dave & janet horsman ::: keepin’ it real since 1998

If you know Dave’s Dad, you might know that he has an eye for detail. (For instance, he arranged the flowers for our wedding!) Dave does too - he’s very opinionated about paint colors and such things as decorating our house. And you probably don’t know this, but along with being the worship pastor at our church, he also does an excellant job with all the media related “stuff”.

In many ways Zeke is also like this. He likes to help in the kitchen, and yestereday he helped me squeeze some lemons for lemonade. (And by help, I mean he placed the lemons on the juicer for me. Have you ever juiced a bunch of lemons by hand? It takes quite a bit of elbowgrease!) When we were just about done, Zeke grabbed the last lemon before I could squeeze it and said, “Hey Mummy, I have a great idea - let’s put melons (he gets those two words mixed up) on the sides of the glasses!”

So cute! I love it!

Here in Minnesota kindergarten is only two and a half hours long (unless you want to pay extra for a full day), but now that Elijah is going into first grade, he’ll be at school “all” day. We’ve been talking about this all summer, and were a little concerned when Elijah got upset when we brought up the subject.

We recently recieved a postcard in the mail (I was all set to post a photo of it, but it had way too much information on it for internet weirdos) with Elijah’s pick up and drop off information on it. He gets on the bus at 8:50 am and back home at 3:50 pm.

After studying the postcard carefully (I could see the concentration on his face), and using his fingers to count, Elijah then said, “I’m not going to school all day. I’ll only be gone seven hours! I thought all day meant 24 hours… why didn’t you tell me this?!”

Oops!

The Great Minnesota Get Together - that’s what it’s known as around here, and as you can see from this picture, it really does seem like most of the state of Minnesota was there!

This photo was taken shortly after we arrived at the State Fair yesterday, at about 2:30 pm. Thankfully, the crowd gradually thinned out as the day went on. There is an awesome energy about being in a crowd like this - I kind of like it - but it’s definatly difficult to navigate with kids!

Anyway, we had a great day, and we have the photos to prove it! Elijah, Zeke and I looked at all our photo’s today, and we agreed that all the fun that was to be had at the Fair was had by us! (This was good, because at 9:00 last night they were too tired to feel that way!) Here are some great pics…

Mmmmm…did we have some yummy food! Corndogs, pizza, cheese curds, slushies, cottan-candy…

No trip to the fair is complete without winning a cheap toy…

…or going on a couple of really, really overpriced amusement rides.

This is one of the best parts of the State Fair - all-you-can-drink, ice-cold milk for a dollar. Just one dollar buys a cup that you can refill as many times as you want throughout the day. The milk comes out of taps just like water! It’s great - carbs, protien and hydration!

Sweet Martha’s Freshly Baked Cookies… Noah sure enjoyed them! I think the look of concern is because he doesn’t understand why everyone who walks by him points him out and has a good chuckle.

This is something else we enjoy every year - The Little Farm Hands Exhibit. Kids get to do lots of farm activities, including milking a pretend cow…

…and riding around on little John Deere tractors.

So there you have it…our day at the Fair in photos. I have to share a funny story that we weren’t able to get a photo of. The boys had been asking all day to go on the SkyRide, so we decided to end our day that way. We all piled into one, and as we glided off into the air, we noticed the warning on the door: Max load - 530 lbs. I won’t reveal anyones weight, but we definatly exceeded the weight limit! Yikes! Dave and I were sure glad when that was over!

On Wednesday night after supper, we went to the park to see if Elijah could indeed beat Janet at a foot race. Elijah had been trash talking Janet all through supper about it. Elijah won. A beautiful night of family bonding followed, but, unfortunately, the foot race was left on the cutting room floor. A note about the soundtrack: I was all set to use a cute worship song, Tim Hughes’, “Joy Is In This Place”, but Elijah thought it was not a great choice. He felt The Counting Crows, “Angels Of The Silence”, captured the mood much better, and in the end, I agreed.

Here are the beginnings of our “Worm Experiment.” After a terrific rainfall yestereday, we went out in search of some earthworms and found four nice juicy ones. Hopefully, in a few weeks we will begin to see how earthworms help produce the nice, rich, dark soil which we need for gardening. Very interesting… It was pretty fun getting everything ready for the experiment - boys love projects!

Sorry, I’ve been delinquent in my posts lately. We’ve been going on a lot of “field trips” …Monday to Barnes and Nobles to read books and play with Thomas trains, yesterday to the Children’s Museum, today to Ikea (Ikea has a place to drop off kids for an hour or so while parents “shop”) and who knows what tomorrow will bring… Oh! The State Fair starts tomorrow! This is an annual Horsman event and always a good time.

Anyway, I just wanted to share a quote I saw on the wall of the Children’s Museum yesterday…

“While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about”

-Angela Schwindt

Last night a spider was reportedly seen in my two eldest boys’ room. It was swatted down off the ceiling by Elijah, but then couldn’t be located to confirm it’s demise. Zeke was in tears (he really seems to have a phobia of spiders, he can’t even look at one from a distance without freaking out) and refused to sleep in his bed. After some minutes of discussion, we agreed to let Zeke sleep on the couch. Of course, that wasn’t at all fair (according to Elijah) so they both ended up on a couch…

Here they are sound asleep on the two couches in our “grown-up room”. Hopefully that spider will be either found or forgotten by tonight!