And then there were leaves.

We are in the middle of the Autumn season. The day started with Judy and I watching the Dudes and having some fun time at the Earle Brown school playground. The boys love the slides and went round and round, up and down.Liam takes the first slide.
Followed by Logan. As soon as the feet hit the ground, they were running back to the ladder for another go. Then the Barnharts joined us for a fun time in the leaves.
There was a lot of leaf throwing, as you can see from Liam
Gretchen traded her wheels for the pile of leaves.
Then mysteriously Gigi was covered with the leaves. I think she kind of enjoyed it.
Each of the kids took turns getting buried in the leaves. At first Lorelei didn't like the idea but as you can see, quite enjoyed the experience.
Along came a Lady Bug, which grabbed her attention from the leaves. It crawled on her hand for awhile, until she flew off.
Logan loved Joe's bike helmet, even though he liked it best backwards.
Logan even blasted Aunt Tana with a handful.

Successful Gardening

We had a successful vegetable garden this year, after not having one for several years. It wasn't as good as Brett's 1st Place garden that was about fifty times as big, but we got a lot to eat. We planted peas, beans, onions, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers and potatoes. We also put chicken wire around every side of the garden to keep the rabbits out. I plugged all holes. In the past, the rabbits eat the peas, beans and carrots before they matured.

After we enriched the soil with bag after bag of manure, compost and peat moss we started planting. Our soil seems to turn into sand in a couple of months. But this year with the1400 pounds of stuff I tilled in, the soil actually stayed nice.










This is only about a third of the potatoes we got. We filled almost three 5 gallon buckets with potatoes, some of them were as large as grapefruits.



This is a portion of the carrots we harvested. We planted only one packet of seeds and after you scatter them and thin them out, you end up with only one fifth of them. We got the equivalent of at least ten large bags of carrots at Cub. I sliced and cooked them all up (use sugar instead of salt in the water to sweeten them) and have enough for at least 25 meals for the two of us. We got about ten meals each from the peas and beans.


We has such good success that we may expand it next year and rotate crops. Judy does not want to do tomatoes next year because we just didn't do anything with the ones we harvested. But we could make tomato sauce. I will have to get Brett's recipe.

Departure time

The time we had with Kyle and Tiffany and their family was way too short. Seemed like they just got here and then had to leave again. They were here for about nine days and it was not long enough. Thanks Kyle and Tiffany for bringing the kids to visit with us. You are missed.

Gooseberry Falls

The next day we drove up to Gooseberry Falls and spent a few hours there. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms in the afternoon and it was threatening most of the time we were there. We thought it was a good idea to start back to the cars because of the way the weather looked. As we got to the gift shop , it started to drizzle. I parked farther down that Jeff did. Jeff and his passengers made it to their car in time but me and my passengers didn't and it started to pour. We had Ellie and Didi and needed to get them in car seats and then put cameras and strollers in the trunk. Well, we could have gone swimming in Lake Superior and not got any wetter. Here are Larsen's by the upper falls.And here are Smentek's by the upper flls.
There goes Ron, Kirstin and Kyle, crossing the river on rocks, for a better photo op. Kyle decided to "climb" the cliff to get back.
Time for a rest.
Kirstin with Didi.
Here are a few photos of the Falls.

Trip to Duluth and beyond

The Monday following our picnic, Kirstin, Jeff, Logan , Liam, Kyle, Tiffany, Ellie, Erik, Judy and I took off for Duluth for a day of adventure. We stayed at a water park for evening fun. I was feeling much better after getting sepsis of the blood five days ago. Here are the Smentek's walking across one of the sculptures on Canal Park Drive.And here are the Larsen's. Are we really excited? Looks can be deceiving.
To out surprise, the largest ship on the Great Lakes, The Paul R Tregurtha, was going under the aerial life bridge. It was so large that it looked like it would not fit. I have seen movies of ships going under a lift bridge while the bridge was going down and tore the top half off the ship. The operator no longer works there.
Then it was stone throwing time on lake Superior. If we kept it up for much longer, we would have filled it in.
Logan and Liam are standing by an old tug boat.
Didi loves to swing.
Then came the time at the water park. I won't post many pictures but the Smentek's drifted down the lazy water park river.
Here comes Kyle and Ellie down one of the water slides. There was a giant bucket that filled up with water (probably 100 gallons) and then spilled out over part of the platform. It was about to dump while Ellie and I were in the middle of it. I grabbed her and stood directly under a platform below the bucket, thinking we would be safe. But I did not know there was a back splash and we got doused with about 30 gallons of water. We were surprised.
Jeff decided to wait for the big bucket to dump and see what happens.

Family Picnic in the backyard

On the last day of August, it was decided to have all our kids and their kids over to enjoy a delicious dinner in the backyard. As you can see, Brett is enjoying it.The smallest ones had their own table and did really well . Liam seems to be saying, "It's a Bird! It's a plane! It's ...."
The view from the other side. Gigi is not quite sure of the guy taking the photo.
Didi was taking the giraffe for a little ride up the hill but there must have been too much weight on the back because over they went.
Gigi, seeing the predicament that Didi was in, ran to rescue the giraffe and ignored Didi. Not to worry, though. Didi said, "Go ahead, take my giraffe!", just like Dirty Harry would have said.
Liam liked taking the scooter down the hill where he stopped to talk with "little brother"
Gigi shows us that there are other things that you can do with the scooter, like resting your feet on the steering wheel. Maybe all that food she ate settled in her feet.
BFFs, Ellie and Lorelei, are happy to share a tricycle ride together.
I think that I want to try out this giraffe. Everyone else has had a turn so now it's my turn.
Logan really got the scooter going fast on the driveway.
Lorelei going solo on the trike.
Joseph needed to shoe us his stuff on his own scooter. He could really go. Yea Joe.
Since Didi's legs are a bit short to really get going, cousin Logan decided to give him a hand.
We had the picnic while Kyle and Tiffany were here so that all could catch up on all the news everyone had. We are so grateful for Kyle and Tiffany and all the adventures they have had and that they included us on one of them.
Then all of a sudden the tubes came out
Andrew is playing pick-a-boo with us.
Even Jeff tried out the scooter.
Andrew has had a growing spurt as you can see from the photo below. He must be at least eight feet long and stuck in the tube.
Here we are with all nine of our grand kids. Aren't they cute?
The backyard family picture with everyone. Andrew and Brandon added the finishing touches.