Shane and Shannon's

Our friends Shane and Shannon are living the prairie dream. They've got a brand-new house on five acres in the country. Check out their spread! (This is the view from the back of their property.)



So far they just have horses and rabbits and dogs, but they're going to get chickens and a dairy cow soon. And they've got big garden plans.

This will be us in a couple of years. In the mean time, we're just thrilled when they invite us over for dinner! (Especially the kids, keep reading!)

Meet Bill and Ted

Our friend Shane has two beautiful horses. I can't remember their real names, but that doesn't matter because look! They are Bill and Ted!

And together they're... Wyld Stallions!

Ted bears a great resemblance to Keanu Reeves:

And Bill's got this funky hair problem that just cracks me up:

But he also has beautiful eyes:

Hanging Out With the Horses

Our entire family enjoyed getting to know Shane's horses.

A Time-Honored Country Sport

Hay-bale jumping!

Shane's hay bales were the perfect playground for all the kids at his house this evening. (They also invited Joy and Jim over, so theirs are the extra kids you see in these pictures.)

Hay Bale Boys

Sunset Silouhettes

Roo's Furry Friend

Roo enjoyed chatting with one of Shannon's bunnies:

I think they were talking about nuclear physics, but it was hard to tell.

Puppies!

In addition to horses and bunnies and hay bales, Shane and Shannon's house has something else that can keep little boys happy for hours: puppies!

This one fell asleep on Fish:

Bean wanted to keep one so badly. Somehow he got the idea that he could buy one for ten dollars. I had to explain to him about purebred dogs. These little guys are going to sell for a thousand dollars each!

Ah, Bean, I hope we can get you a dog someday. But when we do it's going to be a Mutt!

While Waiting for Mom to Come Home

I left Roo home with her dad this afternoon while I went to the store with the rest of the pack. She climbed into the rocker to watch out the window for me to come home and fell asleep, so this is what I saw when I opened the door:

Hail to Homeschool

Last night we had a really awesome prairie thunderstorm. We popped popcorn, then sat on the window seat and watched for nearly an hour as lightning flickered like a strobe light, the flashes sometimes blinding. The rain poured down in buckets, but luckily the hail was only pea- to acorn-sized. I braved the rain to go scoop some off our front lawn for close inspection:

This precipitated (ha!) a long discussion with Bean and sometimes Fish about thunderstorms, cumulonimbus clouds, and hail. We even got out one of my college Geography textbooks and reviewed some diagrams. It was a great homeschool lesson, at 11:30 at night.

I love the concentric rings in the hailstones. It's so cool to think of how those little babies traveled through those huge clouds.