A Father's Day Surprise

Living 2,000 miles away from my family is okay most of the time, but I do tend to miss a lot of small stuff. When plans to spend the weekend at the ocean with some of my favorites from college changed at the last minute, I decided to surprise some people who didn't think I would be in town until Sunday (today). It was great! We picked up a pizza and the traditional birthday ice cream cake (you can't have a birthday in my family without a Dairy Queen cake!) and drove over to the farm.

Our annual birthday picture

We like pictures a little bit

Grandpa turns 93 in September, but since I may not be able to be here that weekend we celebrated early. On his 87th birthday, we started documenting it with a picture of us every year. Now, I'm glad I have all those pictures and it's fun to look back and see how we've both changed since 2009.




When I was a kid, grandpa ALWAYS spent Saturday afternoons at the sales barn. After a while it became our thing. I wouldn't go every weekend, but it was something fun to do together. As I got older and moved away, it became that much more special when we could go to the sales barn.

I took grandpa to lunch at the Branding Iron Cafe, the restaurant at our local sales barn, and then went to the sale for an hour. In the summer, they also sell flowers. If I didn't have to get on an airplane, I would have bought some stuff because those flowers were cheap! I joked that we could redo Granny's entire yard for about $30.

Nothing says. "I'm home!" quite like a trip to the sales barn with Grandpa

We stayed until 2 and they still hadn't gotten to the cows and other livestock. That's my favorite part. They're just beef cows and cull dairy cows, but it's more the tradition of it all that I enjoy so much.

No more small open-cab tractors for us! My brother even built a buddy seat into his tractor since it didn't have one. I must say that's MUCH more comfortable than sitting on the arm rest like I usually do.

My brother mowing the field by our house. He turned the cows out into the field a few minutes later to eat the cut grass instead of turning this field into hay. 

My brother has been really busy farming. In our family, you either help or get out of the way.  Saturday night he walked into the house and asked if I wanted to ride along while he cut the back field on our property. Yes please!!

Tonight, we are heading over to Dad's to grill some hamburgers. As I've said before, I tend to miss a lot of small stuff by living so far away, but I'm always there for the big stuff.




Happy Father's Day to all of the dads. Hope you have a weekend as good as ours!