The farm!

This beautiful picture of the barn is on the farm in ND where I grew up. The truck and tractor add to the picture and belong to my Nephew Jamie, he has done a good job of taking over the farm since my brother, his dad, suddenly past away about 18 months ago on Aug 17, 2010.
This is that same barn about 60 years ago with my father and brother looking at a couple horses. I think that is Bess and the cold either Dick or Billy.
When my brother was only a few years old, maybe 3 or 4, my mother built him a toy barn that looked a lot like our big real barn. He spent many hour's playing farm with that barn, toy cattle, tractors etc. My mother also made me a doll bed and ironing board from wood, (I still have them) and she used big cardboard box's to create cupboards, stove and fridge for me to play house. Below is a close up picture of that toy barn made from wood and painted red and white to match the big farm barn.
This picture is taken just west of the barn facing North. The bigger red building was always our pig barn and I remember spending many hours in there watching the tiny baby pig's in the spring of year and also loving to watch the older pigs eat their "shloot" German for ground feed, with milk pored over it. The small red building was the brooder house where we always kept the baby chicks and moved them when they got older to the big Chicken barn in the picture below. The picture below was taken South of the barn facing East and that is the machine shed with the chicken barn at the South right side with all the windows for sun light. That pump in the center of our yard has always been there. In 1989 I remember painting it black and me and my mother painted the state flower, wild rose, on it for the centennial.

The East view with the machine shed and wind mill lawn ornament against a beautiful sun rise.

Below is my dads faithful farm dog. SPOT! We have always had a farm dog. I remember several names starting with Smoky, Rex, Lucky, another Smoky, Lady, Cindy and now Spot.

This is the farm house that my parents bought and had moved in 1975.
This is our youngest Melissa with 3 precious little foster girls who were very excited to be on the farm and see the calves and cows. They have had the three girls for 6 months and now this week they will be going back to their parents.
Our youngest two grandchildren were excited to pet this sweet bottle fed calf. Below are a couple pictures of our oldest daughters 5 children. our grandchildren minus the oldest grandson.

Jamie bottle feeding this sweet #8 calf.

Such a sweet calf! Spoiled too!

This is the Bottle calf's mother.

More cattle. There are about 60 that will have calves when they are finished calving.

When we were at my parents farm, on Palm Sunday there was a fire that started from a broken electrical wire. It burnt quit a few acres of coulee pasture land. Jamie is a volunteer fireman and helped fight the fire. Here his older sister Amber is making sure he has plenty of water to drink and that he is doing OK. Below you can see a lot of burnt area. No farm buildings were burnt or last and there were fire departments there from several surrounding towns to help fight the fire.

Since it was only one week before Easter, we had a fun Easter Egg hunt with plastic eggs with toys or candy in them. It was a fun time with lots of memories for us adults.

Here is the 10 yr old blowing bubbles that were found in one of her eggs that she found.

The youngest finds a egg hidden by the center of yard pump. She was way excited over every egg that she found.

Looks like older sister is trading eggs with her younger brother. Always fun to make a good trade!

Everyone enjoyed the nice warm weather and the Easter Egg hunt. Below is our youngest grandson opening one of his eggs to check for goodies. I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter celebration remembering the great Love and Sacrifice of our Lord and Savior for the sins of the whole world. Jesus conquered death when he rose from the grave that first Easter morning that we too may live eternally with him.

Family Gathering

The end of March the first few days of April were exciting times for our family. We all gathered together at Niagara ND to visit my parents. The pictures below show some of our good times.

I will need to update a few more blogs since there was way too much activity and fun to share on just one blog update.

Below are several pictures of my parents with their 9 Great-grandchildren. It is hard to get them all looking at the camera and happy at the same time. We really gave it a good try because it is very seldom that we are all together at one place at the same time.

What a great time to all be together.

The youngest Great Grandchildren are twin girls who had just turned one year old.

Jeff and I will celebrate our 40th anniversary in May so we wanted a good picture with all our family. Our two lovely daughters, their husbands and our 6 precious grandchildren. I have many to chose from but will just post the two that I seem to like the best.

These three pictures are my parents, my dad is 93 yr's old and my mother is 90 yr old.

Here they are with their 5 grandchildren. It is hard to believe how fast time goes by. It seems like no

time ago when we were taking their pictures when they were all in grade school and high school.

This is my parents with their grandchildren and great grandchildren. The sun was very bright and in their eyes so most are trying very hard to keep their eyes open and smile for the camera. It was a fun time and great to spend a few days together.

A couple pictures of our oldest Grandson. He is very handsome and has borrowed his cousins fedora for the first picture.

Below is a couple of pictures of our oldest granddaughter. She is beautiful and has grown to be a lovely young lady. She loved toting the little children around so it was hard to find pictures of her alone.

Here he is, our newest teenage grandson. He is very good looking, getting so tall and this fedora belongs to him. His "NEW" look. That fedora did make it rounds and get in plenty of pictures.

Our granddaughter had just turned 10 years old so here she is looking at the Black Hills gold birthstone ring that me and papa gave her for her birthday.

Below is our youngest grandson, 7 years old. He was blowing bubble's and enjoying outside time at the farm. We enjoyed a Easter egg hunt and he was very good at finding the eggs.

This is the sweet baby of our family! She is already 3 yr old but such a fun little thing she is. We enjoyed spoiling her and spending quality time with her even though our time went way too fast.

Below is my nieces son. My brothers grandson. He also just turned 3 years old so we enjoyed spending time at their home for a big combined birthday party. The twin girls below who are his sisters, just turned 1 year old.

My silly Niece, she is her fathers daughter! She is the 3 children's aunt who cares for them four days a week,

Below was one day at my parents home when my Aunt brought some old pictures that we were all very interested in.

The grandchildren goofing off and having an enjoyable time together and enjoying the beautiful unseasonable weather. In the high 60's, that is great for ND!

My husband brought his new play toy, his Taylor guitar, he enjoyed playing and singing a few tunes with our youngest daughter on his old guitar, her husband with the mandolin and my Uncle Ed who has played guitar and sang for as long as I can remember. It was great to hear them all play together and we even did a little singing.

I brought a Easter craft for the children to work on. You can see they are very much enjoying this special activity. Great-Grandma, Great Grandpa and the rest of us enjoyed watching their enthusiasm as they put cross stickers and other religious symbols on a church window shape.