County Fair Highlights

Tuesday night we went to the fair to see a little of the hog show and check out the animals. My favorite are the chickens and other birds. The kids enjoyed all the animals.

Saturday Mark decided to enter an arm wrestling contest. He ended up getting first place in his class. I was pretty impressed, some of the guys he was going against had on their arm wrestling t-shirts and their special arm wrestling glove. I thought to myself, these guys go to arm wrestling contests all over and Mark is just a farm boy wanting to have some fun, will he get beat? Mark did great, the first guy was tough to beat and the next two Mark beat easily.

Amelia turns 3

Amelia turned 3 years old on Friday. We had a princess birthday party for her. She was so excited to have her cousins, grandparents and aunts and uncles come over for supper. Here are a few pictures of her at the party.

Amelia's cousin John helped blow out the candles.

Burn Baby Burn

For those of you living in the Oskaloosa area, you may have noticed a thick black cloud of smoke last Wednesday. It was Mark burning down part of his hog sheds. Things went fairly well, we only lost one tree and saved the machine shed!

Poor Mark was trying to save his machine shed from burning down with a garden hose. The flames were so high that the side of the machine shed was getting very hot. I got nervous leaving him out in the smoke and debris all alone. So I called the fire dept. and asked them to come out in case the machine shed caught fire. They finally showed up about 20 minutes after I called, when the flames died down of course. You can see our burned evergreen on the left side of this picture.

Mark's Summer Project

This spring Mark and I decided that the hog sheds were more work then they were worth. After 30 years full of pigs they were shot! Mark began demolition a couple weeks ago, taking out all the metal gates and feeders.

Mark and Ethan tearing off steal from the hog shed roof.

Mark's crew includes Ethan and the Johnson boys.

Mark and Gabe dozing in the nursery.

The pushed in nursery.

Lawn Sweepers

Our yard went a couple weeks without being mowed when I had Elijah. Mark and the kids took over, making our yard look good again! Ethan helped by driving his 3-wheeler and the lawn sweeper behind Mark and the mower. He did a great job!

Picture Time

Our friend Laura from church came over to take pictures of Elijah when he was two weeks old. Here are a few.

The Kids!

Ethan is our oldest, he loves to ride his bike!

Amelia is our second child, she will turn 3 next week.


Elijah is our newborn, he is two weeks old in this picture.