Some of Summer, Part 3 (and Final!)

Just a few more pictures representing some of our summer!

As active and daring (especially Sarah!) as my kids are, one would almost expect us to have many more owies than we do.  My kids never have any down time; they are at a constant go from the time they are up 'til the time they go to bed.  Even when watching TV or a movie, they are engaged in active play. And the word "nap" is equivalent to a four letter word to them and has been since they were each a year and a half.  The downside: since the kids don't rest, neither does Mama.  The upside: we are wonderfully blessed with happy, active children who go to sleep the minute their little heads hit the pillow!  But anyway, back to the owies... they both are active and daring in their own way.  Caleb is the pure bred farm boy: climbing on tractors, working with tools, getting dirty; but Sarah, as girly girl as she is, is very into stunts and climbing, inside or out!  Nevertheless, we've never had any major owies.  Praise God for His protection because I have witnessed several times when the kids should have landed with an injury but walked away with a laugh.

Here was our first incident worthy of noting.  Sarah started to sit on her four wheeler but, not paying much attention to where her hand was going, ended up hitting the "accelerator" and the four wheeler took off with her in the process of sitting. 

Just a minor owie of a blood blister on her lip.  Not too bad.

The second incident of the summer came about when Sarah was trying to do gymnastics on the loungers at the pool.  No degree of daring and nimbleness can make up for a flip flop stuck in a chair!  She slowly went over the end of the lounger and landed on her face, very gracefully I might add!  I saw the whole thing happen, seemingly in slow motion.  She hurt her pride, but beyond that didn't even realize she had scrubbed her nose and forehead until she looked in the mirror after bath time that night.

The summer of 2012 certainly has been a warm one!  After several days of near 100 and 100+ days, our poor little central air system just could not keep up with the whole house.  Our upstairs finally accumulated so much heat that we just could not sleep up there, so we ended up camping out downstairs.  We brought the kids' mattresses downstairs (where it was 15 degrees cooler!), letting them share one while me or me and Josh slept on the other or slept on the couch. 

A picture of our thermometer.  I'm sure some of you have already heard me explain that this is an outdoor/indoor thermometer.  It has a sensor on the end of a wire that we run outdoors through a window.  The sensor is on the north side of the house, on an extension that keeps it away from the house (and thus registering the heat bouncing off the siding), and is in the shade all day... so its pretty accurate.  We've even compared its accuracy against our thermostat and other thermometers in the house (Josh is a weather nut, so we have multiple weather instruments around), so we know its true.  The function the thermometer is currently set on for the picture is one that shows the recorded maximum high and low since its last reset.  The top number showed the maximum high, recorded at the time of the picture on July 7.  The middle number was the recorded low sometime this winter.  (Sidenote:  the low was MUCH lower than this, like -20 or something, but sadly, I accidentally reset it during a cleaning spree.)  Its AMAZING how varied the weather can be!

Every campout needs smores!  We had spent a few nights in the tent before this, but didn't get to enjoy the delicacy because of the fear of beginning the Great Iowa Wildfire of 2012... not a title we'd want to be responsible for.    So we opted instead to microwave our smores during our toyroom campout excursion!

Awwww.

Awwww, again.

I guess Sarah decided she'd be prepared just in case we sprang a tornado drill on her!  :-)

And finally, for the "summer thus far" posts, I've been able to complete two little outdoor projects that I've wanted to get done.

My new egg sign.  Josh just happened to have this scrap board laying around, so along with some of his left over paint from redoing the highboy (remember that post?), I was able to make this sign to replace the one that rotted away over the past few years.  Unlike my last sign that was staked in the ground with a wooden stake, this one is mounted on steel posts... hopefully that will take care of the rotting problem.  Then, on a whim, I planted flowers in a planter underneath it.  When we still had green grass, it was pretty cute and country-like.  Well, I guess its still cute... it was just cuter when we still had green grass!

Another project I wanted to make was a tire planter.  This was the project I referenced to on Facebook about hating to have help because it was a one person job and if "he" did it, it was going to be "his" project.  Well, it turned out being a two-man job.  We first had to cut the tire into the shape of the petals.  That was not easy!  So it took me putting all my weight on the tire (being on the rather chunky side comes in handy every once in a while!) to steady it while he used the sawsall to cut.  My legs and arms vibrated for thirty minutes after that... which was the entire time it took us to turn the tire inside out to make it into a bowl.

After the "fun" of cutting and turning, I painted it, again using leftover spray paint Joshua had in the shop.  Not exactly the color scheme I wanted, but I didn't want to buy paint and Josh's assortment included John Deere green, yellow and International red and not the pretty pastels I wanted.  Next spring, I'll fill it with dirt and plant some lovely flowers in it... and hopefully it'll be drought-free and they'll easily survive!

This one isn't really a "project", rather its a "move the really cool steel wheel from the old shop to the post by the house" job.  I'm not sure where this wheel originated, but its very old and very heavy.  Josh had left his Jeep on the yard one afternoon so I could take them coffeetime in the field. So I took advantage of having it at my disposal.  Sarah and I backed the Jeep up to the old shop, dug out the wheel (not knowing how heavy it was) and managed to lift it into the back of the Jeep.  It looks pretty neat having part of farming history on display by the house :-)

 Well, there ya have it!  The past three posts by no means cover ALL our activities we did during my month of blogging hiatus, but it gives an idea of what we spent some of our time on.  Now that we're all caught up, I'll start sharing current events of the lives of the Van Zantes!