I grew up on a farm in Southwest Iowa, and we moved across the state and into town living the summer before I turned 13. My life now is so differently, and the childhood experiences that my kids are getting is so different than how things were for me. I am so engrossed in their lives and building experiences for them, that I rarely spend much time thinking about my own experiences. I am so far removed from my time on the farm, but luckily I have a good memory. I can still see my way around the farm and outbuildings in my mind and remember the great adventures that Andrea and I had, starting as soon as we stepped outside of our back door. We didn't have a lot of money when I was kid, I know that now, but at the time I often felt like I had the whole world to myself out on our farm. We had our own play house, a really house (who cares if it was meant for chickens?) with windows and a roof and a door, complete with a homemade wooden play kitchen (awesome!). How many kids can say that? There were so many places to explore and I remember my sister and I creating elaborate pretend games. I hope that my kids will have lots of fun pretending and exploring, but it just isn't the same when you live on a quarter acre lot in the burbs with only a 40'x 70' fenced in back yard to call your playground. My kids have a lot of crap, but they don't have the wide open space and outbuildings filled with potential imaginary worlds that I had. But alas, we are a suburban family. The upside? We have some amazing friends who we love to hang out with, who have kids close in age to our kids, and who are giving their kids the kind of childhood that I had, and they had too, as they are both grown up farm kids. This past weekend we spent the day at the Weber farm in Mechanicsville and we had a really great time. I can tell you that this farm visit beats the heck out of any pumpkin farm I have ever seen! :)
We had lunch, steaks on the grill. Of course they didn't come from Hy Vee, but were home grown and delicious! The weather was perfect even though the grown was kind of wet so we took the kids out to play. Bryce will be 4 in just a couple of weeks and he is such a proud farm boy! He LOVED showing us around. The kids started off by picking up fallen apples out of the back yard and filling their wagons so we could feed them to the cows. It was at this point that we realized that we had left our camera inside and that such cuteness was going on with Bryce, Eli (just turned 2) and Leila, that we would have to run in for it. Let me take you on the photo tour, led by Bryce:
Leila, check out my truck!
Time to feed the cows!
Leila ran through mud puddles, and fed cows. climbed on tractors and had a generally great time getting dirty. Good thing I had extra pants in the car!
It was right about now that we started talking about going home, and Leila started to get upset. Her response was, "but Bryce is my very best friend!" It was about the cutest thing I had ever seen. Bryce was busy feeding cows so Leila walked up to him and said, "Thank you Bryce, I had so much fun with you." He responded by reaching over and pulling Leila into a hug. Cory and I were talking on the way home about how happy we are that we had kids when Matt and Cindy were having kids. This friendship is so adorable. Who knows what the future may hold, but I hope they always get along. It will be interesting, but I am sure that they will grow up with lots of contact with one another. Matt and Cindy are great friends of ours and rank right up there with the "real" aunts and uncles, so it is inevitable. It sure looks to me like Bryce and Leila are great friends too.
Before we can go we have to have one last picture, Bryce wanted everyone in it, but of course we had to have a photographer so Cory isn't pictured.
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