let it snow, let it snow, let it snow (and warm up a bit!)

We gave Conrad one of his gifts early...I think he likes them! (snowshoes)

Merry Christmas!

last post of the day...

it's been fun posting today, I'll sign off with a recent picture of our home....

meet my friends

Froggie is best for quiet time, snuggling, napping, and sleeping and Monkey likes to join us for dinner, car rides and church events. He has his own assigned place at the dinner table. Sometimes I even need to change his diaper.

Downtown?

Every morning that Tim and Conrad drop me off downtown we see dozens of buses. One morning Conrad announced that he would like to ride a bus. I love how well he speaks, full sentences now since September! So last week I informed Conrad we would be going on a bus ride, to downtown. It was a great morning, complete with two bus rides, yummy coffee from Caribou, a visit with a friend, and waffles with my co-workers (it happened to be waffle day for morning break). After eating waffles with berries and ice cream, we still had a few minutes before catching the bus home so we visited aunti michelle in her office and then left papa ken a note and drawing on his computer.






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On the way home, Conrad asked for the camera and we took a few pictures, the one with the Mayo building turned out okay, not bad for a 2 year old!

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This of course was followed by a l-o-n-g nap when we got back to grandma's - didn't even need to take time for lunch since he had eaten so many waffles!

Underwater Adventures

"BIG FISH mommy." This adventure had him talking about it for days!

Dinosaur,ROAR

Here's our little dinosaur!

Check out the Website

I've added a new link under websites to checkout. It's an online newsletter of Simple Living. I get these delivered to my email several times a year and actually look forward to it. The holiday issues are the best - full of ideas for celebrating a simple, beautiful holiday season. This newsletter contains articles like Holiday Cards Without Clutter...good article, check it out.

go hiking?

This picture is actually from October but I haven't cleared off my camera for a few weeks so no real recent pictures to post. Conrad's "new" thing is hiking. He'll put on his backpack, find a water bottle and ask to go hiking. In this picture he has his mittens too. One morning was especially cute after he got geared up, he specifically asked to go hiking with Isaac. (a little buddy from church we hadn't seen for a couple weeks due to their family being out of town)

Yesterday morning it was Everett, Everett, Everett. Before we left the yurt, Conrad announced he wanted to see Everett. While we were driving he asked to play with Everett. When we were in Target shopping he asked when we were going to go to Everett's house. Finally at 9am when we left Target, I called Everett's daddy and left a message to see what their plans were for the evening. The next time Conrad asked about Everett, I told him I had called his daddy and maybe we would see Everett that evening. This seemed to please Conrad as he didn't ask again until after nap time. Which by then we had our plans in place to visit our friends in Hayfield so Conrad and Everett got to play last night while we visited and ate dinner. It was nice, I think the last time we saw these friends was September? Thanks Conrad for being so persistent!

Prairie Burn

Our prairie burn was a success. Mostly. We had some rain the last few days so that prevented the burn from getting as hot as we anticipated. It was pretty windy during the burn too, but that worked in our favor.

The first picture below is the initial ignition. We had a great crew of friends, family, and a couple volunteers from the Praire Smoke group. In the second picture you can see our burn boss, Jaime. The blue trailer to her right is the water wagon - it holds a couple hundred gallons of water to be used for refilling the water packs you'll see in the other pictures.

Here's Tim with the torch, having a good time.

The fire was a bit close to the yurt for my liking, but I kept repeating to myself "Jaime knows what she is doing, Jaime knows what she is doing" and it did all work out. No burn holes in the yurt!

The next pictures show the burn on the north-facing slope. This was some of the dryest, hottest burning of the day.

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This was the second burn of the day - down in the wetlands area.

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And these pictures just show how hot and smokey it can get!

Tim's 30!

For his birthday on Sunday we went out to breakfast with friends from church, then drove around Lake Pepin to see fall colors. We brought a picnic lunch but after such a large breakfast it was unnecessary. We did manage to make enough room though for ice cream from the Nelson Cheese Factory. Conrad slept for the first half of the drive, we woke him up for ice cream. From there to Lake City he was pretty content watching the water. We got out at Lake City to stretch legs, watch the boats, and explore the playground. The rest of the way home, CW read his book (Momma, will you?) and I read mine (Calm and Compassionate Children) and Tim enjoyed the quiet drive.

***progress report - yes, I am still running in the mornings! I skipped Sunday (day of rest, right?) and Tuesday morning (very frigid). Saturday was a great one - I took CW and we went down past the neighbors and to the creek. I didn't really run the whole way though, maybe next summer I'll be able to tackle that.

headlamp, bearspray, and running shoes

I tried something new this morning. I set out my shoes and clothes last night and set the alarm a bit earlier and this morning I actually got up and went running. I used to run in college. I was more motivated and had friends that were runners so it was a healthy way to socialize. It's not that I don't like running, I just don't like being out of breath or sweating alot. For those reasons, swimming, yoga, and walking have been my activities of choice for many years. I just don't get to do them often enough for various reasons.



I went for a walk yesterday with a friend from highschool that also has a little boy. She's a runner, always has been. I used to run with her during summer breaks back in the day. She's hardcore about getting her workouts in and I was inspired I guess.



So this morning I was up and out. Took my headlamp for when I got closer to the hog farm so I could see the black bull calves that like to sneak out under the fence and took the bearspray for the same black calves (or anything else I may encounter). These little bulls are getting big enough to be dangerous and I don't trust them. For most of the run though I just kept the headlamp turned off. The moon was up and offered enough light, despite the cloud cover. It was actually pretty cool. I wonder if I have enough motivation to wake up early on a Saturday?

apples, corn, and pumpkins

I know Conrad understands where corn comes from, he tells me almost daily (we have corn fields on both sides of our driveway this year) and now he knows where the apples come from too. He got to pick several on Saturday at the orchard.

We also navigated the corn maze just for fun...notice he's still carrying an apple?

And we tried and tried to get all the kids in one picture. Just didn't work. Conrad's cousin Zach is off to the side (not in picture) and you can see what the other three were giving us!

raspberries!

Conrad loves berries. Blueberries are still his favorite, but strawberries and raspberries are right up there. We have just a few raspberry plants that were transplanted this spring from my friend's farm in Chatfield, and Conrad is sure to check them every day. When he's done with that "chore", if I'm working in the garden he'll usually stick around and play in the sand. I was really hoping when I bought this toy that it would entertain him and allow me more time in the garden and it seemed to do the trick this year. Hope it still works next year!

I also took some pictures recently of our prairie and home.

And here's just a fun picture from yesterday. I switched my day off this week so we enjoyed the fabulous weather we had yesterday. We picked pumpkin and squash (blue pumpkin and pink banana squash!) then went into mom's place to bake them. I used the pumpkin puree, which was a beautiful golden color, to make pumpkin bars. After naptime, we went for a walk with Grandma to soak in some more sunshine then went home to work in the garden (and check the raspberries again, play in the sandbox, sample the cherry tomatoes).

in the dark...

Over the weekend we heard an owl and several coyotes sing to us. It wasn't the first time of course, but we don't hear them everynight, not even weekly so when we hear one or the other we are reminded how beautiful it is to live on a prairie.

Last night we ran out of power. I was surprised actually, because it was plenty sunny yesterday. We've known we'll need a new, bigger battery before winter so I guess it's time. Ironically, I was charging Tim's AAA batteries for his headlamp (he's been using my headlamp for several days because he was too lazy to charge his own batteries!). When the power went out, I just put on my headlamp. Tim just, well, couldn't do much because it was dark. ;-)

Harvest Party

Sunday afternoon we spent picking grapes, digging potatoes, and socializing. A friend we met through Prairie Smoke (a group of prairie enthusiasts) grows and sells produce in a few local markets and she hosted a harvest party to help close the season. We helped with a few big jobs she needed to be done and otherwise wandered around and picked anything else we had a need for. Afterwards, she made a fabulous dinner using all her own produce, and a couple local chickens.

I wish I had the camera along, CW was adorable scratching through the dirt "treasure hunting" with his friends Sylvia and Armin. The kids' job was to find the potatoes and put them in the box. Even better was when we crawled under the grape arbor - it was like being in a secret forest surrounded by clumps of grapes. He watched a few moments then started picking the clumps he could reach. He was such a helper! When there was no more for him to reach, I would pick and then hand it to him to put in the tray. I was surprised how long this actually held his interest.

sigh - September

And Summer is over. We managed to squeeze in another trip to South Dakota. This time we took my 11yr old nephew Alex. It worked out very well and although the trip was much too short, we all had a good time.

A new past time for Conrad and Tim is flying their plane across the prairie. The fun part is throwing it and watching it go. The not so fun part is retrieving it.... but that will get easier after next month. We've decided to move the prairie burn to this fall. Tentatively set for late October.

August edition

In August we went to the Como Park - twice! We spent lots of time at the parks around Rochester and started harvesting from the garden. Tim continued to collect firewood from our friends' 160 acre farm in Chatfield and the month flew by all too quickly.

July...

In July, we went to the Black Hills with another couple. It was great - 4 adults and one toddler meant we actually got to get on the rock and climb several routes during our trip.

We also went bike riding a few times, and otherwise just hung out at the prairie when it wasn't too hot. There were a few days we would wait until late evening to go home, just to let things cool off a bit and allow the long shadows of the neighboring trees to reach our yurt.

summer memories

So I've been slacking off on posting. Summer just goes by so quickly, I didn't want to lose anytime inside on a computer! Here's a few of the things we did in June:

visit Deidra (CW's godmother and really good friend of mine), roast marshmallows on the fire, go "swimming" before dinner to cool off, go to the parks, get the garden going.