Best Buddies

I am not sure exactly when it happened.  When they clicked.  But they did and there was no stopping them!  Wyatt and Lunden are together the peanut butter and jelly in a sandwich, the icing on a cake, butter on your popcorn.  These two can spend hours together and never get tired of each other.  They play trains and cars.  They like to sit next to each other in their strollers at exercise class just so they can show each other what they brought that day to play with and do a little swapping.  They are the kind of friends that know what the other one is thinking.  They can get each other into trouble faster than you can imagine.  One is into the mischief and the other laughs encouragement.  They are quite the pair!

When life keeps them apart for too long, they let us Mom's know they miss each other.  Get that playdate scheduled please!  When you see them together, they are like brothers.  I can only imagine how they will be when they get older.  I will be calling Lunden's parents looking for Wyatt and they will be calling us.  We may have to put beepers on their ankles to keep track of them!

They have had such a good time together in their short little lives and it is going to be so neat to see them grow up together.  I hope they always treat each other with respect and a pat on the back.  You just can't do without a best friend in your life and these two have been lucky enough to find one already!

Harvest 2011

We missed harvest with my Dad this year.  Life got crazy and traveling the 4 hours to the farm just didn't happen.  Luckily, my cousin was cutting down by Wellington so we drove down to see them and Wyatt had the time of his life!

Waiting for his ride!

Last year he was so afraid of the big combine and tractors.  He wouldn't go near them.  This year he didn't want to stop riding!  What a difference a year makes.  Austin took him on a ride in the combine and they cut a while until the header plugged up.  I am sure with two little kiddos in the cab, Austin could put his full attention into keeping the header cleared out!

Getting out of the combine to work on the header

Plugged!

 After they got the header figured out and the combine back to work, it was time for a tractor ride.  Austin's dad, Eldon, took Wyatt and they were so cute.  This was the first time Wyatt had met Eldon so I was shocked when he went off without a second look back.

Wyatt and Eldon headed to drive the tractor

There is obviously some farming in this little boy's blood.  Maybe next year we will get out to Grandpa Kemper's for harvest.  I have a feeling he will be asking to drive by then.  Wyatt never ceases to amaze me!  Thanks to the Lawless family for letting us have some fun!

Talking it over with Eldon and cousins Austin, Chalea and little Audie

Wyatt Driving the Tractor

 Harvest was always a fun time on the farm.  It usually lasted a good couple of weeks when I was younger.  My Dad and Uncle Marc used two old yellow New Holland combines with a header width about the size of a car. :) It took them forever!  Only one of them had air conditioning too.  Pretty miserable in the KS heat.  They had two old, small grain trucks too.  My brother and I would climb up into the fully loaded trucks and a crawl over all the wheat.  There would be grasshoppers and other dead and alive buggers in there but who cared.  It was kind of like walking in sand.  You would sink as you moved!  My Mom made the best dinners to take out to the guys and it was fun to go riding along to help feed the crew.  I still make a lot of the food she made year after year.  Brings back good memories when I do.  Lots of dust and wheat chaffe blowing.  I need to find some of the old pictures from back then.  I have a VHS video from 82 in the basement.  Pretty funny stuff!  One Summer I worked at the grain elevator, probing wheat trucks till the wee hours of the morning.  Leonard Long and I sat there waiting on those trucks.  The harvest crews that came through town usually had some pretty good looking guys running trucks too so staying up and working was way worth it!  Now my family operates a much larger combine, a semi truck, tractor and grain cart and they aren't out there near as long (provided Mother Nature cooperates).  There is something about a Kansas harvest that just makes me happy.  Hard working people making a living off the land.  Just as it should be.

Kohake Homestead Weekend

On July 9th, my Mom and her three sisters got together along with those of us who could come and finished cleaning out my Grandma Kohake's home.  She passed away four years ago and some was done then but my Aunt Marcia and Uncle Max planned to retire there so much was left so they would have the things they needed to stay there.  Life has changed and along with it, plans, so the farm will be sold.  They planned this day to finish going through the barn and home and give everyone little treasures that belonged to Grandma.  Whether it be a recipe book or the buffet that sat in the dining room for as long as I can remember, everyone left with a piece of memory.

I took the time to sit and remember all the fun we had at Grandma Kohake's house.  The Christmas holidays with all the cousins.  Chalea and Chanda would orchestrate some sort of a Christmas play with all the kids.  We would talk it through in the back bedroom and then head to the living room to put on our performance for the parents.  I remember being afraid of the basement.  There is a bedroom down there but if you go into the back part, she had a storage room where she kept all her canning and boy was it dark back there!  Even the sounds of the house.  How the bedroom doors sounded when they shut, the locust and other critters that were in the fields outside while we slept with the windows wide open.  A benefit to the living in the country.  The full length mirror that hung on the wall outside the bedrooms.  There were so many of us crowded around that mirror on Sunday mornings doing hair and getting our clothes just right.  The brown and white colored canisters on the kitchen counter.  Austin and Tony climbing the big oak tree in the front yard. 

I was pregnant with Wyatt when Grandma Kohake passed away and I am so happy he got the opportunity to go play at her home and enjoy the yard and being in the country.  He had so much fun and I enjoyed every smile.

I know this had to be tough on my Mom and her sisters but they pushed through like a Hulsing woman knows how to do and I think they had a great time just being together in their home.  We found so many treasures.

And got rid of some too! :)

I will miss going back to Goff.  I have a stack of Grandma's handwritten recipes to go through. Some don't even have the recipe name listed!  Grandma has lines drawn around some with little notes and others have ingredients listed with the words "more or less" written after them.  It is nice to see her familiar handwriting.  I love my Grandma, love her family and definitely love going back home to her farm. 

Blogs In My Head

I have so many blogs floating around "upstairs" and I don't know where to start.  I have been busy which is why I am so behind on blogs but if I am behind on blogs you can only imagine what my house looks like right now!  So forgive me as I slowly weed through pictures and thoughts and post them here.  There won't be an order but as life goes on I am expected to do nothing but try to keep up, any which way I can.