Iowa is just two full states away

Do you have any idea how hard it
is to wrangle all five kids into one
candid shots? They are always
busy.

Rodney Kael likes to watch Japanese cartoon adventures. Gavan prefers U-Tube homemade Lego adventures. Groan. Art is Aspen's life. Her parents would do well to invest in a paper mill. Valencia doesn't let Grandpa out of her sight, except in this picture. (She was still asleep.) Jaiden's favorite activity was sleeping on Grandpa's shoulder.


The three girls can't wait to pose. The two youngest girls are blue eyed. Betcha couldn't tell that?

Don't ask me where Rodney Kael was when this was shot. Aspen has a dress that is a sister dress as well, but that thing came off from her the second she walked in the door from church.

Originally Dad thought we could take a truck to Iowa and do Thanksgiving at Sharon's as part of a run. As usual at the last possible moment it didn't work out, so we drove the little black car and had a normal vacation type visit. We had a lovely uneventful trip traveling. We made it through five audio books.

We had fun in Iowa! Every road leads to the mall so Sharon and I had no choice but to follow them.

Dad unscrambled Rodney Kael's Rubik's cube and spent his time with the kids. Dad and I were introduced to the boardgame Ticket to Ride. Sharon kicks butt unless her Dad plays.

Our Trip to South Carolina

I really enjoyed my time in South Carolina. It's another of those here's a tree, there's a tree states. In fact you can't see many sights because the trees get in the way.

I loved the Carolinas Coastal Fair. It was a lot like the EISF except they had a shortage of weirdos. Maybe we should import some for them??? There was this huge Brahma bull there that everyone was playing with. I found it peculiar that they'd have him where everyone could maul him. That's about the time Trevor pointed out he was missing some vital parts, and I took a second look and Trevor was right, it wasn't a Brahma bull after all. And he wasn't a cow either for the really dense people who read this. And who did we say was the Animal Scientist???

We had a nice family visit and played hard with the little girls. Thanks Trevor and Dorothy for letting us come. Dad only got a four day visit. I stayed 10 days.

Scarlett Rose

I thought you'd like to see the blessing photos.

And the Beets Go on and on and on and on. . .

I climbed the pile of beets to get these photos. It's 40 feet of unstable mountain to get up here. Before they started trucking them out the pile used to stretch nearly a mile long.

We can unload an entire truck in two minutes and we have no breaks in between. While one is unloading, another truck is backing in and preparing to go. This year we set a new grounds record. We unloaded 1349 trucks in one day. We averaged 1300 per day. Most trucks come in once every hour. And we have four different pilers running.

This is my home away from home. When we say it's a tare shack, we aren't kidding.

Dashing through the piling yard in a semi with bad brakes!

That was just the first line of one of the songs that Brianne Hillman and I tortured our guys with. It goes to the tune of Jingle Bells. The chorus is:

Beets smell

Beets smell

Beets taste really bad.

We don't think anyone should eat beets, but sugar's really rad.

We spent three weeks working 14 and half hour days. It was my seventh season and yeah, I'll go back next year.