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| BEFORE |
The upper right hand corner of the "before" picture (above) is what we sawed down, cleared out and mowed...
...to make a CAMPFIRE! Well, that was the incentive. Naomi has conniving ways of getting child labor to help her clear the jungle. Um, no, I think that was a bad sentence! Actually, I was babysitting away from the house for my mother-in-law who was hosting sophisticated dignified ladies such as those attending the homeopathic class. It just happened to be on Amelia's birthday! So we went to Ben and Naomi's house. Because Naomi had some other work that needed to be done... and it's always more fun to work all together, right?! And a few toddler hands in the mix help get more done, riiiiiiight? :P
Well we hacked and yanked and grunted and moved fallen tree-logs (with very impressive girl power!), and eventually the job was done! Then we carried stones and Ben helped dig the pit for our new campfire! We had many lemonade breaks and made it a "party" by having a treasure hunt all over our property with the kids finding in the end a special gift for Amelia and the makings for s'mores for everyone! At one point Simeon spied a helicopter not far down the road - it is unusual to have helicopters around here except for medical emergencies airlifted out - so I ran and grabbed my [emergency radio] pager and we loaded up and headed out to investigate! Soon we saw it was a modern flying sprayer (crop duster) for the fields so we all jumped out and stood in the open prairie space on the gravel roads, surrounded by fields all around and an interesting helicopter above! It kept coming around and then landing on it's truck to re-fill it's tanks with whatever chemical it was spraying. EDUCATIONAL MOMENT!!! Naomi was thinking! Lol, I don't care if school is done, if kids are with Naomi we are still going to learn, even if it means chasing helicopters! The cool thing was, we waved to the man in the bubble in the little funny-looking specially-designed helicopter and he buzzed us - lower than the power lines! It was so exciting and special for Amelia's birthday! And he did it TWICE! So, to whoever that was, thank you; you made our day!!! (Unfortunately my phone was being uncooperative and not working at the time of the helicopter so sorry, no pics of my own.)
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| The Work Crew er... birthday party go-ers! |
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| The girls! Amelia (turning 12) is in orange. |
As a random ending to this post, Mom texted us just as we were eating the last of our s'mores and said Pastor was coming to pick up the 15-passenger van (which we were, of course, using)... in HALF AN HOUR! And it really needed to be cleaned out! Yikes! So we loaded up, went back home, got the shop vac and emptied that bus out! A lot of people must have been missing a lot of things, because in addition to the normal junk of gum wrappers, tissues, and other trash, we found 1 guitar, 13 shoes, 6 winter coats, and a host of matchbox cars, books water bottles and the like! Welcome to life in a big family! :D
[this day happened on May 16, 2012]
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