Love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and hold fast to Him, for the Lord is your life! Deut. 30:20


Monday, January 16, 2023

The farm

Josh's had to leave Saturday morning to get back, but since Jill's were not leaving until the next morning, they wanted to go to the family farm.   Wish Josh's could have come too.  The kids have good memories of times there.






Josh's left and then Adam and Jill went to visit friends.

Meanwhile, the kids watched the old version of "Robin Hood" on our VHS.  Yes, we still do have a machine that plays them!

After lunch, we drove to Pretty Prairie.  We first stopped at the cemetery to see both of our parents' graves and other relatives too.





Many of the old grave stones are written in German.  The services were still in German when our parents were growing up, when they switched to English.  It was not an easy thing for the older generation at all.  


Then off to see Uncle Sid and Aunt Gayle who had us get in the back of the pickup to help feed the cattle.








There were a couple little ones.

Taking a walk to the bridge.


The "crick" had been dry until recently.  Allen and Sid said they had never seen it totally dried up before.  Drought for sure around here.


Explaining about the electric fence.  Stories were told of growing up.



What a sweet time!  (Literally as Gayle had baked some blondie brownies!!)  We took the family for a drive through Pretty Prairie to show them where the parsonage where I lived for a time was, where Grandma B., Grandma Schlusser, Grandpa and Grandma Voran lived (all within a block).  

Then we drove to Hutch to visit the Crosspoint Church.   The pastor, Andy Addis, has spoken at Adam and Jill's church a couple of times and he had invited them to drop by anytime they came to Kansas.  Andy took us on a tour of the church before the service.


Afterwards we went out for dinner at a "hole in the wall".


We got back quite late, but the kids packed up their van as much as they could so they could get an early start back to Wisconsin!

Friday, January 13, 2023

More Family Fun, Part 2

Some other things we did...

We measure each child every year.  Eli grew the most, growing 4" this year!

Josh helped his dad with some projects.  A huge help!  Thank you, Josh!!

We had LOTS of good food.  The kids helped me with the cooking.  We didn't go out to eat for a meal (oh my it is getting so expensive to do that!!) but we did go to Braum's for ice-cream one evening.

They always want to go to Drubers for nostalgia, but it is always closed the week after Christmas.  So we went to Newton Donuts which was very good!

And then to Norm's for good coffee!!  Some lady photobombed this one!

I asked Adam if he'd taken any pictures from Norms because I was sure we had taken a family selfie.  He sent me these:

Oh my word!!   Hannah had taken a NICE picture though.

After that we went shopping to Main Street Company, Et Cetera and Prairie Harvest.

Who doesn't love peppernuts (pfeffernusse cookies!!)?  I have several different recipes for them, but here is a link that would be easy to follow.

AND we stopped at the Bread Basket for pies for dessert that evening!!  We were sure loading up the kids with sugar!!

We did a grandparent/grandchild trip to the zoo!  We used to go all the time when the kids lived nearby.  It was so nostalgic, especially for Hannah!

Obligatory penguin picture!

Look at these old photos of long ago!!  These kids have really grown!!

Hannah when she was smaller than the largest penguin!

And Claire.


I will HAVE to bring Kaia and Tenley!!  They are sad to miss out!!


The kids fed the giraffes.

And last, but not least, we got out the potato gun!