Our Weekend Guest

 

Lucky Grampa and Gramma had a very special guest for the weekend.  It is always fun when any of the grandkids come for a visit.  This young man seems to think he is as tall as Gramma - had to prove to him that he's not quite there yet!!

 

 

 

 Then we took his picture with Grampa.  He had to admit that he has a ways to go to get anywhere near close to being as tall as Grampa.

Love you to pieces, Chase.  You can come anytime!!!

Have a good week - STAY COOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Love to all,
Gramma and MOM

Happy Birthday to the Aunts

On Saturday we went to Rock Valley to help these three lovely ladies celebrate their birthdays.  Grandpa Kramer had 14 siblings and only these 3 are left - there are 5 in-laws still living (only one couple).  Aunt Marge (one in the middle) bought them almost look-alike tops to wear and with their gray/white hair, you sure can tell they are sisters.

 

I had a nice time visiting with my cousins and wishing each of these ladies a very happy birthday.  Actually only one has a birthday in August, one in September and one in October.  Aunt Marge's family put on the party.

 

Aunt Alice (left) will be 85 in September, Aunt Marge will be 80 in October and Aunt Hody will be 87 on August 22.

 

Have a good day!!!
Love,
Gramma and MOM

Turner County Fair

As you know, dad and I took the motorhome and went to the Turner County Fair last week.  We arrived at the campground Sunday afternoon - Uncle Rich and Aunt Henrietta were taking a nap so we were very quiet setting up.  We went to the fair for the FREE supper and ice cream and the gospel music.  The music was OK - seemed like a very nice family but not really used to doing a concert.  Afterward we came back to the campground for a fire and roasted hotdogs!!  Rich said they were some of the best hotdogs he's had in a long time - must have been the fire because the hotdogs were nothing special.

 

 One of the fun things we found out when we got there was that Kaleb Lunstra (Mary, his mom) was Chase's daycare lady for several years) was showing both goats and pigs in the 4-H arena.  We had to be at the fair both days by 8:30AM to watch him.  It was fun and very interesting - had never watched them judge either of these animals.  With the pig, the only thing they use is a stick and just tap them on the side of the head to get them to move where they want them to go.  Goats are another story - they pretty much go where they want to.

 They even had a pen for dad, just in case I couldn't handle him.

 Uncle Rich heard about a swinging bridge in the town of Marion which was about 8 miles away.  Dad overheard some people talk about living in Marion so he asked where the bridge was - good thing he asked because you had to turn next to Bubb's Bar and go in an alley and then straight ahead was the park.  It was a neat bridge.

 This is dad consoling me because he was jumping on the bridge and the water came right up through the boards and I had no idea how deep the little creek was.  I should have learned to swim when I was a kid so I wouldn't be so frightened now.

 There was a little park with a merry-go-round that dad was riding on.  He even rode it without hanging on - I hope you're impressed!!!!!

Just returned from a nice, quick supper at Arbys with my very favorite 12-year old and his mom.  Dad is taking a nap since we worked today and I'm going to go work on one of my projects.  I'm slowly getting them finished.  I wrote 6 cards today so only have one left to write this week.  I'm back to writing a "to do" list for the week - I find I get so much more accomplished when I do that.

Have a super, duper week.

Love to all,
Gramma and MOM

Our Weekend



Yesterday (Saturday) Dad put a door in Amy's upstairs bathroom and I had planned to paint the upstairs closet doors.  Well, I had told Chase I thought we should clean out his game room instead.  He "kinda" agreed; however as we were working, he says, "You really think I need to go through every shelf and tub, don't ya?"  I said YUP - keep working.  This is the end result - we even vaccumed the floor because we could see it.  Good job, Chase!!!!!  He did make the comment that he'd rather be doing this with Auntie Dee cause she's nicer.  (I was nice too - I didn't make him throw out hardly anything!!)

 

Dad and I had an awesome day today - totally unplanned!!  We got up late because we didn't get home until 10:00 last night so we didn't have breakfast with Aunt Jen and Aunt Jan.  Dad got up first and said, Let's go to Hardees for breakfast so we did.  He was asking why the aunts were going to breakfast so early and I told him that a friend of theirs was pitching horseshoes in a tournament at McKennan Park.  He said he'd never seen them pitch horseshoes before and thought that might be a fun thing to do, so off we went to the park.  Aunt Jan's friend, Will, is in his late 70's and won one game and tied one game while we were watching.  It was very interesting - dad really enjoyed it and asked Will's wife lots of questions. 

My pictures somehow got all mixed up when I downloaded them so you'll just have to read about my day and then put together the pictures.

Jen and Jan said they thought they might go to the threshing bee at Humboldt after horseshoes  because Uncle Glen was using his new (old) corn sheller and I hadn't seen it yet so off to Humboldt we went.  Maggie was helping her father with the shelling - she said she was there in the morning while they were threshing but nobody would let her help.  When I asked why not, she said just because she was a girl. 

We took a little ride around the grounds on a "people mover" - I wanted to go on the one being drawn by the horses but they didn't stop where we were waiting.  We watched a team of horses cut wheat and tie the wheat in shucks - I had never seen that before.  When the tractor parade started, so did the rain.  We sat in the van for a while but they ended up canceling the parade because of the rain.  Then we decided to go visit my cousin who lives by Humboldt - found his place very easily and had a lovely visit with him - Kathy was gone for the afternoon.  Ended up at westside Dennys for dinner and then home to pack the motorhome so we can leave right after church tomorrow.  This was what we had planned to do today along with some housework - oh well, the packing still got done and the cleaning will wait.  It was a VERY GOOD day with my favorite fella.                                     

 Two of my favorite farmer wanna-bees:

 couple of ringers - they say that at the national tournament, the throws average 95% ringers

 Will is the fella in the blue shirt - he has been the state horseshoe champ several years.

 Can you believe it - actual physical labor

That was our weekend - hope yours was as great as mine.  Amy, you did an awesome job of putting together your cupboard - proud of you!!!!  Hope you had a lovely dinner today with your #1man.  (Chase is still a young man, right?)

It's thundering out - hope it rains all night!!!!
Love you all,
Gramma and MOM

PS:  Thanks for the new background, Miss Holly - you are the very best!!!

Our Yard

Last weekend was Quartzite Days in Jasper and no, DeAnn, they did not have goat races this year.  They had turtle races but we didn't get to see them.  We did, however, have the chance to take a quarry tour.  I've always wanted to take this tour because I thought you weren't allowed to go into the quarry area except during their special days.  It was very interesting - not nearly as large as I had expected.  Found that quartzite is the hardest stone around - much harder than granite.  They make counter tops, grave stones, pavers, signs and benches and yard signs, etc with their stone.  It was a great tour and I'm glad we went - we even got samples.

 

 We took this young man with us on the tour - as you can tell, he's not all that wild about having his picture taken any longer.  From Jasper, we went to Pipestone fair.  Had a nice afternoon watching the draft horse show, the ribbon auction and touring the various livestock barns and then watching a ranch rodeo in the evening with the rest of the Koeles.

 Thought I'd take some pictures of dad's flowers this summer - they are beautiful.  Here's the front door - I think the chair would look better painted terra cotta like the front door but haven't gotten that far yet.

 If you look closely at this picture,  there's a small evergreen tree in the front.  This is Chase's tree that he brought home from school when he was in elementary school.  Grampa says it should probably be transplanted this fall so he said we'll bring it to the farm and plant it in memory of "Grandpa Ken".

 The gal next door planted some type of vining fruit between our two lots where there used to be a hedge row.  There are lots of blossoms but no sign of anyfruit - I don't think she'll have a big crop this year.

 

 This is the view from my front window - isn't it pretty?  This pot of geraniums almost look fake.

That's it for this week.  Dad and I are heading out to the Turner County Fair on Sunday afternoon and will be there for four days - not sure how much time we'll spend at the fair or just sightseeing in the area.  It'll be nice to get away and do nothing for a few days.

Have a super week!!
Love,
Gramma and MOM