My Summer by Natalia

Agua?

That's Matteo swinging in their backyard.

Abrahm riding his bike.

Here's Demi Lovato at the concert!!

David Archuleta!!!!!

Here he is again.

And again. Okay, this is how close Carmen and i got when we ran up to the front of the stage.

Hi. This is Natalia. I just wanted to tell you about my summer. The best part of summer was going to a Demi Lovato Concert with aunt Mellisa, aunt Emily, and Carmen. The concert was at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. We got seats 16 rows from the stage! It was cool! For the first part of the concert, a band called KSM performed. They were good. Then David Archuleta performed!! He was awesome!! And then they had a 20-minute intermission and Carmen and I had to run out TWICE because we forgot something the first time. We were sooooo glad we didn’t miss Demi Lovato coming out on stage! When she did she was Amazing!!!! It was SO much fun!! We didn’t get home until about 1:00 the next morning and we had left at 3:45 Wednesday afternoon. Besides going to the concert, baby-sitting is pretty much all I have done this summer. And some video from the concert, but not by me.

Music...it soothes the savage beast.

Natalia loves Taylor Swift, and I love Coldplay. Jon Schmidt figured out how to put them both together, and I think it's awesome. Love Story that morphs into Viva La Vida.

I'm a lone, lonely loner.

We quote Sid the Sloth a lot at our house. The kids and I went to see this movie on Friday. They love Ice Age 1 and 2, and even though we rarely go to the theater, we had to see what those crazy pre-historic mammals were up to. It was pretty funny, but the best character was crazy Buck. He cracked me up. Maybe it was his underbite.

Anyway, Sid was feeling bad because Diego wanted to move on and Ellie and Manny are expecting a mini-mammoth, so Sid says, "I'm a lone, lonely loner." That's my new Sid line.

We miss you! Happy Anniversary.

Grandpa is a cowboy. Grandma is a teacher. They met 58 years ago on the fourth of July, and went on their first date the next night. The problem was, they were paired up with other people.
Grandpa was working on a ranch near the badlands in South Dakota, and the ranch owner also owned a restaurant. He told some of his cowboys that he had three new girls coming in to waitress there on their break from college, and he would make sure that these cowboys got the first dates with his new waitresses.

So, Grandpa and Swede, who was an older (thirties) ranch owner, took a couple of girls out in Swede’s old Ford. Grandpa was driving, and he came up to a river, and Swede told him to go right through it. Grandpa gunned it, and promptly got the car stuck in quicksand. They all got out, and Grandpa said to Grandma, "Come on, let’s go to the next ranch to borrow a jeep to pull the car out!" (Actually, when Grandpa told the story he said, "I said, ‘Rose Ann, let’s go—'" and Grandma interrupted him with "Oh, no, you said to me,‘Come on!’ because you didn’t even know my name!")

The rest is history. Guess Grandpa knew a good thing when he saw it. And Grandpa eventually remembered Grandma’s name.

Clean is a dirty word

When the chickens are shipped to be turned into the chicken nuggets that you may have just ordered at your local Mickey-D's, it's time for clean-up at the farm.

Adam has spent the last couple of days power washing the fans, etc., in the barns. But in order to do that, he gets covered in water and dirty feathers. So, the fans might sparkle, but the washer looks and smells like a wet chicken.

And apparently I've gotten a little bit of a reputation around the farm. I was looking for the thing-y (that's a technical term, you know) to put on the drill to raise and lower the brooders, and Adam asked if I knew how to use the drill to wind up the winch automatically. He said, "You have to be careful, though." Then he looked at me and just put that drill bit away. Hmm.

I did a little bit of mowing yesterday. Andy's been working long hours, and now that Brian is big and old, he's working on another farm full-time this summer. That means, with Grandpa gone, the mowing is falling behind. I like to mow, and I would help Andy with it sometimes, but Grandpa is definitely the resident mower. I miss looking up or out the window to see him bouncing around on the mower and then I would sometimes send the kids out with a tall glass of kool-aid, since he doesn't drink water straight, you know.