StillwatersIowa

No matter what you do or where you live there will always be things to fix, burdens to share, and problems to solve. During this time of year we generally meet in the office first thing in the morning for coffee and make a plan for the day. However at noon if Jan is home and we are not too busy we go to the house for lunch. Sometimes these noon visits involve a broader range of conversations from broken washing machines whether or not to buy a vehicle. Here Mike is describing to his brothers and sister a small solution to the subject at hand. This string of tile is going in behind the pond dike. The goal is to dry up a wet spot and solve the problem of Jan getting stuck with the lawn mower this summer. Jan tore the meniscus cartilage on the inside of her knee and is laid up this week. The solution is to go to Ames and have Dr. Greenwald fix it with microsoptic surgery like he did Kurt's a couple of years back. The problem is jumping through all the right hoops for the insurance ...

Ask a farmer why he farms and you'll get many different answers. Ultimately we have been given the responsibility to help feed the world. If you think about it a farmer only gets forty to fifty chances in his lifetime to put in a crop. In this weeks activities we are focusing and preparing to put in one of those crops. After a long winter the farm yards usually need some rock to firm and clean them up. I got in trouble taking this picture. I wasn't supposed to get out of my truck at the rock quarry. We always use spring break week as a goal to get seed corn delivered to our seed customers. Otherwise it gets put off and before you know it we are in the field. Another early spring job is to fix tile holes. Tile holes happen when a broken, usually older tile starts sucking in dirt. An easy fix is when you just scrape the dirt off the top of the tile and identify the problem. A hard fix is when you dig too deep and both ends of the tile come up out of the ground. Since the boy...

As we watch the happenings of the week we are reminded that life continually steps forward from one event to another. Big things like earthquakes to little things like moving our clocks forward one hour are examples of this. Knowing God is in charge helps us all as we experiance life. Jan and I celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary by attending a boys state tournament basketball game. Congressman Ron Paul from Texas was in town this week as he considers a possible move forward toward running for president in 2012. Karl may be moving forward a little prematurely here as he takes a spin in 40 degree water. He said he was checking to see if the jet ski still ran. Jan and I went to an Omish community in Drakesville to pick up some loft railing and a porch swing. In many ways their slower and simpler lifestyle looked appealing. But I also feel God wants us to be salt and light in our communities as we live and work together with our neighbors. Becky and Brian had their hands full this ...

Jan and I always enjoy our visits to Aunt Ruth in Arizona. We usually ask if she has any odd jobs for us to do, go out for lunch, and just catch up on each others activities. Aunt Ruth is the one that graciously gave us the Rus family piano that we have in the cabin. This past Wednesday morning we arrived at the Phoenix Airport around 8am for our flight home. The plane was overbooked and a father and his young son were the last ones to check in and were really wanting to get to Des Moines. Since it seemed quite urgent that this dad and son needed to be on this flight and since I was seeing an oppotunity to come back next year with free airfare and because of Jan's wonderful patiance with me we took the $450 per ticket voucher and left for home at 8pm instead. Yes, believe it or not we were in the Gate B terminal for 12 hours. I counted people for a while. Then I counted airplanes for a while. Then Jan and I went to look for lunch. It took all 4 free meal vouchers to buy two salads...