It’s been a few months since I’ve posted anything. The highlight of most of our weeks are the days we get to spend with the girls. With the summer weather we try to do some outside things or take the girls on little trips around town. In early May Ken needed some worm bedding so we took the girls to BassPro. One of the first things Emma spotted was a pink and blue bicycle with training wheels and tassels on the handlebars. She’s been asking for a bike with a bell for her birthday so she was pretty enamored with it.
BassPro has a number of pontoons in the building and a deck built so that you can walk right onto them. Emma had no problem climbing into the driver’s seat and giving us orders on where to sit so she could drive, drive us around.
Margaret, on the other hand, didn’t like being corralled on a boat. She would run up and down the deck hoping to escape to the showroom floor. We had taken both girls up the elevator to check out the second floor and this was Margaret’s favorite thing to do. This elevator has a glass wall so you can see all the stuffed animals as you’re going up . . . and there are buttons to push. But about the only button she could reach was the “Emergency” button.
We did do a little shopping, checked out the aquarium and Grandpa found his worm bedding. The following Wednesday we asked Emma ‘where should we go today’, she said the ‘the fish store’. Well, we went again and spent a little time outside the store driving the utility vehicles. But it wasn’t long and we were inside driving the boats and riding the elevator.
On another Wednesday, we took them to local park to play. It had been a rainy few days before so the big swings had puddles of water under them. The baby swings were dry so I pushed Margaret for a while. Then she wanted out to run around. That girls is drawn to water like a magnet. It was tough keeping her out of the puddles and she was getting upset with Grandma for keeping her away from them. Ken and I had some good laughs at how determined she was to get wet.
While Margaret was swinging, Emma was playing with Grandpa on the playground equipment. She liked going down the spiral slide. She was brave enough to climb the steps and the rock wall up to the platform.
The girls got to spend the night with Grandma and Grandpa in late May. I had gotten them each a pair of rain boots so they could play in the puddles . . . knowing how much Margaret likes to play in the water. Here are the videos I took, which may have already seen. (Videos) They also did some swinging in the hammock and Margaret rode with Grandpa on his new little John Deere tractor.
One of the things I enjoy doing in May is visiting the cemeteries for Memorial Day but Grandma Violet called it Decoration Day. It was always a tradition to take flowers to the graves when I was growing up. We would go to the College View cemetery for Great Grandpa Otto Snider (or maybe Snyder), stop at Lincoln Memorial for (Great) Grandma Pralle and later my Uncle Dick. There were some relatives in Wyuka so I think we stopped there a time or two as well. The last stop would usually be the Emerald Cemetery. I thought it was a beautiful place with all of the flowers. You could hear the birds singing and from that hilltop if you looked to the west you could see (Great) Uncle Lorenzo’s beautiful farm on the next hilltop. A huge white house with a well kept yard and some flowers.
When we would go to leave Dad would say ‘who wants to go see Luke’. We’d say ‘who’s Luke?’ That was a nickname for our Uncle Earl and we loved visiting his farm. Back then farmers had cows, pigs, chickens, a horse or two and they did some row crops as well. Guess you could call it diversified. When Mom and Dad turned us loose from the car we would run all over the farmyard, taking ears of corn from the corncrib to throw to the hogs, climbing in the hayloft looking for eggs, which I don’t think Aunt Irma appreciated too much (she never knew how long those eggs had been in the loft), playing in the big water tank, getting a drink from the hydrant with the old tin cup and checking things out in all of the other buildings. They also milked so that had a shed where they put the milk cans and the cats liked to hang out there. And even though they had indoor plumbing, they still had an outhouse.
Aunt Irma was a great cook and she always had goodies or fresh fruit ready when we stopped by. They originally lived in the old house where my Grandpa Chris grew up. A big two story house with a large living room and it had a small parlor with some furniture that I think they seldom used. The front door entered into the parlor but when I was a kid there was really no sidewalk to the front door. There were just a lot of trees. Everyone who came to visit pulled up in the farmyard and went into the back door that led into the kitchen. Later they built a newer house and tore the old one down.
Anyway . . . we made the rounds to the cemeteries with Aaron, Kalie and the girls. We walked around the Fairbury cemetery for a while and then had lunch at Runza.
We even had time to stop at Emerald. While we were there Emma had to go poop. It took some coaxing but we finally talked her into going poop over the by the trees. I held bottom up off the ground and Kalie held her hands. She did it!! Now the girls love to sing ‘Emma poops outside, Emma poops outside, Hi ho the dairy-o, Emma poops outside.’ They also sing it using other peoples names as well. 🙂