Saturday, September 6, 2003

The summer is all gone and all I have left are the memories so I might as well share them with you. This last month of the summer went by faster than the first two which I didn't think was possible. I guess I will pick up where I left and try to hit the highlights of these past weeks.

One of the big events for me was the trip to the House on the Rock. This was the first time that I had been there and it really amazed me. There was so much to see and it was much more interactive than a normal museum. I have a bunch of pictures and I bought a great book about Alex Jordon who is the founder.

The following day Chanel left for Missouri and that evening Marcia, Sami, Dani, Nicole and I went to see the Dweebs at Riverboat Days in Red Wing. I thought that they were a really good band and they played a lot of older songs that I knew. I think that we all had a good time. The rest of that week I spent helping my uncle with haying. We ended up finishing a small bag and then doing some round and square baling. Luckily we only had about two loads of square bales so it didn't take too long.

The next event took up the whole next week. I decided to help with bible school. This was a great time because I was the photographer and got to see everything that was going on. I think that the class I had the most fun with was the three and four year olds. Usually I like working with the older kids but this year seemed different. I guess it is just me growing up. They were a wild bunch but they were also a lot of fun. The pictures turned out nicely and we had a great slideshow.

The next week I spent in the Upper Peninsula at Cedar Campus. I could write a book about all the things I learned and the great time I had. I will try to hit the highlights in a paragraph or so and you can always ask me if you want more.

For those of you who don't know, Cedar Campus is a InterVarsity owned camp. We were there for Chapter Focus week. I attended the track Small Group Leaders Training, SGLT for short. SGLT taught me so much about how to lead a small group, what a small group should include, and countless other useful pieces of advice. We also had the opportunity to meet as a small group and lead each other in meetings. Through this we grew closer together and learned what it would be like to lead a small group back on campus. It was this experience that gave me the courage to accept the position of witnessing community leader for RWJ 3 when Chad asked me that week.

The week was about much more than just SGLT. We also had daily chapter prayer meetings where we were able to talk about plans for the upcoming year as well as challenges facing us and our chapter. I feel that this made us grow closer as a chapter. There is no way I can describe to you exactly how awesome of an opportunity this was, the only way to know was to be there.

I returned from Cedar campus on Saturday, August 23. The next day, my birthday, was spent going to a movie with my sister, Sarah and Eddie. Sarah and Eddie are triplets along with their brother Dave. They are really nice and we had a good time talking and seeing Pirates of the Caribbean .

The rest of my final week at home was spent working and getting everything packed. Finally on Labor Day, September 1, I moved into the dorms thus ending my summer and beginning the school year.

Thursday, July 31, 2003

I guess it is about time that I write again. I decided that if I didn't write pretty soon I would forget what had happened.

The last few weeks have been very busy for me. I helped my uncle with his oatlage for five days. We were able to get all the chopping done in three days and then I helped clip the pasture the next few days.

After this I was home for the Pepin County Fair. The first two days I didn't go to the fair but I did have extra work on the farm. The third and final day, I spent most of my day at the fair. I helped with the food stand collecting money for a couple of hours. After this, I spent the rest of the day at the dairy show. It was a lot of fun seeing all of my friends show their animals. It also made me wish that I had shown animals. This is one of my biggest regrets. I have always done a lot of work on our family's farm but I never showed any on them. My dad always said that it was too much work but looking back I think it would have been a good experience.

The day after the fair I returned to my uncle's farm to help with second crop. I spent the next four days working on this. We were able to get quite a bit done in this short of a time. I was also able to see some of my relatives when they stopped by on Sunday to visit my grandparents.

This week has probably been one of the best weeks on my summer. We have had the privilege of having a 4-H exchange guest from Missouri stay with us. She came on Sunday night and is leaving for home on Saturday morning. This makes for a short stay but it ends up being close to a full seven days for them with the driving. The girl staying with my sister was Shanel. She has been very nice and I hope she is enjoying her stay. Shanel and my sister along with Eddie and Kyle all stayed at our house Sunday night. Last year my sister stayed with a Kyle's sister Lauren and Eddie also stayed with them. This year Marcia invited Eddie and Kyle to stay with us even though Lauren was staying with someone else.

On Monday we had a family day. We spent the afternoon taking a tour of the neighbors farm. The farm is owned by the Walser family, a wealthy family that owns several car dealerships. We have become friends with the Wolfe's, who are the caretakers of the farm. Their children are similar in age to us, Karl graduated this year and was in band playing the trumpet with Marcia and Rachel is in Lance's class. The farm features buildings built to look older than they are. Unique animals such as elk, buffalo, peacocks, ostrich and wawatusa are also part of the farm. After a tour of the buildings and animals, we went to the recently completed airstrip and Marcia, Shanel, Eddie, and Kyle went for a flight over the area with Mr. Wolfe. I think that they all enjoyed this opportunity. I have been up in a small plane once before with Mr. Howard, our physics teacher and I would enjoy to go flying again.

Tuesday brought more busyness. The whole group met at Menomonie to go tubing on the Red Cedar River. We traveled about 2.7 miles down the river in about 3 hours. I didn't know many of the people but they were all very friendly and I talked to several of them. One of them that I met for the first time was Sara. She is Eddie's sister. Eddie, Dave and Sara are triplets which I think is really cool. After going down the river we returned to a park and had a potluck cookout. Later some of the group went to the gravesite of one of the girls who had went on the exchange last year and died in the past year. Neither Marcia or Shanel knew this girl so we decided to head home.

Yesterday everyone came to Pepin County for the day. They started the day with a tour of a cheese factory. Then they came to Pepin to have pizza in the park and walk around town. We took them to the Depot museum, the Laura Ingals Wilder museum and the harbor. After this we traveled to Kellogg to spend some time at Lark Toys. This is a very cool store that has many older and unique toys and a hand carved carousal. It also has mini golf. Our next stop was at the Nelson Cheese factory for some ice cream cones. We then traveled towards our farm and made one last stop at the birth site of Laura Ingals Wilder.

On our farm we had lots of stuff for everyone to do. We gave tours of the farm and tried to explain how everything worked. Some of the activities included tetherball, football, Frisbee, volleyball and a fire for hot dogs and s'mores. I played volleyball for a while and had a great time. After we ate, Eddie, Shanel, and I had a great time at at one point led 8-2 but ended up losing as more people joined the teams. Then I had to go milk the cows. Probably about half of the people came out to watch us milk the cows. It was good for them to see how the milk flows. We then offered them the chance to actually milk the cows. Only three people ended up doing this, they were Kyle, Sara, and Angie. I have to thank these three for their effort and I hope that they will remember that they have milked a cow.

Today was a little slower of a day for me. Marcia and Shanel ended up going to Angie's house last night and riding with them up to the Mall of America. They were gone all day so we ended up doing chores and getting some other work done. One of the cool things I did was to order some more memory for our computer. This has always been a problem since we bought it but with Windows XP it has become even slower. As long as the memory is compatible, it should significantly increase the performance of our system. Well, tomorrow will come extra early as we are planning a trip to House on the Rock and we hope to start chores at around six. It is after midnight so if I want some sleep I should go to bed now.

Monday, July 14, 2003

Wow, my summer is already half over. I haven't written in a long time so I thought I should update you on how my summer is going. There is so much to talk about and I know that as soon as I get started I am going to fall asleep like I did last time so I will try to be short and fill in the details later.

So far my summer has consisted of mostly work. I helped my family do our haylage early in June. After this I went to my uncle's farm and helped him. This was nice because I was able to see my grandparents. When I returned home after a week of helping him, my parents were on vacation so I had to do chores for them.

The rest of my days have been mostly filled with milking cows and doing all kinds of chores such as cleaning pens, fixing equipment, putting steel on the barn roof, mowing the lawn, and other such jobs.

One really cool thing I should tell you about is a purchase I made. For a long time I had been considering buying a digital camera. I finally broke down and ordered a Canon Powershot A300 along with a 256MB compact flash card. I am still learning how to use the camera but I have found it to do everything I wanted it to and more. I will probably make a page with some of the pictures/videos I have made as well as the specs and more information.

The most recent and best thing that I have done so far this summer was going to Sunshine Festival in Willmar Minnesota . This is a huge Christian music festival with over 100 awesome bands. I had a great time and was able to see many of my favorite bands. In fact I even found a new band that I really like. They were the winner of the New Union band contest and I definitely know why. Riosyphonic has a very unique sound that you can't help but fall in love with. I bought there CD so I will be listening to it a lot next year and you can borrow it if you want. I will write more about all the bands I saw and what I felt about them shortly.

Sorry I have to go but I have a lot of work to do tomorrow and I know that morning will come to soon. Enjoy your summer and hopefully I will write again soon.

Friday, May 30, 2003

Ok, so its been a week since I last wrote and a lot has happened. I am just going to out line the basics as I am busy and want to get some sleep tonight.

Friday, after milking, I spent most of the day doing field work. This was some great time to think while driving the tractor around.

On Saturday, I helped my dad and brother with some fencing. We made a new pen for some animals we bought.

On Sunday, I went to my friend Heather's graduation. It was so great to see her. I really didn't know anyone except here parents, grandparents, and two nieces. I had only met them once before so I didn't know them well.

As long as I was in the neighborhood, I stopped at my aunt and uncles house.