Recently, Avery spent 5 days on the farm with Oma and Opa, minus mom, dad, Amelia, and Audrey, and had the best time. My mom sent me a couple of e-mails filled with stories. I included a few fun excerpts from her tales that bring his stay on the farm to life.
And the stories go on. We went to the pool on Friday afternoon. There really weren’t as many kids there as I thought there might be for such a hot day. I love how the Wymore pool now has that zero-gravity play area for the little kids. It only goes up to 3 ½ feet deep. It has an alligator slide for the wee ones, three water cannons, a giant mushroom that has a water fall coming over it, and giant, winding slide that shoots you down with water. We all went down that last one a good number of times. By the end, Aves knew to lay flat, put his arms above his head and he would literally fly out the bottom. He loved it.
He did get a bit rowdy during the 10-minute breaks that were taken each hour. I would go over to the deep pool and swim laps, as adults are the only ones who can be in the pool then. Opa and Avery were sitting under a large shade umbrella trying to kill the time. That’s hard for little boys. In his wiggle nature, he swung around and popped Opa in the nose, giving him a bloody nose. Opa wasn’t too happy about that, but seemed to get over it pretty quickly, as the two of them were quickly back in the water when the whistle blew again.
Yesterday the boys headed out to the barn for a couple “projects” that Opa had on the books. Avery struck with it for a while, but then had a need to pursue other desires in the barn, like brushing Meow and George while sitting on his infamous perch where we feed the cats. George especially likes the attention. Aves is not too much into Lucy as she gets awfully rowdy when she has someone she thinks is going to play with her. Opa kind of has to take over then and handle Lucy’s playful needs.
Once home there were chores to do and pivots to check. Aves really is not impressed with the four-wheeler. Opa asked if he would want one of those someday. He said, “No.” For supper we had gizzards. Aves took one bite and said he didn’t want that, so he got some left over steak, which he loved. He is also loving the tomatoes and eats them at every meal and picks one from the garden as a snack sometimes too.
Since he looked pretty much like a dirt ball after a day on the farm, a long bath was in order. I do not know what he does in there, but he spent 40-minutes becoming a prune. He even asked for more hot water since what was in the tub was cooling down. He really liked it when his legs warmed up again.
We just hung around the farm the rest of the day, which is what he wanted. Opa tried to get him to go fishing, but he wanted to play in the water and with Lucy. Lucy and he have learned to work with each other pretty well now. We got a cute picture of the two of them running around sharing a stick. He also likes playing in the mud with the hose. He has a stream made that keeps him occupied for long periods of time. He waters my flowers well, which I appreciate. And Opa and he had a grand balloon water fight this afternoon. Oma joined in to play toss the water balloon. The boys were actually nice to me.
Next we hit the carnival. We all rode the Ferris Wheel. He liked that, however the Caterpillar roller coaster ride was his favorite. I rode that with him and I thought it grand too. We did a few jip-joints. He fished with a pole into a take with fish that had hooks on them. He got to pull out three. The gal never showed up the numbers on the bottom and we were handed a small prize when we got done. I don’t know how you tell when you win a big one. Avery had his eye on a snake that someone else had, so when the gal offered him a shark he said, “I want a snake.” I looked around the booth and there were no snake prizes anyway. The game plan then was to find a booth that had snakes and see if we could win one there. Opa is pretty good at darts, so he asked the vendor how many balloons it took to win a snake. The guy told him six. Dad paid for seven darts and missed only one, so we came home with a snake.
On the way home, we ate at an oriental buffet. I know he was tired, so we were worried he wouldn’t eat well. Soup was all we could get down him at first. Then he started eating off my plate. He also took a few things off Opa’s plate. Then he had an ice cream cone to top it off, but he only ate half of it, because by then he had discovered the shrimp I was peeling and eating and preferred that to the ice cream. Then was the long ride home. We think he was so tired that he was wound up. He just wouldn’t stop talking. We timed him, and the longest stretch of silence we had was FIVE seconds. It was just endless questions. And they were all over the map too. Some about Africa, how deep the ponds were, why some fields didn’t have the weeds taken care of, where the sun goes after it goes down, how come some houses are old and rotten, etc. etc. etc. Opa and my ears were exhausted when we got home.
Opa and Aves are down at the elevator right now. Then they are heading over to see G&G. He is going to play them a tune on his wooden pipe. Plus he seemed awfully excited that a pop may be in store at the Coop.
Projects Avery made on the farm (1. Tic Tac Toe game 2. Wren birdhouse)
