Life lately

It's felt really busy lately! 

We had a big project to take down a tree, and of course I can't find a better "before" picture, but that pine has been growing up into the maple for however many years and it was super bushy at the bottom and bugged me. (this pic is after Doug already cut all the bottom reachable limbs off)

So Doug's buddy and my dad came over and a neighbor we all worked to get it down, and then trim up the maple. Also rehomed my crazy forsythia (the pretty yellow one in the pic there) to my mom's house and cut down a lilac that died who-knows-why last year. 

After getting rid of all the brush and limbs and logs, the next goal was to clean up this "grove" area. So nearly every naptime and after kids in bed, before dark, night has been devoted to this task and it is exhausting. 

Also going on: fun with MagnaTiles

And this boy is doing a 7 week beginners soccer class. 

And planting fruit trees. Here's us pushing 3 trees to the Jeep and then thinking... hmmm... where shall we put these exactly?? 

Luckily we only live 3-ish, very slow, miles away as these babies rode on my lap and on the center console sticking out the sunroof on the way home. We got a lot of looks!

Progress picture of the grove with the brush/other small trees gone and hours and hours of roots and weeds hand cleared from the ground. 

Utilizing my last year's birthday present of my leaf hands!

So just went outside to water the fruit trees and saw a deer print in the ground. 

It went something like this:

oh hey, a deer print!

oh the prints are walking over to my apple tree...

wait a minute a bunch of the leaves and flowers are gone!!!

Doug, emergency! We need to perimeter the trees tonight!!

So Doug has been at our college ministry group and is stopping by Walmart on his way home at 10pm to get stakes and fishing line so he can work by headlamp-light to perimeter the trees. Sigh, such is the life of the "farmer" I guess. 

Wisconsin Road Trip

Mom, August and I took a weekend road trip to Wisconsin last weekend. My mom is from there, one sister still lives there and another close by in Illinois and another in Iowa. All the sisters returned to Wisconsin for the weekend since we were coming and we had a nice little visit. I was worried about taking August on the 8 hour car trip, but he actually did pretty well. Napped, looked at himself in the baby mirror, and kicked happily for hours. Of course taking him out every couple hours for a new diaper, nursing, and to stretch his little legs.

When we got there we just did a lot of visiting, we went out to the farm and looked at baby calves, and of course we did a lot of eating. Good times.

Some trip pics:

August with his grandma, great aunt Judy and great aunt Charlotte

My grandparents farm. They are both gone now so the land is still being farmed by Uncle Lowell. I still love to go there, climb up in the haymow, smell the smell of farm and manure, brings back good old memories of playing there with my siblings and cousins. I miss my grandparents.

The grave of great-great-grandpa August who was the farmer that came from Germany.

Carver's rock, this is what's left of the blacksmith shop of another great-great grandpa who rescued some people out of the stream who were drowning.

baby on a hay bale

baby calf

August wasn't too sure about sitting on the tractor with great-uncle Lowell

He was happy to see daddy again.

The trip home was a little worse. We left later in the day so we missed prime morning nap time for him. Then when we got back over the Michigan state line mom noticed a tire was leaking air. So we pulled over and got a plug put in a nail hole by some dealership that was about to close. They said we'd make it home. But 20 minutes later it was leaking again. Now all the tire stores we closed. We made it to autozone and got a can of fix-a-flat. That lasted another exit until leaking again. Mom's new car didn't come with a donut, instead it has this stuff it injects into the tire (like fix a flat) and fills it up with air. So we finally tried that. And it worked! We made it 80 more miles on that, but we were praying every mile! And August was of course screaming a good half hour just to add to the fun. Even Bob Marley could not soothe him and that almost always works. I sat back with him rubbing his head until he finally fell asleep. We got home very late. I had to work in the morning and mom was going to babysit so she slept over. We had the air mattress set up. The next day I went off to work and later mom told me the air mattress had leaked and she was sleeping "like a hot dog in a bun." :( kinda funny, but sorry mom! Maybe someday we'll have a real guest room!

Daddy and August thought it was snug as a bug!