Well actually, it's here.
YES! The pictures are here! And now I can finally do the post that you have all been (hopefully) waiting for. I had TONS of fun out there, but I have a warning... this post involves a lot of pictures. HA! You thought I was going to say something bad about it. The only negative experience I had out there would be the bale swings, and I won't even go into that. It will be me and Wanda's little secret.
So these pictures won't be in order because, well, I can't figure out which order to put them in. So they will be categorized by what we would do during the day and other things.
FIRST:
Of course we had to drive there. The wonderful Wanda and Jacob Farr drove us there! It was a long drive, but we read a book most of the way. When we finally got there, we all piled out of the car and Wanda took me to see every single one of her family out there. I don't mean that in a bad way, it was really fun! Wanda was surprised at how fast I learned every one's name. What can I say, I'm good with names.
They have a maze out there. It is awesome. The first or second day we were playing tag and I completely smacked into Wanda's cousin Josh. I was fine and my head only hurt for a bit, but apparently I almost made one of Josh's teeth go through his lip. He had a purple lip after that. I felt pretty bad, but I think he forgave me.
After a couple of days, we started working.
First on the agenda: RAKING.
The rakes.
Yes, that is me in my pajamas. You have to understand, you wake up at TWO in the morning to do this job. Don't ask me why we have to get up that early, I don't know. Just kidding, I do, it has something to do with the dew in the hay.
Yeah, those are some pretty wild pants. They match the raker wheels.
You can barely see me inside the raker. I actually drove that thing! Wanda says that she can't believe how fast I caught on and learned how to drive everything.
Driving! Even though it's blurry, this picture is my favorite. Since you get up so early, you need a way to stay awake. So you sing, and sing... and sing. At the top of your lungs. Usually we would have my iPod to sing along to, but sometimes we didn't so we would make up words to songs as we sang at the top of our lungs.
It was so awesome being able to watch the sun come up, even though you could hardly keep your eyes open from lack of sleep.
Inside the raker being crazy. Well, I just look tired.
TRUCKING.
Next on the farm agenda is trucking. While we rake the balers follow after us and make our nice neat rows of hay into bales. Once we've raked for four hours, we go home and change, then go out to our trucks. Then, we would drive them down to the fields and the loaders would load bales onto our trailers.
These aren't the bales that you can just pick up and throw, these are one ton bales. That's why they use loaders. Wanda drove the truck the first couple of days, then after that I was able to drive on my own!
This is my truck. It's name is "Audie", which is short for automatic. Luckily they had an automatic truck that I could drive. I don't think I would have been as good at driving if it would have been a stick.
Oh yeah, I drove a semi.
Sadly, I burnt myself on the exhaust pipe of my truck. It hurt really bad at first, but then they put this cream on it and it hasn't hurt since. It has since peeled and is now a white/pink color. It is going to be the biggest scar ever. Awesome.
This is a loader. The man covering his face is Glen, Wanda's uncle. Coolest. guy. ever.
They usually had three loaders going. Two out in the fields, and one in the stack yard. I think Jacob is in the closest one, and Ben, their cousin, is in the farthest one.
SWATHING.
Me doing a Broadway-like pose on the swather
Everyone liked to go swathing. The swather had air conditioning and a radio. I got to go swathing twice and the last time I got to drive it! A swather is basically a HUGE lawnmower. I'm sure everyone could tell that I had been driving, I swerved a lot.
Driving the swather.
GOPHER TRAPPING.
I found and dug out my own gopher hole! Then I set my own trap. I must have been lucky because my trap was the only one that caught one!
The top lump of dirt is the trap covered in dirt, the bottom clump is the actual gopher. WOO! Believe me, it stunk. That's why I'm holding it so far away from myself.
Justin's fort.
Wanda's cousin, Justin, built a fort. It is pretty awesome. It has air conditioning, surround sound, and carpet. Now, this bucket in the ground might look like just a plain 'ol bucket. Nope.
Lindsey and Justin
It is actually an opening to a whole new level of awesomeness.
Kelsy getting into the fort
In this picture you can see the speakers and part of a plug outlet. I must say, Justin is pretty creative.
Wanda's car.
I learned to drive Wanda's car while I was out there. It is a stick shift and it took me FOREVER to even start it correctly.
Dr. Suess rocks.
We drove up to Dr. Suess rocks on a four wheeler. I was on the back so I got REALLY dusty. But it was fun!
Me, Wanda, and Lydia.
I took out my clip after we got up there and this is what my hair looked like. DUSTY.
A random picture of me driving.
This is what I did to Wanda's car the first time driving it. We were driving it out in the fields to check our gopher traps and I drove it right into a marsh. Right after Wanda told me not to. No damage was done except a whole ton of mud was splashed everywhere. It was funny.
While driving Wanda's cousin Audrey out to Lydia, who was in a swather, right in the middle of the field our four wheeler ran out of gas. So Audrey hopped in with Lydia and Wanda and I stayed with the four wheeler to wait for gas. It was actually pretty fun.
WARNING! THIS PICTURE IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART!
Behind me is a freshly killed, skinned, and dissected cow. They drove it over as we were coming back from, somewhere, I can't remember. I didn't know what it was at first, but when I realized that it was a cow, I dragged Wanda over to see it. It was mighty interesting. They even cut it right in half. I did have a picture on here of Carrie standing in front of the cut in half cow, holding the throat. But I decided I shouldn't put it on here.
Kale and Kason, Wanda's nephews. they are so sweet! I found the frog Kason is holding.
While we were there, Wanda's uncle Mike had his birthday party! At his house they have a ping pong table and a pool table. It was pretty sweet. We were holding ping pong tournaments. I lost.
It may look like Wanda and I have no idea what we're doing, but we were actually pretty good!
I forgot to put pictures on here of the ride home, but we had a blast. The weather was SO beautiful, the clouds were amazing, the smell of rain was amazing. I thought I wasn't tired when I got in the car, but as soon as we started driving, waking up at two in the morning caught up with me. I slept like a rock.
There was tons more that happened there! But I don't have enough pictures and I don't even know where to start. I just have to say, the people out there are SO amazing and I had so much fun!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING ME THERE!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
14,000 Things to be happy about.
A Victorian bay window, big four-poster bed with a blue- and white quilt
