Sunday, November 30, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving

Our after-Thanksgiving tradition of breakfast at Mary Lou Donuts continues! Grammy Pammy, a self-proclaimed donut connoisseur, approved.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Klondike Dance Performance

It wasn't that long ago that we were pulling teeth to get Kari through a one-on-one dance routine with Allie at church.  This week, though, everything has changed.  The Klondike Middle School dance team offered a one day clinic to the elementary students and culminated with a performance at halftime during the 8th grade boys basketball game tonight.  Kari had a great time and I had fun observing junior high behavior in preparation for what lies ahead.






Tuesday, November 11, 2014

The Long Awaited Combine Ride

Friday was a great day... It was the day Bryce has been looking forward to for months, literally. Back in August, we again won a silent auction prize that allowed our son to ride in a combine with a local farmer - Mr. Morehouse.

So, you can only imagine how eager he's been recently as we routinely pass fields in Indiana being cleaned of their corn stalks. "Daddy, when is Mr. Morehouse going to let me on his combine?" "Mommy, is that field one that Mr. Morehouse works in?" "I think Mr. Morehouse is in that combine out there." And on, and on and on it's gone.

But Friday afternoon we found the very field and combine in which Doug Morehouse occupied. It's one of his smaller fields measuring roughly 150 acres. In total, he and his staff farm nearly 2,000. And for a mere 30 minutes, Bryce and his father sat in a pretty fancy 2010 John Deere combine and made 4 "swipes" through this field.



It was a pretty awesome experience for both father AND son. Mr. Morehouse has one of those combines that is GPS driven, requires very little steering but plenty of attention to be paid to his iPad and other computers.

Once the combine was filled, a tractor appeared next to us with a giant trailer to get help lessen the load we were carrying. This was the highlight of the day as Bryce was allowed to push the yellow button that dispenses the corn into the trailer.


While it was very enjoyable for us, I think Mr. Morehouse also found the intrusion a welcome break in an otherwise predictable day of farming. With two trips in the combine under our "city belts", we have actually been invited back for a Spring planting, too!














Sunday, November 2, 2014

A Frightful 2014 Halloween

Friday night's weather could have been one of the worst on record for a Halloween night.  20 MPH winds, blustery, and....SNOW!!!  Fortunately, we were in good company with our neighbors, and the Clawson's graciously hosted the Halloween party in their garage.



Bryce's costume this year, sadly, was straight out of the box from Amazon.  Kari, on the other hand, enjoyed helping me create her cupcake costume.  I found the idea here.






I was only able to get one short video.  Kari trick-or-treated down one side of the street and called it quits.  Bryce made it up and down both sides of the street, but we didn't venture beyond Windflower. Handing out candy was a much more desirable task Friday night than being outside even though we only had about five groups come to the house.