Sunday evening after the graduation and a dinner out to celebrate the sun stayed up long enough for us to get some nice pictures outside. I love taking pictures of the trees and garden…and the boys…and the calves and lots of other things.
Like the field across the road…
The baby blueberries…
The peonies almost ready to open with a back drop of a rusted gate to accent their color…
Amish on a Sunday drive past the house…
Corn…
Owen helping grandpa pick asparagus in the backyard…
Rows of strawberries…
This is a very old beat up door that has been rotting and peeling away a layer at a time. As long as I can remember wasps would come out of this door but until this spring I had never seen the labyrinth of nest and door innards that once lay behind the wood veneer…
Here’s the full door…
Curious little brown calves…
And two little boys who typically complained for the first half hour of bedtime that the other was kicking them only to fall asleep in an embarrassing embrace…
On Monday dad and I took the boys out and about to fill up our last day in town with something eventful. I looked up a few ideas online and formulated a rough plan. First it was to the local coffee shop for cookies. Then we went to State Line Golf to buy a round of miniature golf. It was cheap. Very cheap. Owen did great and they all three had a blast hitting the ball in their own special ways. Ivan held his club more like a broom while Aron seemed to prefer the pool cue method. They enjoyed hitting the ball into the water and fishing it out again more than anything and since we were the only ones there, I let them do it their way. It was fun.
My plan after that fell through as the bowling alley was not open until 3:00 even though their website listed them opening at noon. We discussed our options and I asked dad if there were a petting zoo in the area. He told me about one in Three Rivers. So that’s where we went. The drive there was scenic. It was full of old church buildings, creatively painted sheds and barns, rolling hills and blooming vegetation. I couldn’t help but think that Christy’s eye would have made the most of that area. As for me, I wasn’t stopping to take pictures with four irritated and hungry men in the van. They weren’t any happier when we got to the petting zoo only to find it closed. All was forgiven when they turned to see this playground though…
I got the boys to sit in this clear tunnel for me and took their picture. Along comes weird boy and pretty much pulls Ivan out so he can be in the picture. Ivan wasn’t upset…he didn’t want to take any pictures anyway. I have several pictures of weird boy on my computer now.
Our original plan included a matinee too, but with the change of plans we weren’t able to do that. Instead we ate pizza at Angelo’s in Centreville, after we drove out to cross the one lane covered bridge and came back, then on to Nottawa for ice cream at the Sand Lake Party Store. We got back in time to clean up and make hamburger patties for uncle Joel to grill for dinner that night and packed up for our trip home in the morning.
We had a good time.
Embarrassing embrace, weird boy, mini-golf (the way they like it), picking asparagus… this post is so much fun in so many ways! You’ve inspired me to do things I don’t really enjoy (like mini golf!) just for the sake of the kids this summer. Definitely gonna do something similar very soon!
love love love all your pictures and the stories to go with them! thank you so so so much!
I love it all! I wish I could have seen it all, though my eye probably would do no more justice than yours. What a fun afternoon. Even if things didn’t go how you’d planned 🙂
Timothy had just asked if there was mini golf in Sturgis. Glad to see the old place is stll open.
I love them all! The baby blueberries and peony are especially pretty.
Good photos! Made me think of lots of different memories of my own. I can’t see peonies w/out thinking of the ones on the side of Grandma Katie’s house.