3rd Annual Kemper Family Farm Weekend

The Kempers

There are some things that will never change for me.  I love my family, I love where I come from and I love my Grandma Dolly.  Three years ago with the birth of my son I realized the importance of family.  I wanted him to know his cousins. First, second, third and so on.  I wanted him to know his great aunts and uncles and his only living great grandparent.  And I wanted them to know him.  So began the annual Kemper Family Farm Weekend.  For three years, those of us in the family tree under John and Dolly (Viola) Kemper get together at the family farm.  We have a project or two to complete.  The first year we painted Grandma's house, the next year her garage and this year we did yard work and washed windows and cupboards in her house.  It is a way for us to show appreciation for how much she means to us by brightening up her little corner of the world.  The best part?  Spending time with each other.  We laugh, tell stories, eat and reconnect after a year of busy lives.  This year we were so blessed to have the largest group yet.  There were six little kids (5 boys and 1 girl) ages 3 and 4!  Wow were they fun to watch!  It brought back so many memories of being little on the farm and playing with the cousins. 

Friday night we all headed out to the Logan Lake for pizza and smores.  Uncle Marc and Aunt Tam brought the Ranger and 4 wheeler to give rides and the kids tried to skip rocks on the lake.  Everyone stayed to watch the sun set.  Boy were those smores good!

Saturday we were up bright and early.  Homemade cinnamon rolls and cherry bars (cherries courtesy of Grandma Kemper's trees) were for breakfast.  Then we started in on the yard and housework.  Even the little kiddos got involved!

The grandkids were in charge of lunch and we had grilled hamburgers, hot dogs and brats and lots of yummy sides and desserts.  After lunch everyone either headed for a nap, to visit or to cool off in the city pool.  Dinner that night was at the church hall.  Aunt Tam and Rhea fried up the best fried chicken you can imagine.  Mom made the mashed potatoes and holy cow were we all stuffed when we left!

Frying chicken!!!!!

Mom cooking in the church kitchen

It was such a great time and I am grateful to everyone who could make it back.  I am bound and determined that this is one family who will not lose sight of the importance of each other.  My kids will remember just like I do, the farm and all the fun had there.  And I hope that Grandma Kemper enjoys having her kids, grandkids and great grandkids around her, even if it is just for a weekend.  Oh and just one more thing that will never change for me.... my memories!

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.

DDD

For years I had lower back pain.  It felt like I needed to be stretched out.  Like my spine was somehow compacted.  I have seen my fair share of chiropractors and they provided relief but nothing long term.  Then, almost five years ago I changed chiropractors and after some xrays, I was given a diagnosis I had never heard before.  Degenerative Disc Disease.  Part of me was happy to have finally found out what had been causing all my trouble but the other half of me was sad to know there isn't anything to reverse it.  I went to an orthopedic surgeon, had an MRI and he confirmed the diagnosis and gave me a better idea of what was happening to my spine.  I had moderate degeneration of the disc between my L4 and L5 vertebrae and inflammation of the vertebrae around that disc.  As a side note, my spine and tailbone are actually fused together.  Something he said is very common but to me explains why I think I don't have very good flexibility to touch my toes!  The surgeon was surprised how well I was getting along at the time due to how bad it looked but I turned down epidural injections and opted to stay with my chiropractor.  I wanted to keep from doing anything "invasive" for as long as I could. 

In 2007, I got pregnant with my son.  Life was great.  All of my back pain was gone.  I felt amazing and couldn't believe it.  But, as I have read happens, within 3 days of me giving birth, all the pain was back with a vengeance.  It was horrible.  I crawled around on the floor a lot trying to care for my son.  Anything to ease the pain in my back and legs.  I just had my second child and while I still had some pain during my pregnancy this go round, it is back full force and really affects my day.

You don't realize how much you bend over in a day until it is painful to do so.  Especially with a baby.  I am not a short person, 5' 10" tall, so there are a lot of things I do that require me to bend. 

Laying my baby down for a nap
Changing her diaper on the bed or changing table
Loading and unloading the dishwasher
Getting anything out of the lower cabinets in my house
Using my oven
Getting clothes in and out of the washer and dryer
Getting up out of a chair or sitting down in a chair
Turning my head upside down to blow dry my hair
Vacuuming
Picking up toys
Putting on my shoes, pants, etc.

And these are just a few things.  It is also quite painful to lay down and if I sit for too long, I walk like an elderly person, all bent over as if I was using a cane to walk. 

I am writing about it today because I just wish it would go away.  I wonder often what I will be like in another 10 years.  I wonder what medical treatment I will be dealing with as I age.  I wonder if all the years of competitive athletics sped up the degeneration.  It gets to me when I have to stand over my daughter's bassinet, trying to summon the strength to bend over to lay her down for bed without crying.  It gets to me when my son wants me to play and I know if I get on the floor to build those block towers, I am going to be in serious pain when I move.  It gets to me to know I am not supposed to be exercising like I do but I don't know how else to stay fit so I try and push through it. 

Oddly enough, since my diagnosis, both my brother and sister have also been diagnosed with DDD although it isn't as advanced and I hope they never have it be so.  I will continue to see the chiropractor from time to time when insurance allows and work to strengthen my abdominal muscles after having my daughter.  Both of these will help me manage some of the pain and discomfort.  Chronic pain is not a great way to spend every day of your life but I guess it is what I have been given and it could be worse.  I myself will hold out for stem cell research and hopefully one day I will be able to regenerate the bad disc.  Until then, one day at a time, one day at a time.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

A few weeks ago we loaded up the truck like the Clampetts and headed back home to visit my brother, his wife and my nephew.  They travel back that way about once a year so it was pretty important we get there.  First time to travel with the 2 dogs, 2 kids and 2 adults.  I think we did fairly well.  The trip out took forever.  Lorelai was hungry about every hour so there was lots of stopping.  I also got to introduce my Grandma, Viola, to her great granddaughter Lorelai Viola.  It was so sweet to see how happy it made her to hold Lorelai. 

Lorelai Viola and her Great Grandma Viola

It was such a great trip.  Many family friends stopped in to see Lorelai and visit and there was plenty of just being a family all under one roof. 

Great Grandma with Brayden, Lorelai and Wyatt

These two get in more trouble together!

Still more trouble!

 My nephew is a total card.  He doesn't like to sit still for a minute and oh so completely has his parents wrapped around his little finger!  I wish they lived closer so I could see the little guy more.  He had spent some time at the Sutter grandparents house before venturing to Logan and must have checked a lot of cows with his Papa because he yelled "COME BOSS!" all the time.  Way cute!

Cowboy Brayden

Brayden trying to get his mom to eat instead of doing it himself!

Reading a book and playing the guitar to keep Wyatt occupied while the nuggets go down the gush!

I miss my little home town and all the people in it.  We are so fortunate as a family to have each other and our traditions to keep us coming back together.  Time spent with each other is priceless and more important to me now that I have two kids that need to know where their momma came from. 

Chillin' with my Uncle Tony on the front porch

Lorelai and her Aunt Shelley

I think they were trying to decide what they were going to eat next.  Definitely not working!

A little conversation with Grandma

The trip home went much easier.  Not many stops along the way.  I miss home already........