This & That

 Oh the WIND!
Look what it did to our play barn!

This is the empty spot that the barn was anchored to.

And then a few days later...HAIL!
 We were in the field trying to finish up the last couple
acres of planting pumpkins when huge, cold raindrops
started coming down on us.  No lightning though, so
we kept on planting.  Until the hail started coming down.

Paige, Tate and Sydney had fun looking for the biggest piece of hail.

We played a shadow game on Father's Day.  Paige marked
where the shadow of the garage was on our driveway and
we all guessed where the shadow would be when we got
home from swimming. 

TATE WON!  I would have won if we hadn't
stopped at the grocery store for homemade ice cream
ingredients.  Just sayin'.

Planting Pumpkins

It's that time of year.  Time to plant the pumpkins.

Here's what our field looks like in June.  

It will be a much different picture in October.

We used to plant our pumpkins by hand, but now we

use an antique lister and a little Ford tractor.

Grant fills his hands with seeds and Brett sets off towards the

flag at the end of the row that helps guide him.

Water breaks are a must on a hot Kansas day.

And off they go!

Four acres of pumpkin seeds have been planted and

the rest will go in the ground next week.  It will be 

time to hoe before we're ready.  And by "we" I

mean Grant, Brett and Paige.

Dresser Treasure

I found another dresser to set beside

my china cabinet for extra storage.

Yes, I already had two dressers, 

but one was too big and bulky.

I'll be painting it to put in Hope's room.

Here's the "new" dresser I bought yesterday.

Someone had started to strip it, so I

picked up some dark walnut stain and

slapped some on the top, sides and drawers.

What do you think?  See the basket

hiding underneath?  I found two of those

at Tuesday Morning and they make up

for the storage I lost when I moved the

big dresser to Hope's room.

The original knobs (there was one missing)

looked like this:

I love them because I had knobs just like this 

on my dresser I had growing up.  I will definitely 

find a use for these.  But since there was one 

missing, I picked up some knobs at Tuesday Morning

for a dollar a piece and here they are:

Now for the good stuff.  Inside the top left drawer,

I found a letter and a telegram dated 1956.

A family was sending a woman from their family

from a hospital in California to friends or family in

Concordia.  They were arranging for family friends 

to pick her up from the Salina airport and tend to

her until the couple from Concordia (the husband

was a doctor) could retrieve her the next weekend.

It sounded like she had lived through a tragedy

and had been recovering in a hospital.  They 

talked of her no longer needing to take tablets

and not seeming as lonely as when she first

entered the hospital.  Makes me wonder about

her story.  I hope she went on to live a blessed life.