Friday, January 27, 2017

Little Hairy Harry

The little dudes hair is getting quite long and unruly!   So much so that he's taken a shining to putting hair gel in his hair to keep the fuzzy stuff out of his eyeballs.  Mama Chaos sent me a couple of photos while she had a few days off after new years and got the lad ready for school.  

He's cute!!


Exhibit A.

Exhibit B, not so clearly seen in this picture, but...  I LOVE this picture!!

So what is Larger American Boy doing currently?  Out eating ice cream with his life-long buddy Noah after visiting the gym.  Later tonight, pizza party with the volleyball team (yes, they're teammates!).

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

2016 Pumpkin Patch - Center Grove Orchard

As a slight variation to our normal two pumpkin farms,  this year we decided to try out Center Grove Orchard near Cambridge, Iowa.

It is very similar in many ways to both Geisler Farms by Ankeny and Carrolls (now called Uncle Bills Farm) by Grinnell, Iowa.

This place makes their own deli sandwiches and soups so we had a quick lunch before we headed out for fun and frolic!


Always a fun thing that quickly deteriorates into a nasty game of King Of The Mountain.  Robby is about dead-center in that photo, white sweatshirt, dark pants with a stripe down the leg.  Caleb is that little blue heap that you can barely see behind Rob. 

This was cool.  It's a really long slide where you lay on an old gunny sack.  That's Rob in this first run.

And that's Caleb in the yellow shirt with his arms straight out and smiling.

Our kids are not visible...  but this was kind of neat too.  It's a maze of hay bales but mostly kids just got a running start and tried to make it all the way across without a horrible crash.  We saw a couple of horrible crashes!

The gigantic spider web which surprisingly, kept the varmints engaged for a lot longer than I thought it would.

But the favorite is almost always the big corn pit, and this was a BIG corn pit!!

One must do several leaps into the corn if they're to truly enjoy the pit.

One must also be buried in the corn, while constantly berating his brother that he was not burying him correctly.

Nearly covered and resting wonderfully while a happy Chinaman seeks praise for his fine work.

Rubber ducky races...

This was a bit of a let down at this place. The corn maze.  Turns out that we didn't get the map we were supposed to have to navigate the silly thing.  Once we got about 2.5 miles of walking in and had no idea where we were at, we decided to head back East and go do something else.

That something else was the train ride, which was nice because we got to rest after all of that walking in the corn field.

Happy boy!

And we finished up the day with a wagon ride out thru the actual pumpkin patch.

Interesting to note, we did not get any pumpkins this year and did not go trick or treating either.  Neither lad seemed very interested in either.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Bum In The Sun

While I was home sick the first week of the year, the hound dog would try to keep close tabs on my whereabouts.  Problems arose for her with the sun shining in the South windows.  She tried desperately to keep her "back-side" in the sun and her eyes on me!

Monday, January 9, 2017

Vacation (2013) - Post #15, Harpers Ferry Pt.3

Finally closing up the ol' 2013 vacation posts!!   Absolutely ridiculous and I'm so far behind on more recent 2016 posts but what the heck...


So we pick up where we left off descending stairway where we find this little gift shop and bar about half-way down.

Here we are, little bald Calebber, partially hippy Robby and an adorable Liena and Ethan.

Some free advertising for a catering company that we chanced upon...

Robby jacking around with Caleb instead of the other way around!

Just another shot of the lower road in town with John Browns fort straight down at the end of the road.


Two crazies at the tavern!

Cool historical marker.

I think this was a Lewis & Clark marker, but I don't recall for sure...

John Brown's fort, the old fire house.

Our crew overlooking the junction between the Potomac and Shenendoah River Valleys.

The old railroad bridge.

A motley looking crew to be sure!  This was only about 1/2 hour before we parted way with our friends for the really long drive home.


And with that,  I finally wrapped up the 2013 vacation!!!!