April 12, 2009

I tend to write about things of which I have taken pictures but I have not uploaded the pictures to my laptop yet so the pictures come later. This is another one of those. Pictures to catch up with the posts and a few fresh ones from this morning.

I think it was Thursday that we had a play-in-the-sink day. The boys had a blast. We normally save that activity for when our babysitter comes but it has been so long that I decided to surprise them with a special event.
Nick making bubbles with soap in a sponge.
Ben thought that looked like fun so he did it too.
And here is the behind-the-scenes picture, so you can see how we keep the water from getting all over the floor. Actually, they both do a pretty good job of keeping it in the sink these days. I have heard the boys say 'actually' at the start of a sentence a few times lately. Very cute. The other day, one of them said about the dad "he's a really nice fellow", or something close to that.
And here is Nick, pretending to be the leader of the band, as he also plays the cymbals. Don't you just love his band leader's hat?

Here is a picture of the very old barn that I mentioned in the last post. The back half of the shorter building in the forefront was where my grandfather used to milk cows. I'm not sure what he used the front half of the building for back then. When I was little, they stored saddles and feed in there. The taller portion of the barn, just behind the building in the forefront is where the haylofts are and, just behind that, the shorter part is where my grandfather used to store things like his lawn mower and a bunch of other stuff.This is the inside, where grandpa used to milk the cows. There would be feed in the long trough with the slatted boards just in front of it. The cows would stick their head between the slats to get the feed and someone would move the slat into a position where the cow could not pull her head back out. Then they did the milking by hand. I think that little ditch that runs across the room was just below where the back end of the cow would be, so they could just hose the cow poop down the ditch and out the back door when they were finished. Aren't you glad I included that bit:).This picture shows the ladder going up the wall where we used to climb up on top of the hay. That little door next to the ladder would be block completely by hay so the only way in was up. We had so much fun climbing around on the hay back then.Here is the old potato cellar (on the left) and the old tool shed (on the right). Grandpa was forever going in and out of the tool shed, when he was working around the farm. The old house used to sit just in front of these two buildings. Us kids spent many hours playing around the house, playing hide-n-seek, climbing the trees, trying to tame the wild kittens and just running around after grandpa. I wish I had a picture of the old house. I will have to go through all of my old pictures and see if I can find one to scan in and keep. The front room of the old house was once a little cabin all by itself and it had been added to over the years.
This is the house that my grandparents built before they tore down their old house. They used to enjoy sitting in that blue two-seater slider swing thing and watch the great grandkids play in the yard.
And, last but not least, here are a couple of pics from this morning.
"I found one!"
Checking out the stickers in my egg.
We like Easter candy!
Happy Easter!!