living on the prairie

We are home again after a three day trip to the western part of the state.  It was a neat time of catching up with old friends, and realizing that while our children travel well, they don't travel that well :) 

Action point #1 is that we decided not to attempt a one day 13 hour road trip to Kansas (coming up soon, more on that later). 

We decided to leave the interstate and take a few back roads on our way west, and it was so worth it - the drive is just amazingly, well, big.  After a few hours in the car we stopped on the side of the road to stretch our legs and snack on some soybeans. 

Fresh soybeans, still on the stalks, still in the fields.  The way I understand it, the farmers are waiting for the beans to dry out before they harvest.  But I don't understand too much about farming, so don't take my word for it. 

That's a photo of Julianna in front of one trillion acres of soybeans, or something like that.  They are quite tasty right out of the field and all our kids like to crack open the pods and snack away.

It was very windy and quite cold... the weather warmed up again yesterday though.

I am reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books to Julianna (and Lydia sometimes listens too).  We finished Little House in the Big Woods and are now in Little House on the Prairie.  We both loved this passage:

"Kansas was an endless flat land covered with tall grass blowing in the wind.  Day after day they traveled in Kansas, and saw nothing but the rippling grass and enormous sky.  In a perfect circle the sky curved down the level land and the wagon was in the circle's exact middle.  All day long Pet and Patty [the horses] went forward, trotting and walking and trotting again, but they couldn't get out of the middle of that circle"

I seriously feel like that sometimes here.  Except our van travels much faster than Laura's covered wagon, and the "middle of that circle" is occasionally interrupted by another vehicle, a billboard, or an old school house.

We're planning our own trip to Kansas - very soon :)  Looks like the birth mom will induce later next week and we tentatively plan to start driving down on Tuesday.  The "tear off a link a day" chain has become the "tear off two links a day" chain as the trip is approaching faster than we first anticipated!  We feel *mostly* ready to meet this little baby boy, and when I really stop and start to think about that day my heart starts beating faster and I am filled with a "oh my, is this really happening?" kind of feeling!