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This will be our Septemberfest blog day.

I did take a picture of Goebbert's on the way in. It is nice and clean getting ready for Fall.

It was mid-70's today, but it felt warmer when in the sun. If we were going to experience the festival, we had to go with some old standbys, like the duck game.

To get you ready, here is the official sound of Schaumburg in the summer. It is cicadas and jets.

picking out prizes

Then the fishing game. We actually never fully hooked a fish and the guy gave us a prize.

The carousel was fun. We got the horses we wanted, the black ones.

Here is a random look at the carnival, which was not in the usual location this year because of the new village hall coming in late-2026.

For our last event, Heidi and Kai competed in the water gun game.

A view from across the pond.

I had fun using my tripod again.

...and playing Bingo.

One last photo...

...and one last day of Summer vacation upcoming.

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When we left this morning, we had one more page of math to finish up for Kai's summer goal of doing 50 pages. They are word problems related to money. Kai was not only able to read them, he was able to solve them all successfully on his own. Here is working on the last page in the car.

When we got home, he wanted to play with Nridib. I told them I'd drive them anywhere, so they agreed to play under the bridge.

walking to the bridge

getting some water

They then went to the Yellow Playground. We played a game called "Sharks and Minnows" - I was the shark, but them and the two other boys that were there couldn't quite figure out the rules.

After that, we went home to figure out what was next. Kai wanted to go through our recyclables to find different things we could make instruments from, like boxes, plastic bottles, etc.

Then they dug up some clay soil and mixed it with water to make some sculpting. They were making these spikes in the driveway.

Then they wanted me to run them over with the car. I am using my rearview camera to see them.

Here Kai is repositioning some so they get run over.

They enjoyed seeing the spikes get flattened.

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 While we waited for breakfast, we played with one of my old Transformers.

After breakfast they played a little garbage. It is a very easy game to learn to play.

My dad is trying to sell off some of his machinery, so I took a few pictures. A lot of it isn't worth much because the farms are so big now. Big farms don't really need small machinery. Regardless, we should be able to some money for it. We can try to sell on Facebook.

The chopper and disc aren't worth much, but the disc-bine should get a couple thousand, we hope.

More racquetball..

In the evening we ate in Brill. Brill is very small. The bar and bank on the left and the grocery store and feed mill on the right. 

I met the guy who taught me all about identifying trees. My Botany 101 professor Mr. Grivna. That was fun, I was just talking about him the other day. Him and my dad played softball together, so we go a ways back.

Kai found some friends to play with at the playground.

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Kai and I went up to Rice Lake today.

King Hiss, Kristof and Math Teacher made it - they are our characters.

Trying to hit the bubbles with a racket.

racquetball against the barn

My parents have been selling this rusted out corrugated steel. People love it. One person was using it for her she-shed. My mom has sold over $500 worth of it this year. Today she sold $180 worth of it. My dad has gone up to the junkpile in the woods to bring more down to sell. One person's trash...

The pictures below are not necessarily in order.

driving the tractor through the woods

On the four wheeler

Here is the bear trap. It is just a bunch of sweets to attract the bears.

More campfire...

My father's day present, which I got while in Toronto was a projector.

watchin the baseball game on our barn - my parents were amused

picking beans

There is a planned power outage for 10PM, so I kind of threw this together quickly....update the power is out at 10:02PM. I'm hot spotting this to the Internet!

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Today we went to Eugster's Farm Market. It was a beautiful day and not too busy.

The first thing we did was make flower headdresses.

One of the popular things to do is water the garden. Lots of kids like to do it. The plants stay nice and green.

I spent the $2 for the goat food. It didn't take long for him to go through it.

The neat thing is that the zinnia field was still in good shape.

they put this little house here for picture opportunities

We had to make it back home to give us a little time to prep for our meeting with Ms. Judd.

Here is the final product we will give her. It includes a picture of Kai in Quebec City.

Here is the sign outside room 210 - Kai is now on the 2nd floor.

Ms. Judd seemed very nice and personable (those are Heidi's words). She was interested in what Kai saw in Canada and what he liked to do.

Ms. Judd is looking at Kai's letter

There are 19 kids in Kai's class. In his group of four seats will be Nridib (Ardro) to his left, Kiara diagonally across and Roen directly across.

Here are the mailboxes. We were happy to see Theron and Uma and their families. They are from Kai's kindergarten class, but were not part of his 1st grade.