to educate anyone that has a desire to learn about the subject. Damian shared about our hay and row crop production as well as the equipment we use. Dallas explained how the cattle operation works and about the practice and benefits of burning pasture in the early Spring.

My job was to bake lots of cookies and brownies and keep our dogs, Milo and Maisy, from being a nuisance. If anyone likes wildflowers, this is a great time to pick maximillus sunflowers and they look beautiful in a vase. An added benefit of hosting something like this is that it motivates Damian to clean up around the yard and get rid of the junk that has been accumulating around the out buildings! :-) We have been privileged the last few years to have similar groups visit including Todd Thiart and his staff as well as a group of producers from the Netherland's on a tour with Agco. Here are some pictures of Damian doing his thing!




























This is my mom and dad and they were such a HUGE help today. My dad works for Prairie Land John Deere and they provided the pop and water that we iced down in the bed of the Ranger...it makes a GREAT cooler! He helped arrange things for our guests and took pictures. My mom helped me get the snacks around and arrange the table. She also ran into town to pick up Brooklyn after preschool and took her to the Big M Steakhouse (aka McDonald's) for lunch, which was a special treat for her. I'm so lucky that my parents live close enough to help out and be a part of special things in our lives like this!

This is a picture of Damian and I with the current Miss Idaho. Her platform centers around promoting agriculture and she is such a sweetheart! It was such a beautiful day and things couldn't have gone any better!

What Damian does for FUN...

Damian's favorite bedtime snack after a long day in the field is a bag of microwave popcorn and a can of pop...usually Dr. Thunder (but that's a whole other debate). He has a long running contest to see how FEW old maids he can end up with when he gets to the bottom of the bag. His success rate increased greatly when we got our new microwave, but his long standing record has been 8...until now!

Count carefully and you will see that there are only SIX old maids left in the bag! He was incredibly proud and the first thing he said was, "That's probably blog worthy, isn't it?" SO, because I love my husband and love showing you how goofy he is even MORE, I am blogging his latest accomplishment! HA He is such a statistical guy that it cracks me up! This is the same man that said if he had realized they baled 984 bales in one day, he wouldn't have quit until they had baled 16 more bales, so they could say they baled 1,000 in 1 day! That was two years ago and I'm sure if you asked him he could tell you what day, what field and the model numbers of the equipment used as well.

He truly has an incredible memory when it comes to numbers and agriculture. If only there was a way to train his brain to remember to take out the trash, rinse his dishes after he eats and put his dirty clothes in the hamper, then I'd have it made! :-)

A Surprise Harvest

Last year a good friend of ours had the cutest little pumpkins for us to decorate at her sons birthday party. The kids thought it was great fun and they set them out on the front porch for decoration. Well, they sat there a LONG time, in fact they set there well into the winter. At some point Damian decided they weren't pretty anymore and dumped them into the flowerbed between the sidewalk and the garage. We hope to do some landscaping there yet this fall, but to this point nothing grows there but weeds. Anyway, this Spring as the weeds started to grow up, Damian went out to spray them and noticed this growing. He told me it looked like a pumpkin vine, so we left it to see what would happen. As we got some rain and sunshine our little vine began to grow...
and

GROW

and

GROW...



Eventually our 'little' pumpkin vine grew all along the flowerbed and around the corner. This doesn't even depict it in it's full glory, before I finally had had enough the vine had covered the sidewalk and grown out into the yard! When I mowed over the weekend I sent the kids out to bring in the harvest and cut out the vine. (They thought this was GREAT FUN because they got to haul the vines out to the burn pile with Garrett's 4 wheeler.)




Aren't these the cutest little pumpkins ever?? I don't know why we got the green, bumpy gourds too, but Garrett thinks they are really cool. Since our Accidental Garden turned out so well, we might try the REAL THING next year!

Brooklyn's First Day of School...

Well, the BIG day finally came!! Brooklyn has been dying to start preschool and has been especially anxious since her big brother and sisters started several weeks ago. We picked out school supplies and a new, pink princess backpack. I TRIED to convince her to wait because I had seen a really cute monkey backpack at Target, but NO...it had to be THIS one! One thing about Miss B...she has her own sense of style and is not easily persuaded to take my advice.

For example, she has FINALLY decided that she likes to wear dresses, but ONLY if she can wear her pink Chuck Jones high tops or her white, pink and black Sketcher tennis shoes. So, when we shopped for clothes for fall I made sure EVERYTHING would go with PINK. And, YES, she wears her shoes of choice even with her dresses to church.

You might also notice that my precious girl is NOT wearing her glasses. Well, they have been MIA for about 3 weeks now, which has been very frustrating for me. I just refused to believe that they would not be found EVENTUALLY and I certainly did NOT want to spend the money to buy a new pair. Well, bless her heart, she found them in her dress up drawer in her bedroom earlier tonight! Yay!!
This is the traditional picture that all my kids take at some point while attending First Baptist Preschool. The BIG bear that helps you measure how tall you are getting.















This is Brooklyn's teacher, Miss Nettie. She wasn't here when my other kiddos were in preschool, but she seems really nice and Brooklyn just LOVES her!













The first week they were only scheduled to attend for ONE hour on ONE day. Brooklyn insisted that this just wasn't long enough, but as you can see she was pooped by the time we got home and had lunch. She fell asleep before I could even get her tucked into bed for her nap.












What will I be doing for 5 hours each week while Miss B is in school you ask?? WHATEVER I WANT!! Of course there will be plenty of errands to run and I hope to get in lots of exercise. Somehow I don't think the transition to kindergarten will be quite so easy...at least for me!

Fall is almost here!!

I can't believe that summer is over, school has started and I haven't blogged ONCE! I thought about it often, but pretty soon so much time had gone by and there were so many things to share that I couldn't decide where to start. SO, I'm going to start NOW and maybe I'll add some things from our summer over the next few weeks. We spent the summer swimming, playing baseball and softball, helping Damian (which mostly consists of helping move equipment and feeding the help), VBS, Church Camp, our FIRST EVER family vacation....the list goes on! I thought I'd share some pictures, so you could see how the kiddos have grown over the summer...

The first day of school

Michaela

Montana

Brooklyn

The whole rowdy bunch!

Damian planted about 200 acres of no-till sunflowers and they are doing very well and so beautiful! We managed to capture a few decent shots in between the girls squealing at bees! :-)

I hope everyone's school year is off to a GREAT start!

Wordless Wednesday

M&M Turn 11

I cannot believe my girls are turning 11 this year! Their birthday is actually this Friday and we are having a pizza and bowling party at Lakepoint with their friends. However, since our family is rather large, we had a family party on Sunday night with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. My brother, Jansen, his wife Kim and daughter Shye couldn't make it, but everyone else made an appearance.

This is the cake I finished decorating at, oohhh, 2:30 in the morning. It really didn't take that long, but my sister came down from Manhattan and spent the night, SO we spent as much time talking as decorating! ;-) LOVE YOU WHIT!!

This is Michaela getting ready to blow out her half of the candles...

Now it's Montana's turn. They shared a cake this year, but we sang Happy Birthday separately and let them blow out their own candles. Afterall, twins shouldn't have to ALWAYS share EVERYTHING!

Montana got the blue and green bat that she has been wanting for softball.

Michaela got a new, blue digital camera. She has taken at least 100 pictures since then!

We had a lot of fun eating cake and visiting with family. The girls are really looking forward to celebrating with their friends on Friday. However, June is such a busy month that several aren't going to be able to come. I'm guessing that means a sleepover is in our future later this summer!

Ahhh Summer!

This weekend we rode the Ranger down to the creek just south of our house. It's such a beautiful place to visit and the kids had a great time swimming. I drive the kids down there often, but prefer swimming when Damian is with us to protect us from all the wildlife. This weekend we saw some fun critters...crawdads and the cutest baby turtle...AND some not so fun critters...two snakes. Well, the snakes pretty much ended the first trip for me, but I had forgotten all about them by the next evening, well, sort of! ;-) Here are some pics of the fun time we had.

My Hard Workin' Man

Damian has been planting soybeans all week, starting most mornings by 7 am and not get home several nights until 1 am. He had hoped to finish with the soybeans by the first of June, so he could focus on getting the brome put up right. It looks so beautiful this year! If he has a good week, he should finish in 3 or 4 days which won't put him too far behind schedule.

This is Damian's new Air Seeder. He has gone 100% no-till which is why there is so much plant growth still in the field. It provides good ground cover to hold in moisture and help prevent soil erosion. It is also very good for lowering the fuel bill, since he doesn't have to work the ground numerous times prior to planting.






Damian forgot to take his lunch, so the girls and I loaded up in the Ranger to take him something to eat. We sent Brooklyn in the tractor with Daddy while M&M and I went and got the pick up and the seed cart from the last field. The girls dropped me off at the truck and drove the Ranger back to where Damian was and I drove the truck. I wish I was quicker with the camera because a HUGE deer jumped the fence and crossed the road right in front of us...beautiful! I guess I was focusing on the girls driving without me sitting right next to them. Makes me kinda nervous! They did a great job, though, and after Damian filled up with seed we took the Ranger and the truck back to the house because we would be in town by the time he was ready to move everything home.

This all happened on Thursday, which was a very busy day for us. After leaving the field we got around and headed in for gymnastics in Augusta, then to El Dorado for part of Montana's softball game until time to take Garrett to his baseball game which was back in Augusta. Damian finished his field in time to make it in to the game. He isn't able to make it to many this time of year, so Garrett was very happy to see him! After Garrett's game we went and watched our friend Quinten play. It was a lot of fun and a much faster paced game than machine pitch! We finally headed home about 10:30, lucky for us we got to sleep in on Friday! Yay!!




The only disappointment was missing the last half of Montana's game. AFTER we left she hit a triple AND a double! The closed a 14 run spread and ended up losing the game by only 1 run. Next time I'm sure we'll take 'em! ;-)

A little bit of what we've been up to...

I really intended to post all of this as it happened, but as often happens at the end of the school year, I have been overwhelmed with things to do, so blogging just wasn't a luxury that I could afford. This should catch everyone up on the happenings at our house, though.

She's caught!! Montana evidently saw the camera out and couldn't resist capturing a self-portrait. What a sweet surprise when I uploaded my pictures tonight!



Garrett bought me a special present at the AR STore. Aren't they beautiful?? He made sure to point out that they were fashion earrings and was so proud when he gave them to me!
...so being the loving, supportive mother that I am, I told him I would wear them to his "Big Show" that night. The things that we moms will do for our kiddos! I made sure everyone sitting remotely close to us knew that they were a special present from Garrett!
The BIG SHOW is a tradition in Mrs. Dyer's K-1 class that has been around for well over 20 years. She always buys the kiddos costumes that match. This year it was a country theme, so the boys all wore red T-shirts and jeans and the girls wore white T-shirts and cut-off jean shorts with red bandana-print belts. They jump rope, sing and dance...they even dance with girls! Garrett was the only boy that had TWO dance partners. Evidently he's quite the lady's man! LOL The little girl on the right is actually a second grader and his 'girlfriend' at the moment...whatever that means in the first grade.

Here is Garrett after the show with his best bud Cole. I'm sure they are an ornery pair at school!A few evenings ago, Montana was out shooting hoops when she began screaming for me. When I went outside I found this waddling across the yard. Aren't they the creepiest looking things?? I really can't stand them! He appears to have some battle scars from the dogs, but may have Montana's screams to thank for saving his life. Once she started in, he did a 180 and hurriedly headed the other way! You never know what crazy critters will show up at our house!

Damian has been hard at work trying to get crops in the ground now that it is finally drying up. Hay season is right around the corner, so he really needs to get the planting done. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of him planting corn, as I have been so busy running kids all over creation, but hopefully will get some pictures of the soybeans going in. He has a new air seeder that he is using, so he will want a picture for the scrapbook. He is worse than a kid with a new toy! LOL He is also in the process of adding onto each side of our huge pole barn out back, but that is put on hold since it's time to be in the field. If you have been to our house, it is the barn with the BIG KSU Power Cat on the north side. No fear, Heather, he numbered the pieces, so that the Cat can be put back up when he is done! This is always a trying time for us as he pretty much only has time to work, eat and sleep...often eating WHILE he works...I just pray he doesn't SLEEP while he works! I'm thankful that he is such a good provider, though, and able to do what he loves! God is so good to us!

Have a wonderful holiday everyone!!

All She Wants To Do Is DANCE!!

This morning Brooklyn decided she wanted to be a Rockstar! She put on quite a show for me and all her little friends...Elmo, Ernie, Anthony, etc. She has found the perfect place to stand in her bedroom where she can watch herself in the mirror. It's important to perfect the performance ya know! ;-)

First, she has to be sure her clothes and hair reflect her personal style and that her hair is down, so she can flip it when necessary.

This is her telling me all about how she can brush her hair herself and put in her own hair clip.


Today she rocked out to High School Musical on her Wiggles guitar with the custom green ribbon guitar strap. The strap was a necessity, so she can play, sing and dance all at the same time. It's tough being a one-woman-show!