Category Archives: events

October 26, 2014

It’s been another week full of fall pumpkin fun around here! We joined a group of friends for a play date at Lehner’s Pumpkin Farm. It turned out to be a small group and a really chilly day. It was, however, an awesome place that we will certainly return to next year. Our group was setup as a “class” so we had a nearly 3 hour schedule that moved us throughout the farm and included a bunch of activities, petting animals, riding a wagon to go pick a pumpkin, and having lunch. It was really a lot of fun, and I’m glad I was able to go there over my “lunch” hour(s) as it was relatively close to Millcreek.

Finn got another haircut this week in preparation for our fall family and Finn’s 18 month photos that Amy took for us this week. We are excited to see how those turn out. We dressed up as a German couple for the annual Halloween Costume Party this year. Didn’t turn out too bad for such a last minute purchase 😉

Finn is really loving playing with cars, trucks, farm machinery – any small moving vehicle. Lately he gets right down on the floor and puts his cheek on the ground and plays with his toys. First thing every morning he still wants to get either his plane, tractor, or car off his dresser while he’s getting changed (which he doesn’t love much these days). And he loves reading books that are all about “dig dig dig” (read that as any type of machinery) are his favorite. He’s also loving sleeping with a blanket, in addition to dog dog and fishy. He looks so sweet when he is sleeping and this week I was able to capture a couple of photos. He is also becoming quite independent and moves really quickly. A few times he’s gone either up or down the stairs before we realize it. He can be quiet and quick – and is so proud of himself when he reaches the top or bottom he has the largest grin on his face.

We had the most beautiful fall day and enjoyed family fun with my lovely OU college friends and their husbands and kids at Young’s Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs. We’re pretty much regulars there this time of year. It was great to see everyone, though hard to have much conversation with anyone amongst trying to keep up with all of the kids. They range in age from 1 to 8, which makes finding activities that everyone finds enjoyable somewhat of a challenge. We did have fun petting the goats (that’s twice in one week!), checking out pumpkins, watching the Eilerman’s launch pumpkins into the sky, and making it partially through the corn maze before enjoying a sweet treat and heading home.

October 19, 2014

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We’ve been having so much fun this fall I’m a bit behind in getting this post online!

We have a little blue Cookie Monster this year! Finn really loves his costume. I got home the day it had arrived and when I walked in the door Kevin had him dressed up. He had the hugest smile on his face and was holding a cookie in his hand, which he quickly began eating in Cookie Monster fashion. He is quite the entertainer these days. We went to the Spooktakular at the Rec Center on Thursday where we ran in to our cousins and several of our friends. It was a beautiful night and we were able to walk through the haunted woods, the hay bale maze, and go trick or treating. After church on Sunday we headed to Mansfield for an afternoon of fun with Grandma and Grandpa Beilstein. We had a full slate of activites, first at Apple Hill Orchard where we intended to pick apples. However, when we arrived the sign said u-pick was finished for the season! Luckily their store was still full of apples, so we “picked” ours indoors instead and then wandered around the orchard. The trees were beautiful and the orchard is in the pretty rolling hills of Richland County. Kevin and I would love to have about 5 or 10 acres on a setting just like this 🙂 Next up was Wayne’s Country Market where Finn and I cruised through the hay-bale maze. There were fun tunnels which were a hit, and also a straw horse. Then we hung out at Grandma and Grandpa’s house before heading to the Pumpkin Glow at Kingwood Center. Finn loved running down the hill to the neighbors driveway where he was captured by Grandpa a couple of times. We also checked out the possum that Grandpa caught in their backyard live-trap, but I didn’t capture a photo of it. We headed to the Glow before dusk, which was perfect timing, as when we were leaving and it was dark the line at the beginning was HUGE! Though I did run in to a high school friend and his family who I don’t think I’ve seen in probably 15 years, so that was fun. There were hundreds of carved pumpkins, food trucks, and lighted balloons and glow necklaces for kids. It was really well attended! And when we arrived home, Lily and Cameron were quite happy to see us (after 12 hours of being home alone) and they were super awesome not having a potty break the entire time!! And here are a few others from the week. Finn loves going for a “ride” on the tractor with Kevin (and thanks to Google for the “auto-awesome” photo it put together for me of Finn and Kevin going through the back yard). He loves to play with Lily and one morning after Lily was going nuts in her bed, then left, Griffin went and sat where she was. Finn and Graham had fun on the rocks at church, he tries to move them and likes climbing on them. And doing some nature painting with Debbie.

Construction project from this week was to re-build the doors on the shed, first so they would actually close, and second so the tractor would fit! Kevin and Brett had to widen the door frame several inches and then re-build the doors so that the mower would fit through. Can’t even tell anything was done, can you? These are professionals 🙂 Work on the garage included putting up shelving and installing cabinets. Photos on that will be coming soon.

September 28, 2014

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Check out that boy on the combine! We are in full-on Fall-fun mode! We had a pretty low-key week until the weekend, when we started our Saturday morning by taking Finn to a Build-and-Grow workshop at Lowe’s. This project was building a firetruck, so Finn was pretty excited, especially with the end result! He made lots of noise hitting the hammer and then ran around the store like a happy boy once we were finished. We enjoyed the beautiful afternoon with lunch at Northstar at Easton and then walked around a shopped for a short bit. Later the Ackerman’s joined us for dinner and Piper came along to play with Lily. It took them awhile to become buddies, but here they are enjoying a good game of tug.

Sunday was a jam-packed day. After church we attended the lunch for kiddos and parents of the NPC Nursery. It was SO hot outside, Finn was a hotbox. But he enjoyed playing on the playground for quite awhile. I think we were one of the last people to leave!

Finn grabbed a brief nap on our drive to Richwood to visit Chad’s family’s farm for the fall-harvest of corn. I must say, I was really excited for this visit, and so was Kevin. Even though I work at a nursery around all sorts of equipment, I still miss the farm I grew up on. All of the open space and exploring, driving the machines, you just can’t beat it. This was an experience I’ve never had before – riding in a combine! When we arrived, Nancy, Chad’s mom, greeted us and showed us around the main area of the farm that included barns and grain elevators, chickens, ducks, and even a pig! We watched a semi full of corn pull in and get emptied into the floor and up into grain elevator. I climbed up the back of the trailed and peaked in the trailer to see the enormous amount of grain being unloaded. The moisture content of the corn is determined during the harvest, and the corn goes through a dryer as it is being unloaded to remove whatever moisture necessary. We walked up the steps to the top of the grain silo, and, I’m not gonna hide it – I was stoked, until about halfway up. Kevin was holding Finn and he was half way up when I began following and I got a bit freaked out! It is super high up there, and so dusty from the grain – all I could imagine was Kevin falling with Finn or Finn moving abruptly and falling out of Kevin’s arms. Phew. All was well and I even managed a few photos. I’m not sure where this fear of heights is coming from, but I was a nervous twit there for a minute!! From there, we all piled onto the Gator and Elizabeth and Will took turns driving us down to where they were harvesting corn for the day. Dave, Chad’s stepfather, was just coming up a row shortly after we got there, so Kevin, Finn, and Elizabeth hopped up into the combine and went down and back a turn. Then we traded, and Will, Finn, and I went on the next round. The equipment is amazing! GPS guided and electronically controlled all from one joystick that has about 22 options of things you can do! There is a screen that shows read-outs of the moisture as the corn is being harvested (it updates every 3 seconds) as well as the number of bushels per acre. Anther screen shows fuel, MPH, amongst other things. One of their new pieces of equipment is a weigh-trailer, which can drive alongside the combine and receives the harvested corn. It has these crazy tracking tires which allows it to spread the weight-load out a lot more (versus a traditional tractor tire which would not be able to haul this much weight without creating big divets in wet ground) . The weigh-trailer weighs the load right in the field can hold a semi-worth of volume and can empty the contents into a semi in 2 minutes. Dave told me for the field we were in, it’s about 60 rows (so 2.5 trips back and forth) to fill the weigh-trailer, which fills the semi. He said they like to do about 15-18 semi’s a day. Wow. It’s a pretty cool view from up there! I learned all kinds of tidbits, like last year corn was yielding over $7 per bushel, whereas this year he said it is right around $3, or actually $2.98, due to the overall higher production in the US. They don’t expect to have higher yields this year as the spring/summer was so wet – he expect it will be about the same as last year. Definitely not good for Ohio farmers! At the end we had an ice cream treat and Elizabeth released one of her grandma’s Monarch’s! We had so much fun, thanks to the Wiley’s and Ackerman’s for letting us tag along!