Bunnies & chickens

We have recently become friends with a family who lives on a farm outside Waverly.  They have a lot of free-range chickens and a litter of baby bunnies only a couple weeks old.  We paid a visit on a beautiful Saturday morning.  Emily enjoyed holding the bunnies much more than Lincoln.  He was more interested in chasing the chickens around with a bucket of corn.  They both helped gather about a dozen eggs, which we took home to eat, and they also helped feed & water the animals.  Of course, on the way home we got the expected, "Can we have chickens and bunnies?" question.  The standard answer: "No, that's why we go visit them at other people's houses."  :)

This hen is named "Mrs. Furry".  She is very tame.

Hair cuts

The kids & I headed to Denver tonight for hair cuts.  Emily needed a good trim, but decided to cut 4" off instead.  Lincoln wanted a "professional" cut.  I just needed my layers evened out a bit.  It's always fun to visit and catch up with Trudie!

August 2014 videos

7 years + 10 months

 

Emily has also done a lot of growing up this month.  From swimming to riding a bike to attempting to braid her own hair, she is no longer a little girl.  She has also decided she is totally over Hello Kitty.  She was so excited to pick out a new backpack that was "more like my style".  It turns out her "style" is anything besides an animated character. :)  We ended up ordering one online that came just in time for the first day of school.  She likes panda bears and has recently changed her favorite color from green to blue.  

Emily prefers a "sporty" look and recently started wearing full elastic headbands.  She was super excited to pick out some new soccer gear.  She's going to try recreational soccer this fall.

Emily also lost two more teeth this month and is now sporting a "holey" smile.  She pulled both of them out by herself late at night and surprised us in the morning.

 

Emily's favorite books right now are the Dear America series and anything Encyclopedia Brown.  While Lincoln likes listening to the radio at night, Emily's current music of choice is Mannheim Steamroller Christmas CD's.

Cousin fun

We spent the Saturday of Labor Day weekend in Waukee with Austin's family.  The cousins had fun playing with each other, going to the park and swimming with Grandpa & Grandma.

First day of 2nd grade

The school year really sneaked up on us this year, but after attending the open house, Emily was super excited to go.  She set her alarm for 7:00am and was dressed to the shoes by 7:05am.  She was disappointed we couldn't ride bikes to school for the first day because it was raining, but excited about her new lunch bag and panda backpack.  Her assessment of the day after school: "It was awesome!"

Slide

We spent Emily's last official day of summer enjoying some time at the park.

De Zoete Winkel

The kids got to spend a few days at Grandpa & Grandma Boote's while Austin & I attended and volunteered at the Global Leadership Summit at our church.  They had tons of fun going to the library and park, riding bikes, playing with cousins, helping on the farm and swimming.  They also got to take a trip to De Zoete Winkel "Frozen Sweets" frozen yogurt shop in Orange City.

Goodbye, cows

While back in my hometown for the funeral, we said another goodbye.  After milking cows for most of their lives and managing a very successful and well-respected dairy business, my dad and uncle have decided to sell the cows and transition into semi-retirement. 








Although we didn't live on the "home farm" growing up, I have many fond memories.  The most distinct is the summer I turned 16.  My job for those months was to do the morning milking of approximately 125 cows, bottle-feed approximately 20 calves and power-wash the parlor six mornings per week from 6:00-9:00am.  I gained so much respect for my dad and his vocation that summer.  My favorite part was helping pull calves.

Here are some other highlights of our goodbye tour:

The "shop" in the machine shed

No green tractors here!

Great Uncle Kevin's go-kart (they've never seen it actually run)

Riding the Kubota around the muddy yard

Feeding cows with Grandpa

Goodbye, cows.  Donsons Farm won't be the same without you!

Swimming!

After another unsuccessful attempt at swimming lessons last winter at the W, I was lucky to find a private teacher able to get some lessons in at the municipal pool before it closed for the season.  Emily has become so much braver and more comfortable in the water.  By the end of four lessons, she had passed the equivalent of two levels and was doing multiple strokes.  She also started going down the water slide.  I was so proud!  Lincoln also did well and passed another level.  He is still very hesitant about getting his head wet or putting his face in the water, but he loves floating around in a ring in the big pool or splashing around the kiddie pool.  I no longer feel like I have to hover over either of them.  There are some videos from an afternoon at the pool in the August play list.

National Night Out

Today the kids & I enjoyed the activities and food at Kohlmann Park for National Night Out.  The free event is sponsored by the Waverly Police Department.

Emily rides a bike!

We have struggled for three summers to get Emily to ride a bike without training wheels.  She had determined that she couldn't do it and would either purposely crash or just flat out refuse to try.  We had even acquired a small bike with the pedals removed to act as a balance bike to learn on.  Finally, this afternoon I told her I'd buy her a Razor scooter if she learned to ride without training wheels.  She thought about it and then got out the balance bike.  Within an hour, she asked to have the training wheels removed from her bike and started cruising up and down the hospital parking lot.  Who'd a thunk?!?  Here is the video proof...

July 2014 videos

7 years + 9 months

Emily comes up with all kinds of big ideas.  This month she wanted to put together a big backyard carnival and invite four families.  She made tickets and thought of rides and booths.  [Un]fortunately, she got distracted by RAGBRAI.

After watching "Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension" Emily has been making plans to make a sequel called "Across the 3rd Dimension."  She has cast herself as the ultra-cool Candace from the 2nd Dimension.

Who knows what she'll come up with next?!?

Adventureland

It's hard to believe, but I have never been to Adventureland in Altoona, IA, so I was excited to join most of Austin's family for a fun day.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  It took Emily a little while to warm up and figure things out, but she had a great time.  She even went on the log ride and a lot of water slides!  Lincoln talked big about going on roller coasters, but stuck to the kiddie rides and the lazy river with me.  His favorite ride of the day was the bumper cars.  A huge thanks to Grandpa & Grandma Lorenzen for a fun day filled with great memories!

Bremer County Fair

It's one of our favorite times of the year--the Bremer County Fair!  Now that the kids are older, it's even easier to stroll the two blocks to the fairgrounds and check out what happens to be going on.  It was an absolutely perfect week of weather.  The kids & I went five out of the seven days--sometimes more than once/day.  We spent four hours there on Tuesday alone.  We hit the food stands, completed the Clover Kids scavenger hunt, watched part of the dairy show, ate ice cream twice (Emily got popcorn from the Democratic Party booth 3x), watched several different demonstrations, attended the 4-H carnival, and of course, looked at all the animals.  The kids (especially Lincoln) desperately wanted to go on the midway rides on Tuesday, but I wouldn't let them since we were going to Adventrueland the very next day where everything would be bigger, better, cleaner and safer.  I'll probably let them take a little of their own money to waste when they show Andjelka around this weekend. :)

Petting Zoo

Make-a-frame workshop

Garden stand

Every year we seem to have an overabundance of something out of our garden.  This year it's raspberries and cucumbers.  I picked 21 giant cucumbers from our five hills last night.  I tried giving a bunch away.  Then I let the kids set up a table on the lawn to sell them.  They made $10.00 in 45 minutes before Lincoln started bawling as they fought over a "Minnesota" state quarter.  At that point I decided to shut 'er down for the day.  Emily is now scheming about other things to sell.  ;)

First 4-H project

Since Emily was a Clover Kid this year, she was able to take a project to the fair.  I didn't know exactly what to expect for her, but I was in 4-H for seven years, so I knew how to do a proper 4-H project.  We'd been trying to think of something for months, but it finally dawned on me to just let her take the "Upcycle Dolls" she had already made.  Emily picked some of her favorites, and I offered some suggestions to improve the display she had already made for the library.  She included some of her origami objects, and I got to play with my Cricut machine. :)

This was the final result:

I found out a write-up (i.e. goal card) is optional for Clover Kids, but I had Emily do one anyway complete with inserted pictures.  It was the first time she had typed up anything, and she did a great job!  She explained what upcycling is, talked about Camp Invention, mentioned her donation of items to the Upcycle Fair at the library (hello, citizenship!), cited the web site she used for origami instructions and listed two things she learned: It's cheaper and more fun to make things yourself, and it helps the environment to use things you might just throw away.  Then we did a practice session talking to a judge with me playing the role of the judge and Austin as an audience.

The "judging" itself was kind of a letdown.   It turns out a Clover Kids project is just a show-and-tell with the judge who sweetly says, "Boy, you've been busy!  What do we have here?  You did a great job!"  There were no deeper questions, and the judge hardly even glanced at the write-up.  The kids just get a participation ribbon and some coupons for the fair.  Afterwards, Emily remarked, "Boy, Mom, yours took a lot longer!"

Overall, it was a great experience, though.  I think Emily got a feel for what it's like to do a 4-H project, and she was very excited about having her stuff on display.  We're proud of our Clover Explorer!

Chicago

We chose Chicago as the destination for our family trip this summer.  Austin travels to Chicago quite a bit for work, so he's somewhat familiar with the city (although he doesn't go to the tourist attractions).  The kids have never seen a big city or a large body of water like Lake Michigan.  It had been 10 years since I had been to the Windy City.

Ready to roll!

We arrived Thursday night and checked into our hotel.  Friday was the 4th of July.  Our big activity of the day was Shedd Aquarium.  Both kids loved the water show.  They also got to touch several animals.  The video of Lincoln pretending to be a penguin is in the July play list.
 

We enjoyed lunch on the terrace with a gorgeous view of the Chicago skyline.

After checking out the swimming pool at the hotel, we experienced Chicago-style pizza.  It was late by the time we were done eating, so we sat down in Millennium Park to watch the fireworks display off Navy Pier through the trees.  We were far enough away that we barely heard the booms, but it was just fine. 

Before leaving the park we had to take a picture by "The Bean" (aka Cloud Gate).

It was a pretty short walk back to our hotel, although still very crowded.  Let's just say the kids got a glimpse of mass humanity. :op

Our second day featured a trip to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower).  We took the subway to Shedd Aquarium, so today we took the "El".  Lincoln was fascinated.  Riding the "train" was the highlight of the trip for him, although he said he preferred the underground subway because it went faster. :o)


The wait time to get up to the Skydeck was almost 90 minutes, but the line continually moved and there were lots of displays and different things to look at along the way, so it didn't seem that long.  We spent a long time enjoying the views of the city.  Emily later said the Willis Tower was the highlight of the trip for her.  Both kids were fearless on "The Ledge" which is a see-through plexiglass ledge that sticks out from the top floor.

Instead of taking the train again, we walked to the lakefront and took break by Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park.  Lincoln got a kick out of trying to feed the birds (see video in July play list).

Then we walked along the lakefront all the way to Navy Pier.  It was quite a distance (which we heard about), and we had to take several breaks, but we made it!  The pictures below are suppose to show how tired and miserable the kids were and then how happy they were to finally make it.  Navy Pier itself was very crowded because of the holiday weekend.  We just looked around a little before heading back to the hotel to go swimming.  According to my new FitBit Flex, we walked 6.75 miles that day!

We got an incredible deal on our hotel thanks to a contact Austin had.  We stayed at The Langham (the first 14 floors of the black building in background) downtown on the river right next to the Trump Tower.  I didn't realize until we got there that it was the #1 rated 5-star hotel in Chicago on TripAdvisor.  It was definitely the nicest hotel I've ever been in.  This was the lobby overlooking the river.



The swimming pool was on the 4th floor.  We spent a lot of time there.  The kids even got in a hot tub for the first time!

The room was over the top.  The kids got a real kick out of the turn-down service at night.  They also loved flipping the switch for the privacy glass between the bathroom and sleeping area.

 They also enjoyed the view out of our 8th floor window.

Despite the amazing accommodations, Emily's overall assessment was that she'd rather stay in a lower class hotel where we could eat [continental] breakfast.  We packed our own breakfast food and gave strict instructions about not touching anything in the well stocked mini bar or food drawers.  I think I might agree with her when it comes to family trips.  However, I have to say the complimentary Nespresso was superb! ;o)

Our last morning was spent at the Adler Planetarium.  I'm sad to say I wasn't terribly impressed.  We did get to see the cool Destination Solar System show in the domed Grainger Sky Theater.

We had to stick our toes in Lake Michigan before leaving.  It was COLD!

As we headed out of town, Austin showed us where the Concur offices are in Oak Brook, IL and the Marriott next door where he spends most of his time when he comes to Chicago.  We also had to take part in the Portillos experience.  It didn't disappoint!  (Okay, so it didn't disappoint me.  The chocolate cake was ahh-mazing.  The kids weren't too excited about the poppy seed hot dog buns.  Their loss.)

It was a fantastic trip.  We had great weather and the kids did awesome.  The highlight of the trip for me was seeing them experience so many things for the first time.  Great memories were made--and that's what it's all about!