Brooks family: September 2005

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

An afternoon on the farm

Jamie getting settled in for his first potato harvest. This was not an ordinary tractor!

We spent the afternoon at a friend's house. They have a huge farm and were in the middle of potato harvest. Jamie rode on the big tractor and had a great time!

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Yesterday, Jamie & I hosted our play group at our house. We had a great turn out with 13 kids and 7 adults. Jamie had so much fun and was excited that his friends came to his house. We had hot dogs and chili dogs for lunch with yummy salads and vegetables (OK-the adults were the ones eating the salads and vegetables) and homemade peanut butter cookies. The kids had fun playing with the train table and with the trucks in the sand box. My favorite thing was when these three boys got together and decided to "make music". I flashed forward 10 years and imagined these same three boys in our garage practicing music for their rock band with real instruments. Good thing we live out in the country where they will be able to make lots of noise without making the neighbors mad.

Merrily they go around...

After eating breakfast on Saturday morning, we went to the park so that Jamie and Shelby could run off some energy. They swang on the swings until Grandma thought her arms would fall off and then discovered the merry go round. They took turns pushing each other around for a while but then enlisted Bill to push "really fast". I tried to take photos but they were going pretty fast and I didn't get very many good shots. Needless to say, they had fun! I don't know about Shelby but Jamie was worn out and fell asleep in the car as soon as we hit the road to return to Alamosa.
**The Explorer made the trip to and from Red River without any problems!!!

Shelby's SpongeBob Birthday

Shelby had a huge crowd at her 8th birthday party. The theme was SpongeBob with pizza and cake for everyone. She had at least 15 school friends on hand to help her celebrate as well as several adults. The gift table was loaded and she made quite a hefty haul, from DVD's to clothes to Polly Pocket to a portable DVD player. Jamie was excited but overwhelmed by the noise of all of those children. He started out sitting with Shelby but it wasn't very long before he wanted his daddy. After everyone cleared out, we went back to Shelby's house and watched her sort through her loot. By that point, she was in a birthday fog and oblivious to the rest of us but we did have fun with her bunny, Snuggles. All in all, a good day for the birthday girl.

Friday, September 16, 2005

Shelby's birthday

Brooks family

Today is Shelby's 8th birthday and we will be going to Red River this afternoon to celebrate with pizza and cake. It is so hard to believe that she is eight years old! Jamie is so excited, he's been talking about her birthday since they were here over Labor Day. Jamie and I wrapped Shelby's gifts today and Jamie told me how he was going to unwrap lots of presents and blow out the candles. I tried to explain that Shelby gets to do those things today because it's her birthday and that he'll get to do those things when it's his birthday. We'll see if my words made any impression. Nevertheless, he has it in his mind that we're all going to hide and say "Surprise!" when Shelby walks in the room and he thinks that's pretty cool. I think he has a book about a surprise birthday party for Thomas (the Tank Engine) so that must be where he got that idea.

We finally got the Explorer back yesterday. YAY!!! I'm so happy to have my stick shift back. Nothing against automatic transmissions but I have ALWAYS driven a stick and I have missed it. Our poor Explorer has over 200,000 miles and there have been a couple of times that we thought it couldn't be resurrected but, it seems to keep hanging in there. We had to replace the water pump over the summer (much better than the blown head gasket that the local Ford dealer diagnosed) and this time we had to replace the clutch...again. This is the second clutch since February and at least the seventh one in the 10 years we've owned the car. I love my stick shift but this clutch has given us major grief. We are lucky, though, that the mechanic we've used since living in Alamosa now is the Auto Shop instructor for Alamosa High School. We get the same quality work that he's always provided but now we only have to pay for parts (he can't charge labor). What a deal! To his credit, this is only the second clutch that he's put in.