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Another Big Bite

Another Big Bite

Tag Archives: Iowa

Fall at the Farm… In Pictures

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by anotherbigbite in On the Road Again, Out of Doors, The "Joy" of Parenting, The Good Ole Days

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

apple picking, fall, family, farm, Iowa, pumpkin farm, Travel

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When my dear friend Tamara told me she and my brother were heading to Grandma Mary’s farm over Columbus Day weekend, we jumped at the chance to meet them halfway (well, two-thirds of the way) between here and Chicago.  I haven’t seen my brother Mike in a year and a half and since then, he and Tamara – one of my best friends and Finny’s godmother – started dating and are now living together.  I’ve been asked by a few people if I’m weirded out by this whole ordeal, and I never have been.  Mostly because it’s really none of my business what other consenting adults do, but also because I have loved these two people dearly forever; why would I not be happy if they were happy?

Turns out, these two are made for one another.  How did I never see this sooner??

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When my grandmother got wind of our little adventure, she was thrilled to have both Mike and I (and accompanying stowaways) at the farm at once.  Oh, did we plan our whole trip before we even asked Grandma if we could come?  Yeah… That would be Tamara and I…

The drive to Iowa is just under twelve hours from Colorado Springs, and the trip out there was mercifully uneventful.  We arrived around eleven at night (after losing an hour and leaving late in the morning) and Grandma Mary was waiting up for us.  The kids both woke up and Finny was wired with excitement over finally reaching the farm.  By midnight, they were tucked in and asleep and by one, the rest of us were dozing.

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Saturday turned out to be a gorgeous fall day; the sky was bright and clear and it was warm enough to go out without a coat.  Nathan had one objective for the day…  Teaching Finn how to shoot the BB gun.

Finny developed into a spectacular shot over the course of the day.  While the boys were shooting, Alice and Grandma took to moving plants into the greenhouse and picking flowers around the yard.  I can’t believe there is only about seventy years between these gorgeous ladies. 🙂IMG_0628

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After lunch, we decorated cupcakes….

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And went for a spin on the swing…

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Nathan and I headed into town for a few supplies.  The kids were in bed by eight, and at eight forty-five, Finn bounded down the stairs to announce, “Dad won’t get out of my bed.  He’s keeping me awake.”

Nathan had gone into the kids’ rooms to make sure they piped down and went to sleep.  He was snoring so loudly that Finn couldn’t sleep.  I coaxed him into our bed and Grandma and I waited for Mike and Tamara to arrive.

They arrived after ten thirty and we kept poor Grandma up chatting until one once again.  By the time the kids were up, she was already awake and getting breakfast ready.  We all got ready for church and headed into town.  I think the last time I was in church might have been when we were staying with Grandma two years ago…  Yikes.  The kids were super well-behaved and Grandma got to “show us off” (her words, not mine) to the congregation.

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After the boys went back out to shoot the BB gun again, we brought lunch out to them and got started picking apples.  Two and a half bushels later, we had cleared what was left of the red apples and barely made a dent in the green ones.  I ended up carting sixty pounds of apples back to Colorado and have been making apple sauce, apple pies and apple chips since we’ve been home.

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And we hunted for frogs down at the pond. Tam was (far and away) the most excited.

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And we hunted for frogs down at the pond.  Tam was (far and away) the most excited.

While Tam, the kids and I were nestled in the apple trees, the Nathan and Mike were shooting the heavy artillery.  We let Finn fire the rifle once, and Nathan had me shoot the shotgun a few times.  Holy crap, that thing can kick.  As it was, I was a much better shot with the rifle.

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And this might be the most Iowa photo of all time…

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We waited until Tamara had arrived in Iowa before hitting the pumpkin farm.  Since we’ve been kids, this girl LOVES herself a good pumpkin patch.  Case in point…

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And if I was to try to describe my brother to anyone, I might just have them look at this photo.  It is Mike, being Mike in the most Mike way possible.  Rolling around in a trough full of corn kernels.  We are of the same blood, him and me.

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We visited my grandfather’s grave before we tucked in for the evening.  There was a few tears, a few smiles and more laughs than should be appropriate in a cemetery.  We reminisced about the photo someone had snapped at the funeral of Mike furiously gesturing to his crotch.  What you should be asking is why on earth someone is taking candids at a funeral and NOT why my brother was in such a position… And why I was standing next to him laughing my ass off…  Maybe Mike and I really need a lesson in appropriate manners.  Sheesh.

It was sad to leave the next day.  Other than getting a flat tire just as we crossed over into Colorado, the trip was equally uneventful as the way out there.  And it just might have been the first time I wasn’t terribly excited to sleep in my own bed.

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A Load of Bull

11 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by anotherbigbite in Bitchfest, My Two Cents, On the Road Again, The Good Ole Days

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Albert the Bull, ancestry, danish, Denmark, Elk Horn, heritage, Iowa, Travel

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I’m just glad that I’m not walking across Iowa after a jaunt across the Atlantic, homeless, newly widowed and with two kids in tow.  This was the fate of my great-, great-, great-grandmother, Annie Kristina – or Stina for short – in 1890.

Finn with Danish Flag

There is a lot to learn about one’s heritage – and lessons to be learned.  Today is the day we close on our Ohio house.  Apparently not all parties got the memo, since instead of a deed to sign; we got an addendum to our contract to extend the date of closing to January 15th.

But, it could always be worse.  I have been saying that from the beginning; it is almost like I’ve cursed us, since it usually does get worse.   I am thanking my lucky stars that I’m not in the same boat as my aforementioned ancestors.  After immigrating to Iowa from Denmark, Stina (and her kiddos) returned to join back up with her husband and their newly-inherited farm in their homeland.  Upon her return, she discovered the hubbs had died.  Without any money, she packed her kids back up, sailed across an ocean, dragged them back to Iowa and WALKED from the southern part of the state back to her house in Iowa.

As I said, things can always be worse.

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This part of Iowa is home to a slew of Danes.  Elk Horn, Iowa is a tiny little Danish village; complete with a windmill carted from Denmark, a Viking homestead and a killer schmorgazborg.  It isn’t even kitschy/touristy – it’s the real thing.  You know, folks speaking Danish and all.

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We took in the sights in downtown Elk Horn and also visited the Danish Immigrant Museum.  We also stopped by Audubon – home to the world famous (apparently) Albert the Bull.  I’ll have you know; he is a model of virility…  He is the world’s biggest bull, and I’m guessing he also has the world’s biggest pair of testicles.  They almost touch the ground.

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His balls are bigger than my child for Pete’s sake. And Finn is tall for his age, I’ll have you know.

Seriously?  Is that necessary?

By the way, I am silently cursing myself for not taking a picture of them so y’all can revel in their so-called glory.  They are even painted flesh-colored.  Eeeww.

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I am ashamed to say these are the two pieces of information that will stick with me after a week of learning about my Danish heritage.  Giant balls.  Widows walking across Iowa.

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Nevertheless, here we are.   We are playing a modern-day version of Oregon Trail…  Slowly inching our way westward, hoping to discover the splendors of the American West.  I should don a calico bonnet, put my hair in a bun and channel Laura Ingalls…  I’ve come to a river… Should I caulk the wagon and float across?  Oops, I lost a head of oxen and now Finn has come down with Typhoid Fever.  LET’S GET READY TO HUNT!!

I’m hoping I’ll get to Colorado Springs with all our dry goods.  I’m thinking that there is a pretty good shot at Nathan being alive and well when I get there, though one never knows.  But if anyone expects this broad to walk across the state of Iowa if he isn’t, they have another thing coming.

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A Hawkeye State of Mind

02 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by anotherbigbite in On the Road Again, The "Joy" of Parenting, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

farm living, grandparents, holidays, Iowa, sledding, Travel, winter

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It is funny… So very much has been going on that I would love to blog about, and yet – blogging has taken a backseat (actually, it is stuffed in the trunk beneath the jumper cables) to the rest of my life.

I am a pretty good whiner and complainer; and yes, handling the kids and being sorta homeless is tough, but I really don’t have that much to bitch about.  We have been bouncing from guest room to guest room, inching our way across the country.  We spent a few weeks with my mom in Chicago.  Now we are camped at the family farm in Iowa with my grandmother.  A few might say that it is tough being a single mom; because being a single mom IS tough.  This is not single parenting, though.  I’ve got more extra sets of hands than I ever had in Ohio.  I’ve got someone to eat dinner with that is fully capable of using their fork for its intended purpose.  It is nice to carry on an actual conversation; one that doesn’t involve detailed descriptions of bowel movements or superheroes.

Come to think of it, most of us have had the flu over the past week and a half, so I suppose I have been having a few extra conversations about pooping.

My brother picked Nathan up from the airport for me, and the first words I uttered to him were “Can you get me something to throw up in?”  Who says romance is dead?

Nathan came in to Chicago for the holidays.  The original plan was to head on back to Colorado right after Christmas, but the closing on our Ohio house was delayed (yay, real estate!!), which also meant that we wouldn’t be able to close on our Colorado house on time.  This is why I’m hanging out in the friendly state of Iowa; the internet connection may suck, but the company is good.  My great-aunt was also visiting; she left this morning after we made sure we gave her a parting gift – the flu followed us here from Chicago.

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The holidays were great; we saw the famed Zoo Lights at Brookfield Zoo and took the train into the city to see the holiday windows on State Street.  After breaking bread at Marshall Field’s (which is now Macy’s but will forever be Field’s in my heart), we headed back for Christmas Eve dinner at my parent’s house.  By that time my brother, Finn, Alice and my stepdad had all been leveled by the flu.   Or, as my brother Mike eloquently observed while my youngest brother Jeremy was barfing; “T-Rex is in there attacking the toilet.”  Ick.

We are all unplugged (literally and figuratively) at the farm now in Iowa.  I get spotty cell service, there is zero Wi-Fi and the Internet speeds are about as fast as they were around the time of Christ.  I can get Pinterest and Facebook on my phone if I sit in the exact right spot upstairs.  You know what, though?  It isn’t so bad.  It makes me feel like I’m back in high school, when we only had land lines and AOL Instant Messenger was a tool for occasional entertainment only.

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Instead, we have been celebrating Grandma’s birthday and playing out in the snow.  We’ve built a snowman, explored the barn and corn crib, poked sticks at the frozen pond and seen the frozen grape vines.  I keep telling Finny about Grandpa Stan’s garden, Grandpa Stan’s pond, Grandpa Stan’s tractor…  This is the first time I’ve been back to the farm since my grandfather’s funeral.

“Do you want to see where grapes come from, Finn?  I’ll take you to Grandpa Stan’s garden and show you the grape vines.”

“No.  I want to see him.”

“Who is him, Finn?”

“This guy you keep talking about.  Grandpa.”

And so I find myself crying in the middle of the frozen prairie amongst the dead milkweed.  I’m sad that Finn didn’t get a chance to experience the force of nature that was Grandpa Stan.

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So… For the next week and a half, we will be completing an entire snow family, exploring the chicken house come greenhouse and searching for the perfect coat for Princess Backfat; it is way too cold for a pea coat here in The Hawkeye State.

We’ve already checked “Iowa Skiing” off our list.  For those of you who aren’t intimately familiar with this favorite winter activity of native Iowans, it involves a four-wheeler, a length of rope and an ice-fishing sled.  Maybe a visual is in order:

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Though it isn’t necessarily recommended for grandmothers or toddlers, we are working on getting these two on the sled this coming week.

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