Fun Day at the Apple Orchard

This past weekend we had perfect Fall weather.  I babysat Diane's girls Sat. so it seemed like a great day to take them to the apple orchard at Ft. Dodge.  A couple of years ago they redid their outside play area for kids and it's now called the Back 40 Playground.  It's great!  So many fun things to do.  The girls liked this huge pillow like thing that looks like a silage pile that you take your shoes off and bounce on.  I just had to keep laughing watching everybody on this thing, especially Camry.  She was one of the smallest kids on it and kept getting bounced all over but she was constantly smiling and laughing and going back for more. 

the cow train

Their next favorite thing was the cow train.  It was a short but fast ride.  The sign said kids under 4 had to ride with an adult but later we found out they didn't enforce that. 

these guys know each other - cute!

this was a great slide made out of tile

made it to the top of Tire Mountain

They really loved the corn pile too.

Yep, that was me - "on the go"! 

This was my first post with pictures from the new laptop.  This seems to have fixed the problem of not being able to enlarge the pictures when you click on them.

It's Ready and Waiting

 

The combine is ready and waiting!  Tim and Bill have been checking tires and everything else on all of the equipment.  We've still only had two rains this summer plus a tenth and a half Thursday.  The corn and beans are turning - later than usual due to all the rain we had in the spring and getting everything planted late.

Pretty sunrise I watched from the kitchen window recently. 

Large Gopher at Work??

A week or so ago Bill was doing a bunch of digging so he could hook up the water line to the shed.  Had to dig down to the house basement floor to hook into the water line and then over to the water line going to the shed.  Making a nice mess of our side yard again.  Check out the one picture when he's down in the trench and it looks like the wall is going to cave in on him.  Tim was there to call 911 if it did!  

  

Fun with our Niece & Nephew

Recently Bill's mom had a couple of the grandkids at her house for a few days so Bill had a little shadow most of the time - one who asks LOTS of questions!   I didn't see him except for a couple of minutes one day so no pictures, but one of the days Peggy was going to Bible Study so I asked if Taylor would like to come hang out with me and she said yes.  

We walked down to the creek and across it and threw rocks in it and she waded in it.  We looked at Uncle Bill's shed.  I asked if she wanted to bake something and she requested that we make peanut butter fudge.  Luckily I had Aunt Jan's recipe that she makes in an electric skillet that I knew was easy and good so we made that.  We went downstairs and looked at all the cards and stuff.  And then ran out of time.   I'm sure her parents would probably let me borrow her most any time!  

The next day the three of us went to "coffee" at the library to hear the program which was Luke Dahl from our town talking about and showing pictures of his service as medical personnel on a Blackhawk helicopter in Afghanistan.  Very interesting.

stirring peanut butter fudge

Did you all see the Blue Moon again a couple of weeks ago?  Always fun to watch it rise.  Pictures just don't do it justice - at least with my camera.  

Blue Moon rising behind our house

I've caught a few beautiful sunsets this summer.  Here's one:

sunset from the front of our house

 
 

Miscellaneous

Hello - I'm typing this from my new Windows 8 laptop!  This is a good thing to be finally using it!  Right now I'm working on getting icons on the Start screen for all of the main things I use all the time.  Getting rid of an old familiar laptop is like getting a new cell phone, jeans or anything else like that - you have to get it all nice and comfy like your old one was.  I'm liking this one already because the battery says it'll be good for six hours and it's staying cool on my lap.

I've had a long time Stampin' Up! Demonstrator friend from southern Illinois here with us until yesterday.  She got here last Thurs.  I took her to West Bend to see The Grotto and shop, we walked on the Three Rivers Trail, went out to eat in Humboldt and did lots of stamping which was great.  I miss all of my stamping friends.  Yesterday afternoon I had a P.E.O. committee meeting in Emmetsburg and went from it to get something to eat with the friend that rode with me, and then we went directly to our regular P.E.O. meeting last night in Pocahontas and got home at 10:45.

Mom is going to have a visitor from Germany this week who is also a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator there so this morning I boxed up lots of my sample cards and 3-D samples to send to Mom's for Mona to look at and take back to Germany with her and got that to the post office before it closed at 11:30.  (our town's post office was one that the hours were cut back to half days and open one hour on Sat.)  

This morning I went to the program at the library and the guys finished up here with the spray foam insulation in our new shed.  I'll blog about both of those soon.  Bill went to a big equipment auction in Pocahontas hoping to get some shelving and a fuel barrel for the shed.  He just got home and was able to get most of what he wanted.  Going back now with Tim to load and bring it home. 

The other big things to figure out with this laptop are getting Microsoft Office transferred from Bill's laptop to mine, then transferring all my Word & Excel files from my old one to this laptop plus pictures AND a biggie is finding out how I'll download pictures from my phone and camera to this one - so I can do my blog posts.  Wish me luck!     

Evening of Stamping

One of my Stampin' Up! customers recently asked me if she could bring her five oldest granddaughters to our house to show them my craft room and lots of stamped cards and other fun things.  I have lots and lots of card samples, gift bags, Christmas tags, gift card holders, etc. so had them all out on tables for them to look at.  One whole table was all Christmas stuff.  After they ooo'd and ahhh'd, I had them make a birthday card using several accessories, a bookmark and a refrigerator magnet.  

My friend, Terri, came too (front row on right) because she had helped at school when some of these girls were just little girls - about six years ago!  So it was fun for them to see each other again.  Terri got excited about stamping too.  She's a card and note sender and says she loves paper so I know she'd love making her own cards to send.  She thought it was fun getting together to stamp with others too.

Freezing Corn

While my mom was here recently, our sweet corn happened to be ready, and it was good this year.  Tim and Bill had planted 16 rows with the planter for the first planting and 8 more rows to be ready a little later - in other words a LOT of sweet corn!  Tim puts an electric fence around it to keep the raccoons out which seems to work!

We went out in the morning and picked a bunch and shucked it in the field.  Mom had the job of taking silks off, boiling it and getting it into the ice water.  I used my electric knife to cut it off the cob and bagged it.  I still had some left from last year so just did 10 more small bags, and Mom went home with 8 quart size bags.  I don't remember it being a bad job last year, but the job went much faster this year with two of us.

I really like using the electric knife.  But I took it slow and easy.

And my favorite picture, the "strips" of corn.  I like eating these strips if you cut if off the cob right on to your plate!  Grandma R. had false teeth so she always cut her corn off and would ours too sometimes, and I always remember it falling in strips!

love strips of fresh corn!

Gilmore City Fun Days Parade

The same weekend I took the cookbooks to sell at the Gilmore City Farmers' Market, I was babysitting and took my littlest great niece to their Fun Days parade that Sat. morning.  She had fun picking up candy.  She and her sister are like their aunt and "love chocolate" (love it!).

This horse "lives" in our town in a couple's yard.  

Gilmore City Nursery float

  

These tractor pics are for you Harvey A.!  Wish you could click on them and make them bigger.  I don't know what has changed with that.

I loved this smiley Hardee's mascot, but our little one was scared of him until later when we saw the guy that was inside walking with the star off his head and she saw that it was a normal guy in there. 

Gilmore City Farmers' Market

You may remember I was on the committee that did the Rolfe Sesquicentennial Cookbooks.  We sold lots of them last Christmas and then during the sesqui celebration in July - but still have lots left.  So, I took them to a nearby town's Farmers' Market on a recent Fri.  This was their last market for the season and it was also during their Fun Days weekend.  Didn't have much luck - only sold one - but we were set up in the shade, there was a breeze and the other vendors had some good stuff to buy so it was a nice afternoon.

our cookbooks - $15

farm fresh eggs for $1.50

baked goods

cinnamon rolls, banana bread, Snickerdoodles

green beans (my fav) and peach jam

 

Great Labor Day Weekend

I'm so far behind on getting pictures posted of things we've been doing this summer that I hardly know where to begin.  And Bill says he doesn't know what he's done unless he reads it here!  ;)  

This past weekend was really nice.  We were invited to friends' lake house which was only about an hour away.  It was a nice, quiet lake with not many boats out and not very many houses around it even.  They grilled hamburgers and provided some other things and those of us that went pitched in.  I took deviled eggs and cream cheese cupcakes.  Peggy took a lemon fruit salad (got that recipe!) and a macaroni salad.  

Uncle Tim checking out one of the docks

We got to sit on their deck and enjoy the view and then those that wanted to went for a boat ride to see the area (really nice pontoon boat that holds 13).  Later those that wanted to go fast (me!) and kids that wanted to have fun went out again.  Nice, nice day.

kids riding on Big Mama (not really, but Big something - I forget)

sunset from the deck

The rest of the weekend we both got a lot done around here.  Bill has been moving rock up to the shed entrances now that the concrete is done.  Yesterday he got everything moved out of it to be ready for the spray foam insulation guys to do their thing in about a week hopefully.  He trimmed some dead branches from a big tree.  This tree got a little hot when we burned our old house so some branches died.   

I'm working on painting our screened porch that was painted yellow, when we built the house, instead of a tan that I wanted.  I'm having a very hard time getting the right color of paint.  The woman at the hardware warned me that it's very hard to get the tan color you want without it being pink and she was sure right.  Right now we have a pinkish tan screened porch - which is still better than yellow - I think.  Not sure what I'm going to end up with.

One of my stamping/demonstrator friends from southern Illinois is coming to visit me this Thurs.  Lots more summer fun on the agenda while she's here for a few days.