Tales of a Shoebox Princess

My brother likes to call his 17 acre hobby farm "the compound." He's an aspiring off-the-gridder. I like to think of him as the South Dakota version of Michael Gross in Tremors, but without the giant fanged worm creatures banging around. He could handle the underground menace though. Anyway he and his wife took a vacation and needed someone to watch the place/kids while they were away and I volunteered to do it. I took my mother along with me, not that she would be much help, but she does like her grandchildren and they like her back. I did a bit of working in the office while I was there, but the fun part of the week was interacting with the animals. Mike has cows, goats, chickens, dogs, and cats aplenty. I didn't have to do much in the way of animal care because that was the girls' job, but I did like to visit them. South Dakota week picture dump: the art in the guest bathroom Betsy likes boxes Niece Annie at state gymnastics competition ...

I'm going to post a picture of me with my grandchildren without their mother's permission. I'll take it down if she wants me to, but since she blogs more than I do, I'm going to go on ahead and post the picture in a bit. Grandchildren are THE BEST. I've heard people say that for many years and I couldn't wait to test out their claim (but not enough to badger my children into having grandchildren. At least I like to think I don't badger them about it? Three of my kids are not married so I'm definitely not telling them to hurry up and have a baby. One is married with no children, STILL IN COLLEGE, and I want her to finish so I'm def not badgering her. And the one who is married who DOES have children, already HAS children so I don't badger her either). Now that I have two grandchildren, one of each flavor, I can say with certainty, YES IT'S TRUE! Grandchildren are the BEST! Emma doesn't seem too excited in either picture, but she ...