School Begins

 

I did something when trying to edit this blog post, and it disappeared on me. So this is attempt two at "School Begins."

First day of School picture taken by Dad. 

Caption those faces for me. They perfectly typify these kids on this most glorious of school mornings.

Jonathan is taking Agricultural Structures at the local high school (Thank you, Missouri, for allowing homeschool kids to take a class or two), and the rest of the classes are all at home.

The kids playing pool at Mimi and Papa's. They have their own playlist of pool music, which I find very funny.

One little kitten seems to have survived. A tabby with white paws. She's skittish and we think she lives out in the field instead of under the house now. Maybe something got to the other kittens under the house? I miss the pretty soft-gray ones. 

We bought an old croquet set from Bear Branch Market (highly recommend this place!). I'd like to get a Corn Hole game too since we have so much space in our yard, and it's not deathly hot half the year.

These frog pictures are for my mother. She LOVES frogs! (not)

Phoebe has her driving permit!

Dad took her out for her first drive down the gravel road. She let him take over to do a three-point turn for coming home. When I took her out, she wanted to try a turn and ended up doing a seven or eight-point turn. She kept reassuring me - "It's fine, Mom! I'm not going to drive into somebody's beans!" She got it done and got us home. Now commences the 40ish hours of driving before the license next year.

And I read something funny in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters the other day. He was writing about his fiancé Maria and how he can't handle the books she likes to read:

"Unfortunately, I am not yet of one mind with Maria in the area of literature. She writes me such truly good, un-self-conscious letters, but she reads and sends me and loves, of all people, Rilke, Bergengruen, Binding, Wiechert, of whom I consider the latter three beneath our level and the first outright unhealthy. Thus actually none of them suits her at all.... One would need to be able to talk about such things to each other.... I would very much like for my wife to be in agreement with me as fully as possible in such matters.... I don't like it at all when wives and husbands are of different opinions. They must stand together like an unassailable bulwark. Don't you agree? Or does this also belong in some way to my "tyrannical" nature that you know so intimately?"

I wonder how all of that would have worked itself out if he had lived?  

VBS and Anniversary Trip

 

Firstly, what's going on with farming around our house.

They sprayed the fields around our house. 

I wanted to show how massive this sprayer was. But I guess the land and sky and trees are even more massive, because this looks like a little toy tractor in the picture. 

I took this picture on my walk back home. 

On this day I walked toward the Embree's on Nadine Lane. Which I guess I'm not supposed to call it a lane because it's always been called The Gravel Road, and the gravel drive leading up to our house was called The Lane, and the road now named "Montana" is definitely not "Montana" because no one else around here would call it that. It's just The Road with perhaps something like "West of the House" tacked on. 

Anyway, I was walking The Gravel Road back home from the Embree's, and I thought the juxtaposition of the fields ~ green soybeans and sandy yellow corn tops ~ and just beyond that, the bins behind our house ~ it was very pretty.

Some kind of leafy vine growing up the corn. 

We were wanting to visit Mark Twain Lake and do some swimming, but we found out the water was too high and therefore closed. So we went to visit Mark Twain Cave instead.

By the way, Jesse James is the kids' distant cousin via Mimi's family.

This is the cave Mark Twain visited often and featured in Tom Sawyer. It's a labyrinth cave instead of the wide open cavernous ones we visited in Texas. 

Christy Franke Photography

Our church had VBS this week. This boy is also in my Sunday school class. 

Christy Franke Photography

We had a lot of really great volunteers and leaders putting it on. Jonathan was a crew leader as soon as he could get off of work. Phoebe was in the nursery and changed her first diaper.

Christy Franke Photography

Harrison and I were helpers in the kitchen. I got to work with this lovely group of ladies behind the food table there. They were a hoot to work with.

And Phillip and I celebrated our 21st Anniversary this weekend!

I had him take a picture of us at Taco Bell because Taco Bell seems to be our go-to for our Anniversary. We were gonna do something big for our 10th, and we had a baby instead. So we went to Taco Bell. We thought maybe for our 20th we'd do something big, but we had a closed-down country instead. And we were taking Liz to college. We just happened to stop at a Taco Bell as we were driving to Missouri last year, and it turned out perfect to be at Taco Bell right on the anniversary day when we had practically forgotten it was even the day.

So this year we also stopped for lunch at Taco Bell.

Phillip planned a fun trip with our first night being at The Elms in Excelsior Springs. 

The shades of night were falling fast, 

As through an Alpine village passed 

A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, 

A banner with the strange device, 

      Excelsior! 

I had to look up this poem and read it to Phillip. I've always wondered what kind of mission that guy thought he was on that he had to keep going further up 'mid snow and ice. Anyway, it was not cold this weekend. But we did have a storm! 

The hotel was built around the 1920's and is supposedly haunted. We had gotten some late night Waffle House bowls and were driving back in the rain when we noticed all the lights around were out. Sure enough, the electricity was out in the 'haunted' hotel. It was plenty spooky walking down those long, low hallways back to our room. 

But isn't it amazing that we all have flashlights on us these days. At least until the phone battery dies.

We also went to a production at the Lyceum Theatre in Arrow Rock. It was fun to see a live play with all the stage decoration and costuming. There were a lot of little girls there because it was The Little Mermaid. We will definitely have to go back for more, and I would love for Phoebe to be able to see where they make their costumes.

Dinner was at the newly re-opened J. Huston Tavern ~ the oldest continuously operating restaurant west of the Mississippi. I guess they had a kitchen fire and had to remodel the kitchen, and this was their first week back. They did well!

I had to get succotash as my side because you just never see succotash on a menu.

We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast in Arrow Rock. It is really a cute little town. I could totally see us retiring there and running some kind of small business. They're pretty much a tourist town. We met a young couple who moved there three years ago from North California. They run the ice cream shop and make their own ice cream (and grow what ingredients they can). They really like it in Missouri.

That was an awesome week to end off the summer. We start school, Lord willing, on Monday. 

The kids can't wait to do Math.

Jon Turns 17 and Liz Visits

 

The sunflowers are blooming! They are so fun. We saw a yellow Goldfinch sitting on top of the tall sunflower the other day. He was bending over to maybe poke seeds out of the middle. Bright yellow on bright yellow was delightful! 

A sad story for our little kittens. Momma cat got scared by a dog the other day, and we didn't see the cats for a while and Abigail wasn't eating either. They are starting to come out from under the house now, but we haven't seen the soft gray ones ~ only the two little tabbies. So I'm really afraid they are not with us anymore. 

Sad face.

Jonathan invited kids over for his birthday. 

They played games and ate food. They are a fun, rambunctious crowd, and we're always pleased to have them.

And Elizabeth was here this weekend too! 

It's so much fun to have all the kids together. They are hilarious to listen to. She'll be starting her sophomore year of college in a couple of weeks. She's had a good summer doing paintings and photography around Joplin, making more knitting patterns, working at the dry cleaner, hanging out with her summer-home family. 

Our before-bed hangouts are a joy for us parents. We love you, kids.