Weekend at the Farm

While Will headed north, Claire and I went south with my mom to spend some quality girl time on my grandparents' farm. My aunt Jane and cousins Laura and Eliza joined us and so my grandpa was greatly outnumbered.

(Since generations get kind of confusing, these are all from my point of view this post!)

Here are the four generations: Me, my mom, my grandma, and Claire
A couple things you might notice about this picture. Claire is destined to wear glasses someday. And wow, I think we all hope we can look as good as my grandma does at 78 (?) years old! If her secret is having 8 kids and even today still doing chores (feeding calves) ~10 times a week and caring for the large garden she still has, I think I might be out of luck.

We spent a lot of time outside (of course) and luckily it was mostly beautiful weather and not even too hot.

The theme for the weekend was babies. We started off on Friday morning watching a calf being born. Here it is just ~5 minutes after birth:


Then, my grandparents' neighbor invited us over to see his baby bunnies and chicks. Claire liked them a lot.


Then, we heard that my Aunt Mary had several kittens at her house, just down the road from my grandparents, so off we went to the next baby visit. They were adorable in all colors, and a very cute age, playing, but also mostly okay with being held for a little while, too. I was really glad Claire can't really talk all that well because I'm guessing she would have pleaded to take one home.

Note to Claire's Uncle Andy: Claire now makes a very credible "Meow" sound.



I think Grandpa and Grandma enjoyed seeing Claire. She wasn't so sure of her Great Grandpa, but was a very good sport and let him hold her a few times.


She got along pretty well with her Great Grandma, here she is saying good-bye right before we left:
Here she is on the way home:

Being a farmer is awful tiring work!

-K

p.s. oh yes, in case anyone was wondering, I defended my thesis on Thursday, June 12, so I'm now (finally) finished with grad school. Everything went well, and I'm very, very happy to be finished! Now I better get started on writing some lectures for fall!