Farmer girl went off to talk about her project with some judges.  They look at her extensive book of information on her fields that was created over the last two years.  They ask her questions and guess what, she actually knows the answers!  This is unlike her mama who has been around farming for the last 22 years and I wish I knew half of what this girl does!

Good luck today girl.  You got this!  Farm on!

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What’s a trip to Springfield without a trip to Scheels?  What’s a trip to Scheels without a ride on the ferris wheel and a spin through the presidential characters and maybe even sitting through a simulated Nascar race?

This year may have been the last on the ferris wheel for this boy.  Not a fan of stopping at the top.  Just like his mama I guess.  

Then these animated, moving, realistic, totally awesome and completely creepy figures of the presidents.  

Eeek.  Not sure he was a fan of them either.  

We did manage to spend a mere 3 hundo on running shoes for the big kids’ upcoming track season. Now THAT is scary!

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Before I get to feeling too badly and make you feel bad for him, and heaven forbid when he is older and reads this, I want to clarify.  He doesn’t miss out on a darn thing!!!  Not a thing.

Yes, he doesn’t get to do many of his own structured activities, but he does get to do cool things like work concession stands, hang out through praise band rehearsals, watch his siblings in various sporting events and learn so much from watching them and emulating them.

He is a happy boy and he makes us all so very happy too.  While working a track concession stand, he took a little break.  He came back into the building with this beautiful rock collection.  Gorgeous.  Thoughtful. Creative.  In his own little way.

 These were all in the pocket of his sweatpants.  Don’t ask me how they didn’t fall down around his tiny little hips under the weight of all of these rocks, but he managed to keep them up!

I’m a lucky mommy to have a kid that helps our his family an me so cheerfully, and even finds the magic in the rocks beside the concession stand.  

We somehow managed to leave all of these in the landscaping, but we did end up coming home with a Sour Patch Kid box and a box from Rice Krispie Treats.  Why?  Because they are “SO COOL MOM!”  Whatever makes him happy.  It’s not all about the structured activities.  Sometimes it’s in the littler things.

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Here they are working on a project about how nitrogen stays in the soil. Yep.  I can’t tell you much more about it, though I have asked lots of questions. I guess I just don’t share that passion so it doesn’t stick in my brain, but seeing moments like these between two of the people I love the most just warms this mama’s heart.

Besides that, somebody has to worry about the nitrogen and the weed pressure and the fertility and the runoff and the levels and the pH and all of that good stuff around here.  These two seem to be the perfect fit.

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He rode his bike to work, see it in the background? And oh ya, he picked out his own shoes. He probably worked 15 minutes and had 3 snacks and likely a potty break.  Love this little man.

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Well, our girl, being mature an all said….”let me think about it.”  Grr….come on, you are 9, just pick something girl!  And a few days later she said she wanted to show pigs.  Um….pigs?  We literally knew nothing about pigs.

And so it began…….fast forward about six years or so and a friend introduced up to livestock judging.  She was on a team, had a great coach and loved it.  It literally took one conversation and my girl was hooked.  It was her thing.  And off we went.  Another new venture.  We joined a team, the same one our friend was on and we drove our girl an hour and half to practices aka workouts.  We took her to competitions, we hung out at farms while she was with her coach.  We researched, we talked, we followed her lead.  

Last winter our girl’s team got third place in the Illinois State 4H Livestock Judging Contest.  The first place team gets to go on to compete at the American Royal in Kansas City.  The second place team goes on to compete at the National Western Livestock show in Denver Colorado.  Well, lucky for our team, the second place team had already been to Denver to complete for their one and only time, so the honor was passed to our team!!  Image the excitement!  We were headed to Denver!

In January of 2017 off they went to Denver to compete.  They, meaning not Mama and Daddy.  Just the team and their coaches.  Repeat not Mama and Daddy.  

Not US-Her. Alone without us.  This was another new experience for us.  Another example of our laser focused, sharp, confident and capable girl was off with her team to Denver for several days.  

Here they are….your 4th pace team. I’m going to post a link to the results here, not necessarily for you all (um, the 4 of you who actually read this) but for me, well us….to look back on and recall the excitement when our team did a very nice job representing Illinois!

Photo thanks to Sue!

You know what, our family maybe knows a little about horses.  I mean you could say horses are two or three generations deep around here.  But pigs, sheep and cattle.  Nope.  Our girl is figuring that out on her own.  And she is rocking it!  We are so proud.  Not of her performance (of course we are proud of that) but we are proud of her confidence, her poise, her drive, her determination and her passion.  She’s a gem. 

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This was one of those life changing trips for Great Grandma.  Her name is Dorothy.  We call her Dorty,  Dorty often spoke of her friends who lived on a cattle ranch in Oklahoma.  How “the boys” visited a few times in their childhood and rode the horses and met the ranch boys.  These “boys” are now in their 40’s and have kids and wives and a couple horses, pigs, dogs and cats of their own and run a nice little farming operation together in Illinois.   These boys are my husband and his brother.  I’ve seen photos of their tiny blonde toe heads horseback in expansive pastures of tall Oklahoma prairie some 30 plus years ago.  Adorable.

The grown farm brothers, well one of them, was able to visit with the ranch brothers on their Oklahoma ranch.  Grandma was over-the-moon happy to have reunited these two families, if only for a weekend.  Four generations now have fond memories of riding horseback in those OK pastures now.  And Dorty was happy. In OK. 

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It’s our little tradition to pack our trailers and trucks and campers and hotel rooms full of food and stuff, moms and dads and lots of kids.  And lots of food.  Did I say lots of food?  Lots of kids eat lots of food.  We set up shop at the Illinois State Fair!

Yes, it’s about showing the animals that we have been working on.

Yes, it’s the big crescendo before school starts.

Yes, it’s fair food, and 4H milkshakes.

But a big part of it is these 9 kids right here and how blessed they are to have each other in their lives.

See, their moms have been friends for at least 167 years.  There dads were all AGRs (fraternity boyzzzzzz) and friends (2 at ISU and one U of I alum, but an AGR is and AGR:) 

  You see, this crew, we are deep and wide and long.  A win for one is a win for all.  Likewise a tough loss for one in the ring echos through the camp.

These kids rush from the cattle show ring to the sheep and over to the swine ring watching each other do their thing. Each willing to wash, carry or trim or lead the other’s animal if needed.  Each loving each other in a genuine, unpretentious way that makes their mamas and daddies proud.  

Friends since birth.  Through thick and thin.

YEAH!  IT’S ALMOST HERE!!!  

ISF 2016!!

SSS

(Sorry so sappy, I blame it on these photos we shot last year that keep popping up.)

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You know what’s so great about running sports like track and cross country?  If you are into PC, close your ears—or eyes.  Running races are just all balls out.  Just pure, unadulterated, uncomplicated competition and grit.  Above is my girl.  Grit is her middle name.  She runs the mile, two mile and 800. She’s a tough cookie.  Tougher than me.  Don’t tell her that.  Wait, it’s probably pretty apparent to her by now….

This is my niece.  She ran the mile and 800. She really likes to run for fun.  Very cool to me, because, well I don’t think running is fun, but I wish I did.

And this is my boy.  It was his first year in track.  He ran the 800 and the mile.  I love his enthusiasm and how he strives to improve each meet.  He loves to run too.  

This is my baby at a track meet.  He frequents the concession stand and hangs out under the bleachers with other track sibs and makes stuff out of scrap wood and old tires.  This is their dining table.

And last but not least, this is our exchange student daughter.  She ran some short races like the 200 and 100.  What she likes most about track is hanging with her friends at the meets.  I love that about her!

Now adays, lots of kids time themselves with watches.  Kids these days!

Now, if only I loved to run as much as I love watching these kiddos run the world would be perfect. Well, or if watching these kiddos run burned calories for their number one fan too. 

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We aren’t Hoosiers either, nope, not from Indiana.  But my husband’s dad is a Hoosier, and thanks to a group of hoosiers dating back several generations, we get to enjoy this gorgeous, remote setting year after year.  It has been passed down several generations in his family and now our kids are the 5th generation of our family to lay their heads on the pillows in these sweet cabins. 

I plan to do a few posts about this…but Justin has gone here nearly every year of his life.  I’ve been going now for maybe 16 or 17 years of my 20 years being around this clan. The kids have gone every year with the exception of the last 2.  So, it was DIRE that we go this year.  We made some adjustments in our schedule, missed some stuff we like to go to, sucked it up and…..ahhhhh arrived in the Northwoods for a week of awesomeness.

These are the kids that ran the show with us this year.  Ages 6-17. We had 8 kiddos in these little cabins along with their parents and of course Mimi and Papa.  That was a party of 16! A marvelous, fun, energetic, giggling, planning, fishing, wrestling, talkative, silly, glorious party of 16!

Everyone got along for the whole week.  In close quarters.  I mean CLOSE.  Like sleeping inches from one another in a dark cabin with no electricity and very limited (no cell service) electronics. Poor Mitchell (the biggest of our brood) snoozed his nights away on a cot nestled at the end of two cots shoved together where the big girls slept, right at their feet.  This bed was inches from bunkbeds housing two more kiddos. Not a single complaint.  Not one from anyone.

These kiddos LOVE this place, “better than Disney” is what they say!

Our week was filled with sun glorious sun! See that tan (um burn) line on the little one there in front? We got burned, we got toasted, we got wet. Alot. 

After settling in and tidying up our accommodations after nearly a year of vacancy and stillness tucked in the bush on this island (think, sweep, check for spiders and mouse poop,) we headed over to Moose Bay.

A quick boat ride and we docked  in Moose Bay ready for a hike.  A for real, sometimes it’s touch climbing the rocks, no trail, no park rangers, deer flies bite hard, bears are real, HIKE. 

Blueberries, brambles, vines, fallen trees, carpets of moss covering rock after rock, fallen trees and all!

This year we struck gold.  Blueberries were plentiful and the bear poop in the berry patches made it obvious that the bears were in on the secret. 

We collected blueberries forever and had to pull ourselves away. I don’t think if the 16 of us picked all day we would have picked them all!

Cole and Jace climbing rocks.  These kids were troopers on the hike up the rock.  They could scale about anything with ease!  It wasn’t quite that easy for the rest of us!

The girls stuck together all week.  Love to see their friendship, just like their mamas so many years ago.  Hope they stay BFFs forever.

Papa Mike on the ascend.  I wonder how many times in his lifetime he has made this trek? 

We made it!  Just look at that view!!!!

We have many photos over the years of ourselves and friends and family on this rock, it just never gets old.  It also doesn’t get much less scary, I mean, what if one of my babies went tumbling down that drop off?  Snap a quick pic and get away from the ledge!

Mimi and Papa on top!

I know it isn’t untouched, I know a few people see this spot every year, but NOT MANY!  This is pretty remote, pretty secluded and that is fascinating and awe inspiring to me.

After breathing the fresh air, filling our lungs with the smell of pines and scarring our legs from the brambles on the way up the rock, we are rewarded with this beautiful view.  And we are thankful for the opportunity and inspired by the grandeur of God’s creation.

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