MORE RAIN AND 1983 CAMPING MEMORIES

Another rainy morning. As I drove up the road to church,looking at all the overhanging tree branches that are growing so long and green as they drape the roadsides I thought this must be what it looks like in the rain forest !! The rain today was hard at times and came down steady all day.
Our lunch bunch consisted of d-in-love and g-son, daughter and her boyfriend Matt, and #2 son . #1 son is working all weekend down in Polk County rebuilding washed out roads from a torrential rain Friday. This is just one of many roads that washed completely away down there.

Too much water for the culverts to carry !!! He got called in to work yesterday at noon,worked until 12:30 this morning and went back to work this morning at 7:00,getting home at 8:00 tonight, giving him 66 work hours this week !!! You would expect this in the snow in winter time not this time of the year !
One of my cousins who grows corn has a picture of someone canoeing through one of his corn fields.  Another friend who has a large dairy has 1000 of his 1900 feed corn acres under water. No one has been able to cut hay because of all the rain and pastures are all waterlogged. Right now everyone is scratching their heads in disbelief that this rain just won't go away !?
All the standing water in the pastures and everywhere else is breeding millions of mosquitoes around here.
After everyone left after lunch hubbie went to a Decaon's meeting at church and me and my four-legged kids sat out in the sunroom  and watched the rain.
Just about time for evening chores the skies started to clear and we actually had glimpses of the sun at chore time after emptying 1 3/4" of rain from the gauge for today. As I type this blog at 11:00 tonight the pouring rain has started again !!
Hubbie decided to take advantage of the break in rainfall to change the oil in my van. The "change oil light" has been on for about a week now waiting on a dry couple hours.
Back in July 1983 there was no everyday rain going on and our little family was enjoying weekend lake camping trips.
#2 son was 4 months old and such a happy baby.

#1 son who was 21 months old was at a really fun age.

He had to help his daddy with what ever was going on.

And he got tired of mom constantly snapping pictures of him.

Daddy is skiing .......

And guess who's driving the boat ?????

Some weekends we had friends join us.

Sometimes the weekends were just perfect for doing nothing but relaxing from the past work week.

Why life looks like it was so simple back them now for me I can't understand but it does. In 1983 I worked a full time job as a drafting engineer while hubbie had a full time uniform delivery job and we had these 2 precious little boys to raise.  That does not sound like a simple time in my life but compared to the more complicated world of today I guess it really was. There were no cell phones, computers, no texting  or facebook friends to keep up with. I don't even remember at that time having an answering machine, we had a home phone and when we were home we answered it and when we were not whoever was on the other end of the line waited until we got back. We wrote letters to out of town family and phone calls to in town family when we needed to talk to them. This was before we began farming so there were no animals to find someone to look after while we were gone.
The biggest thing that makes life seem so simple back then is the age of my boys, changing diapers,bandaging skinned knees and drying tears away was so much simpler than watching them make their way through adult lives !!  I wouldn't trade these memories for anything in the world and each time I create these decade post I pat myself on the back for doing them because I get to go back and relive all the memories of these old photos.
I thank God each day for the wonderful full life He has given me with my children and now with g-son. I'm sure decades into the future I will be looking fondly back on today's activities as well.
Good Night and God Bless.