The farm

Ok, I am a bit behind on my posts...not too sure where all the time went, but all I can say is that it went fast!!! Well, we're back. Titus must have matured in these two weeks, because I haven't got much on him. Oh well, I hope you enjoy catching up anyways cuz this one's gonna be a doozie!

We went to Tim's grandparent's house (the farm) for a week, almost 2 weeks ago now (WOW!!! Am I that far behind???). We had a great week and were even able to spend some of it with Tim's parents as well, which was nice. The last 10 minutes or so of the trip is all on gravel roads, and our rule is that the kids can unbuckle and "drive" anytime we are on the gravel.
The boys take it pretty seriously, but we would be sunk if we were forced to rely on the attentions of this 4 year old. She drives like she rides her bike...looking the wrong way! She was all over the road!
One of the first things that the boys wanted to do was to get the squirt guns out that Levi got for his birthday and have a little water fight. By the end of it Elijah was one of the winners...

Levi was quite the sharp shooter...
and Tim and I were soaked. I never intended to be part of the water fight (yes, that's a white cotton shirt I am wearing), but the boys (Tim included) had a different plan. It was the "soak mommy as much as possible" plan, and with 2 1/2 men implementing the plan, it worked (Levi was partly committed to his mommy and partly to the boys).
The best part of the water gun fighting was when grandma and grandpa got to the farm and Elijah and Levi turned their attentions to GrandpaGrandpa was great!!!
Elijah was spent by the end of that battle, but I do believe they had too much fun to let that ruin the day!
However, Levi, who struggles with his attitude at times (all times), was tired of being squirted, so he moved himself to the front yard to enjoy another of his birthday gifts...a dud if you ask me, the snake, that is. This was a 10 ft or so long snake that has holes poked in the length of it and hooks up to the hose for the water to come out. The water pressure must have been lacking, to say the least, because the water squirted out only 6 inches or so. I stood on the snake's head and forced a bit of pressure and it was much better. The water was above Levi's head, but who wants to stand on a snake's head the whole time? I did so for a few minutes (that motherly obligation) and then went inside to cool off. That little boy must have stayed out there for close to half an hour by himself playing in the water, pretending he was walking in and out of fire, walking a rope that's hanging above hot lava. You name it. He makes his own imaginarium out of everything (minus the science).

Later on in the week, I got the novel idea to put a swing up in one of the big trees out front. How many years have kids been a part of that farm and there has been no swing??? Unbelievable (not really). So, I went fishing around in the machine shed and found some rope. Grandad wasn't home at the time, but when he did finally see the rope we found, there weren't any expletives, so we assumed he was ok with it. Well, now there are 2 swings and a rope and though I cannot figure what took us so long to get them there, they look great. The kids had fun on them as did the adults, once we decided that the tree limb actually would hold us up!
Levi and grandpa were too busy to test out the swings for us,
So we got Eden to do it instead. When it was all said and done, grandad wondered where the deer hunters were going to hang their deer to drain them. I hope he doesn't cut the swings down. Oh well, either way, this was a job well done and well enjoyed!

I don't have any pictures for this, and who would, but we went into town and Tim's grandma got almost all of Elijah and Levi's school supplies, shoes and some clothes. Aren't grandparents (or in this case, great grandparents) great?!? We didn't even have to ask and they helped us out so much! Many thanks to them! Too bad they haven't entered the computer age yet to see this.

We went to a nearby park a couple of times to enjoy the beautiful weather, have a picnic, play tag at the playground, play kick ball, frisbee, running bases and of course, swing on the swings. Grandma did great on the swings with Levi. Neither of them fell off!!! It was so fun to watch how much they both enjoyed themselves.Micah could have stayed in her swing forever, I believe, though we did let her out. Guess what she did (if you have small children and you go to parks much at all, you know)? She went straight for the fiber of mulch! Mmm, mmm good! Now, the farm is in Adeline, I believe, with a population of 120 (I thought it was more like 460 but Tim tells me differently), so I am fairly confident that the park isn't used by much more than us, some animals and the bugs and so the mulch was probably safe enough to gnaw on. Besides, you know her chewing on it bothered the grandmas more than me, so don't worry, she was rescued! On one visit to the park, the boys asked to ride their bikes to it and I said yes, for sure. Tim had to be convinced a bit, but ended up letting them after driving to where they could start riding, and then we followed behind them the rest of the way.It ended up being about a mile that the boys rode on this dirt road, and Levi said his feet hurt too much to ride anymore, so he walked his bike up the hills and rode down them. How much sense does that make? He didn't quit, in the end, so I was happy.
Eden had earlier declared that she wanted her training wheels off. Remember when I said she drives like she rides her bike??? We accommodated her wishes, even though we knew better. She is a leaner who likes to look behind her and talk to whoever happens to be riding their bike near her. She lasted all of one trip around the basketball court, and then another one because "we didn't take those training wheels off for nothing." Then she was done. Rather, we were done. Truth be told, she was done even before we started. I still managed to get my hopes up a bit. Silly, huh!?!
AWhile at the park, Eden kept bringing me leaves and weed flowers and saying, "Do you know why I love you?" and then she'd hand me the greenery as an answer to her question. Sweet, yes, but one time she handed me a dried up brown something or other that had one of those earwigs on it. Yuk! Sorry to say, I didn't keep that one. Well, I didn't really keep any of them, but those I threw down fairly quickly.

When we went back to the park for a picnic, we talked grandad into coming with us. He is a homebody to say the least, but he decided to change into his dress overalls and nice boots and hop into his truck to follow us to the park. While we were there, he was actively involved with the kids for several minutes, and that's saying a lot!!! We also got to witness Levi's upper body strength...seriously, this kid has a six pack and I guess you'd call them bb guns on his arms. At any rate, he is ripped for a little boy. Little Hercules. Just wait until he actually believes he's as strong as he really is.

Later, we hiked through the cornfield with Levi as our guide. It didn't matter that you could see the trees in the distance above the corn to help guide you from getting lost in the hundreds of acres, I couldn't keep the feelings of getting lost out of my mind. Nevertheless, we followed that little boy as far as he led, and we ended up on the lane coming into the house. If I was good at estimating, I would say it was around a half mile or so through the corn all said. Not bad.

One other thing that the boys like to do is shoot the BB gun. Elijah is pretty good at hitting his target and Levi seems to get it sometimes too. Since his brothers got to shoot the gun, we had to let Titus get his little hands on it too. He got the Indiana Jones/cowboy hat, to make it official and Tim helped him shoot his first BB gun shots. He looks far to comfy handling that gun!

The week was over almost as quickly as it had begun, so we got ready to go home. The trip home isn't quite a 3 hour drive, but we still make sure to leave after dinner so the kids can sleep on the way.

Is this an Olsen face, or what?!? Tim's parents live 20 minutes from us, so we travel together. Not very long into the trip I had to make a pit stop...sorry, I wasn't feeling well. I didn't know how long I was going to be, so I actually brought a book in the stall with me. All was going well, until, I guess I was in there a bit long and someone new in the bathroom since I sat wasn't too sure if there was someone in my stall or not, so she gave the handle a bit of a tug and sure enough the door opened. She shut it right away, but it never latched again, so there I am, facing the ajar door that would open a bit and close every time someone would enter or exit the bathroom. Needless to say, I ended my library time early and we headed off again. Meanwhile, I requested that Titus get moved over to grandma and grandpa's van because he was on a sugar high or something. ?He was so loud (a Cain family trait) and he'd poke Micah and he took off his sandals to repeatedly beat the bug/fly that was on the window, even though his short little arms couldn't get the shoe that far. Grrrrr. We did save my nerves and sent him and Levi over to grandma and grandpa's van. Not too sure why we didn't start out that way.

It was a great week full of fun and much activity and we cannot wait to go again. In the meantime, we will survive, I hope, until school starts, which is only a couple of weeks away.
tick tock. tick tock. tick tick tock...