4th of July

It's hot out there!

And we haven't gotten much rain. The crops are suffering. But they're not brown yet.

This is a beautiful field of winter wheat that has been harvested and the straw rolled up into gorgeous round bales. We pass it every time we go into town, and I am loving it so much. 

Phillip is working on getting a new heating/cooling system in the house. He rigged up an ingenious way to move this heavy piece of concrete.

He had to move it, then build a box to hold it all, then lay down more dirt and rock. And then move the concrete piece back on top of all that.

Doc ~ ever ready to "help out."

We took a trip to St. Louis. I wanted Jonathan to get some city and highway driving experience before he headed off to Florida in August. He did a wonderful job handling the traffic and the missed exits (Siri's a little slow on the draw when you don't know where you're going). 

We went to City Museum for our St. Louis trip. It's this huge indoor/outdoor ...... play park(?) that's fun for adults as well as kids. As a matter of fact, my young kids would not have enjoyed this (but there were plenty of young kids there!). You go through creepy tunnels and into small claustrophobic spaces to get around. The good thing is that they always give you an 'easy' way to around as well. 

Harrison and I went up into these two airplanes that have the skins taken off and the seats taken out.

When I say we went up, I mean that we were up! 

We climbed through these fenced tunnels and steep stairs to get to them.

That is not us, however.

Cockpit.

It was fun. Tiring. I was wearing the wrong shoes. But a fun trip.

A bowl of cherries. 

Phillip and Phoebe.

We've been spring cleaning, and we just finished cleaning and staining all the woodwork in the house. I love it when that job is done. The house just feels so spic and span.

Pictures to show that we bought new books for the upcoming school year and everything still fits on the shelves we have! We do not have to go to the bank (from an old movie I Remember Mama).

Some of the shelves have books behind books, but it still fits.

This is our school shelf which has been rearranged to say goodbye to Jonathan and hello to only two students this year. 

Oh my. Tears.

I picked the junior highers up from camp last week. Harrison thought this year was even better than the last two. I asked him if that was because he now kind of knows what to expect from camp, and he thought that was a big part of it. 

When we asked him what he was looking forward to about camp, he said he liked walking around in nature and thinking. And he hoped there wouldn't be a lot of adults coming up to him and asking him if he was alright. Yep. He's our kid alright. I imagine I gave some adults some worries as a kid too ~ always had my nose in a book.

The only cat who has stuck around is Pickles. And then, I'm not sure he's not running off to some other house half of the time. 

Abigail has deserted us. We hope she comes back someday. She may have gone off to have another batch of kittens somewhere. So maybe she'll come back when they can be on their own.

Yay! There was fresh sweet corn for sale in town yesterday, so I got five dozen and made 9 quarts of frozen sweet corn. There was a pickup truck with two ladies getting 20 dozen for their frozen sweet corn. That's impressive!

Doc is "helping" by biting my garbage can and trying to get in the way.

4th of July small town celebration! 

We had a good summer meal of pulled pork sandwiches and watermelon and such. Phillip read us the Declaration of Independence per usual. It's a good thing to read every year. To remember the reasons we thought we needed a new government and then to realize what these men put on the line when they signed that document. 

Phillip also read a paragraph about what happened to those signers. We know about the ones who survived, but several fought, several were killed, many lost their fortunes to the British and died penniless, several had their wives and kids die in consequence of the war. 

It's sobering.

But back to the celebration part. 

We went to Perry, MO to ride the carousel that Papa rode as a kid. We found out that Mimi and Papa had been there shortly before us and had also ridden the carousel. :-) How fun! This is the oldest carousel in Missouri (so the sign said). It hadn't been in Perry for many years and some folks had raised money to bring it back. 

This was also the first time the kids and I saw a tractor pull. We got kiwi lemonade (for Phoebe), strawberry slushy (for Jonathan), and Amish ice cream (for me... and then all of us because it was a lot of ice cream).

Harrison is off to Silas' house for the afternoon and will see fireworks tonight. Jon and Phoebe have to work. It's been a fun day.

Why is this so beautiful?