What do you do out there?

When I say I'm going out to Dad's place, and that it's great because it's out in the middle of nowhere, my friends get a puzzled look and say,"What do you do out there?"
Well, here's what we do out there, at least a few things:



There's always the work in the gardens- corn, peas,green beans, tomatoes, cukes, watermelon, squash, blackberries and onions were all ready for picking when we were there over the 4th of July weekend. Yes, my Utah friends, corn is ready in OK, not "knee high on the 4th of July." The watermelons were just getting ripe, and Aaron loved being the one to carry the first one to be picked up to the house. And he is quite the little purple hulled peapicker! Say that 5 times fast!Sam learned that picking cucumbers is prickly work, but she loved putting them through the food processor to make pickles. Jake.... well, Jake doesn't care for garden work much, although he did like picking blackberries (tame, thornless only please).

On Independence Day, we went into town and watched a fireworks display, then went back to the house and had our own in the pasture. It lasted about an hour and a half!!! The kids had a blast shooting roman candles, fountains, and all kinds of goodies up. And we didn't even burn the pasture, though they tried when they got the notion that roman candles looked like magic wands and wanted to duel with them. I thought they were going to light up the hay.

When it got HOT, and it was, we were able to sit on the porch and watch the hummingbirds. They feed on those feeders all day long, it's beautiful and amazing to watch. In the morning there are also lots of cardinals in the gardens and in Janet's flower bed. In the afternoon, you can watch a hawk, and at dusk a couple of good sized owls swoop in. We like to hang out and just take in the wildlife, especially Aaron. Oh, be sure and ask Samantha about the Ninja toads!

Of course the kids' fave thing to do in the heat was hit the creek. They swam every day, and apparently the big rocks there have names. You have to ask them about that, I don't know anything. They had lots of fun because we had some of our cousins join us. Nathan (my nephew)stayed the weekend with us at Dad's and kept us entertained, and on Tuesday, Daniel and Emily came to fish and swim with us. It was fun for me because it made me remember all the silly things I used to do running around out there with my cousins when I was the kids' age.

Did you see that whopper bass that Aaron caught? Would you believe he just walked up to the pond, put his lil' ole cane pole out there, and wham! that fish hit his bait the second it hit the water. Can you believe the luck that boy has? He's just funny like that. But I thought that bugger was going to pull Aaron for a swim. Of course you might not want to ask Grandpa about why he had to climb a tree to get Aaron's pole out later. tee hee Nathan caught a smaller bass and a perch, and Jake caught a little perch that they tried to use for bait. Sam caught... some puppies. She's not much the fisher girl, but she loves playing with all those old farm dogs.
It does get pretty quiet out there after a while, and I have to admit, the kids showed an unusual amount of enthusiasm for going to Target after we got back.