Have map, will travel

Our family spent Sunday exploring the countryside of North Dakota.  Steve and I have always loved getting in the car and driving with no particular plan or direction.  I am not sure the boys have discovered our love for exploring the roads but they are forced to participate…lol.  Today we drove about 200 miles…little of it on the highway, most of it in the middle of nowhere.  We found towns like Marion, ND (population 146) and Verona,ND (population 108) and dozens of farmhouses that have likely seen many generations. 

It was a great afternoon…we only had one problem…

 

       

            the sunflowers in the field were not the cause…

 

  

       the soybeans yet to harvest were not the cause…

 

 

                     even the corn was not at fault…

 

                         this was definitely the culprit

 

      

Hay bales in the afternoon certainly mean Benadryl, eye drops and breathing treatments for bedtime.

 

    Looking back, maybe this wasn’t such a great idea…lol

  

Before

I have the best Dad.  He knows how much I love flowers.  This week (just for no reason-see, he is the best Dad) he sent me these flowers.

         

He also sent me a link to an article about how to dry flowers at home.  Most of you know that I can kill any plant (even the ones people give you and say “oh this one is so hardy even you can’t kill it”) but I figure maybe that talent will come in handy for this project. 

Speaking of projects…you know I can’t have flowers and not take pictures.  My kids run in terror when they see the camera but flowers can’t do that.  They sit there patiently while I take 20 shots of each flower from every angle only to decide that none of those shots are any good.  I decided to use this opportunity to take before and after pictures of my flowers.  I thought it would be fun to compare them later.  When the winds turn cold and everything green in North Dakota is buried under a foot of new fallen snow, I will be enjoying my summer flowers…and I will photograph them once again.

 

   

   

 

                  

 

   

 

   

 

          

A Heckuva good night

Last night Steve’s IT department had a cookout/potluck at one of the nicest parks in Fargo.  The weather was gorgeous (lately we have had too many days in the 90s with humidity so high that your glasses fog over).  The mosquitoes are still a horrible nuisance but there was enough breeze to slow them down a bit.  The park rents out various types of bikes and surreys and the boys have always wanted to try one.  It seemed like a perfect night (and school had started that day) so I let them try.  They each took a “banana peel” bike and explored the park via bike path.  They had a blast and I just love this picture of them.