A very windy night!

Monday morning we woke up to a massive clean-up day on the farm!  Very high winds during the night brought down two huge trees, one falling in to the other.  They were not tiny trees.  We really had no clue where to start so we began on one end of the farm and worked our way across, picking up seemingly a zillion sticks strewn every which way.  We had the little stuff picked up by noon and could barely stand straight after all the hours of bending over!  After lunch we started on the two big trees.  I was a bit overwhelmed and then our good friend and neighbor Craig came over with two forks to put on Mark's tractor and the two of them sawed and hauled some massive wood to our now huge burn pile.  I kept busy cleaning up the little stuff under all that big stuff.  What a tiring day, but with Craig's help we had the majority of it tackled!  All that is left is the huge log which we are still contemplating on how to remove from our lawn!  I hope that is the end of storms and wind for Iowa.  Enough already....

Now, what to do with huge "log" on the right?  Maybe we will just make seating for our bonfire area!

Two more videos

I found a couple more videos that I took from Drew and Kayley's stay at the farm!

A week on the farm!

Thursday, June 9th Drew and Kayley arrived with their parents.  Matt also arrived that evening.  This was the official birthday for Kayley who turned 3 on the 9th. 

Friday night we drove to Fort Dodge to visit Grandpa Butch who had a room at a hotel with a pool.  The kids enjoyed swimming and we all ate dinner at the hotel's restaurant, The Cellar. 

Saturday Megan, Kayley and I went to a shower for Brooke Swanson at Barb Peterson's home.  It was a lot of fun seeing everyone and Kayley was very good at the shower!  Following that we had Kayley's actual birthday party with gift opening and a delicious "princess" cake.  Grandpa Butch came to the farm for the celebration and spent the night with us.

Sunday Megan, Andy and Matt all headed home and Drew and Kayley stayed at the farm.  I was a bit concerned that they would get homesick for an entire week but they were little troopers and did just fine with grandpa and grandma.  We had a fantastic time!  The big hit for them was swimming in a little pool I bought for their visit.  When we weren't swimming we were driving the golf cart all over the farms, spraying water from the hose, picking up sticks, cleaning grandma's car from splattered bugs and playing pool in the basement.

This past Sunday we loaded up my car and I returned them to their parents in Peoria.  That is a five hour drive and they did great on that, too!  Drew got pretty excited when he started recognizing landmarks for Peoria and he said he was excited to see mommy and daddy!  I stayed that night in Peoria and left Monday morning for the return trip to the farm.  It is VERY quiet at our house now...too quiet for my taste!  :-)

Some videos and pics of our very fun week:

 

This video is pretty hilarious at the end!