Camping with Friends (Again!)

September was crazy busy for us. (Isn't it always?!) I was delighted to turn the calendar page to October. Such a clean slate. While constantly doing fun things is, well...fun, it is also exhausting. After a while I start to feel like the heart and soul of our family is unraveling due to all of this "fun." Don't get me wrong--I am thankful for our active lifestyle. It means we are all healthy. It means we are blessed in more ways than I can count. But a little rest is restorative. :)

Last night we celebrated the end of our soccer season by watching Aaron play one last game this fall. The weather has been so perfect for soccer this year. Kaleb played his last game last week. Someday I hope to post more about our September days. But for today, I'm highlighting our September camping trip with Shawn and Rebekah and kids.

"Friends are friends forever, if the Lord's the Lord of them..."
Rebekah and I used to sing this song during the summer we worked at camp.
And now we go camping together with our families. :)

What is he thinking? I like to think he's reflecting on such a great summer. Ha!

Aaron insisted we bring my flip-flop candle on our camping trip.
Notice his elbow? Seems like it had a bandaid on it all summer long.

Kaleb uses sticks as swords...

...and as guns...

...and he dug this log out of the lake to have a place to sit!

The boys spent lots of time playing in the mud. What a great thing to do while camping.

Here they are showing off their dams.

Derek and Shawn deep fried the turkey Braylen shot last spring. They did it all themselves--hooray! Rebekah and I prepared a few side dishes and I think we had a nice spread of food. Yep, we sure do love our hunters. :) If someone would have told us 20 years ago what our future held, Rebekah and I would have never believed it. Isn't God great?!?!

Derek's checking on the bird. (Thank you Braylen for this picture!)

One last picture for today. This one's from the state fair. Yes, we snuck in a trip to the state fair on Labor Day weekend. We even let Braylen bring a friend. It was very hot. There were lots of people there. But we had fun and ate cotton candy, funnel cakes, and drank tart lemonade. That makes it worth it, right? ;) I thanked God over and over that we never tried to go to a state fair with young kids and strollers. I saw so many miserable looking toddlers and even more miserable looking parents. I wanted to tell those people, "Wait until your kids are older! They will enjoy it more, they will be old enough to remember it, and it is so much easier on you as parents!" But I kept my thoughts to myself. To each his own, right? :)

Haven't you ever seen a Mater hay bale before? :)

MOO

Thanks to Grandma :), we took a field trip with the kids before going back to school. She had this idea to visit a local dairy. While it's not Young's Dairy, it was an educational experience. What did I learn? Dairy farms are messy. Not at all like the cute little childrens books portray them to be! I also learned that dairy cows produce all that milk, and they never get to nurse their calves. At least at this farm they don't. Their calves are taken away after birth and bottle fed. I also learned that most of the milk from this dairy is used to make cheese. And we don't even live in Wisconsin! :)

Here are a few pictures from our field trip. It was a fun time with my boys, nieces, SIL, and MIL.

Some of the calves were friendly, while others were skittish.
Aaron found one who thought she was a dog in need of a good head rub. :)

My favorite question from one of my boys was this:
"Why are all dairy cows female?"

Pluto

Our dear Pluto
{Thank you Braylen for these recent pictures of Pluto.}

Today we lost our first pet. (I'm not counting the fish from years past.) Pluto the parakeet was Kaleb's Christmas gift 5 years ago. He picked him out at the store the day after Christmas. We brought him home and 2 days later he started to sing. I admit, sometimes his singing was a bit loud. And he was really good at making messes! But now that he's gone, I miss his chatter and singing. I miss watching him play with his mirrors. I miss watching him climb all over the cage. I miss watching him splash in his water.

After school I picked up the boys and brought them home. But I didn't let them go inside the house. We sat on the front porch and I told them what happened. What time I found Pluto. What position he was in. What I did with his cage. And we remembered some of the happier times with him. Like when we brought him home--he escaped before we could put him in his cage. My dad finally caught him and then Pluto bit Dad's finger! And how we knew spring had arrived by how loud he screeched. Kaleb liked to remember Pluto climbing all around his cage using his claws and his beak.

It broke my heart to see them cry, and I cried right along with them. Especially with my sweet, sensitive Kaleb. Pluto belonged to him, and half of Kaleb's life has been spent with Pluto. He may be just a bird to everyone else, but to us he was OUR bird. And he was special.

I called him Pretty Bird, and I used a whistle pattern to "talk" to him.
Today I whistled it to him as I packed up his cage.
 

This is Kaleb with Pluto on the day we brought him home. What a happy day that was! Tonight Kaleb told me he was saying goodbye to Pluto while looking at a hole in the clouds, when suddenly a flock of birds flew through the hole. Fly free, dear Pluto! You will live in our hearts forever.

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God." Luke 12:6

One Month Done

I can hardly believe the boys have been back in school for a month already; 7th grade for Braylen, 5th grade for Kaleb, and 2nd grade for Aaron. The switch from summer to school went as it usually does--shocking to our systems at first, then becoming routine fairly quickly. I let myself mourn the end of our summer for one day before embracing this new school year. I needed that time to transition my feelings and responsibilities from summer mode to school mode. The years keep moving on and the boys keep stepping up to new grade levels, so I guess I'd better step up to my new year as well.

This year I am still staying at home, keeping plenty busy during the day with all the "busy work" of running a home while my family is out of the house. Once 3:00 comes we live our lives in fast forward, running from one soccer field to another, one youth group to another, one meeting to another, one homework assignment to another... I am blessed to get our house in order during the day so we can run everywhere BUT our house during the evening. Hmm. That seems kind of backwards, but then I remind myself that September is like this for us every year. Once October comes we settle down and live in our home a bit more. And most of these busy activites are fun--I often remind myself of that, too. :)

Aaron continues to do very well on his Depakote medication. What didn't work last spring is working this fall, and I am VERY grateful for that. I am also at peace with leaving the Lamictal behind. Derek and I think Aaron is still having seizures here and there, but they are so quick--like one second or two--that we are never sure if he's had one or not. What an improvement from last spring! The prayers offered up on his behalf are priceless to us...thank you to each and every one who prays for him. Our God is our Jehovah Rapha--"God who heals."

So, here are the boys at the beginning of their new school year. So far it's a good one! :)

Braylen needed a bigger and stronger backpack this year.
The best way to describe 7th grade in one word--fun!

The last time I have two sons in elementary school.
The next time Aaron has his brother in school with him will be his freshman year in high school.
Wow! That makes this one very special year for Aaron and Kaleb.

Walking away

One new thing about this year? Their cousins joined them at their school!