The week was a blur ...

This past week flew by. Lots went on and, for some reason, Mom and Dad seemed to have the shakes with the camera. There were some good shots and lots of blurry ones so bear with me. Last Sunday I went to a new park that had a cool playset. Dad didn't get the photos uploaded so I'll ask him to include them in this week's blog. This park had several cool slides!

And a sound game where you could here the person at the other end of the tube as clear as day!

The best part of this park? The round ladder that I could use for bin climbing practice. Up, up, up the outside of the bin ...

... and down, down, down the inside of the bin.

After school this week Mom and I worked on making the perfect paper airplane. Thanks to YouTube, we found a great design.

Yeah!

Thursday was the ultimate. Mom found out about National Fire Prevention Week activities in Des Moines and one of them was a promotion with our favorite pizza place. Real honest to goodness firemen were delivering pizzas and testing smoke detectors. They came to our house!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And, I got to go out into the truck! They even turned their lights on for me! (Of course, at this time Grandma Maggy was driving by not knowing what was going on and freaking out!) Thanks for setting this up, Mom ... you're the best!

Saturday (yesterday) Dad and I went to Chariton to see Papa Jack and Grandma Margaret. It was her birthday this weekend so we took a plant and had a good visit.

They both liked my farm set-up and were impressed with the number of acres I covered.

Last night, after Chariton, Mom and I met Grant and his Mom at the circus! It was a lot of fun and we stayed the whole time. Elephants, tigers, acrobats ... it was really great!

Today? Well, today was a chilli dinner at Boulevard. It was great to see so many old friends and catch up. Everyone was doing great. It was good to be back.

(Dad had hoped for a couple pictures of me playing with my friends but we looked like giant, colorful blobs we were moving so fast. No photos for you, Dad!)

Have a great week, gang!

Pierce

Saturday fun day!

I had a pretty good week this week and it was capped off with a really fun Saturday. The Altons came for a visit!

After going out for lunch we came back to house. Bob and I played catch for awhile and had a lot of fun. (He's a good thrower.)

Afterwards I played with the hose and "washed" Dad's car.

Mom and Carol enjoyed visiting and looking at photos.

And, by the end of the visit I got Bob to play helicopter with me! (If you sit under a turning ceiling fan you can pretend the fan blades are the rotor blades of the helicopter.)

It was a great visit and afterwards Mom and Dad took me to a park. I practiced my fire pole sliding and feel well prepared for the next emergency.

Have a great week!

Pierce

Harvest time!

This past week Mom and Dad surprised me with a trip to Papa and Grandma Kathy's farm! It is harvest season so I got to spend lots of time helping. The highlight of the weekend was spending time in the combine and helping with wagons ... but before we can do that we have to feed the cows. I helped put the empty buckets back in Papa's pickup truck and was able to get off the tailgate by myself.

Papa has a new combine this year and it is really neat! It has a Pierce seat and plenty of room in the cab. I felt right at home.

One benefit of field work are field lunches. Papa was generous and let me have some of his jelly for my PB&J sandwich.

Dad did just enough to get a lunch in the field too ... he was feeling pretty proud of himself!

Great-Uncle Tim was around this weekend, too! He's so cool. I really like spending time with him. He drove the big tractor and let me climb in and have a seat.

Whew. Long hours in the field this time of year ...

... thankfully I was able to take a break and help Grandma Kathy harvest some apples from her tree!

I also showed her some things I learned about one of Papa's older tractors. (She seemed appreciative even though she kept saying that she was "retired".)

More combining. Papa and I covered a lot of ground this weekend and I really felt like I helped bring in the harvest.

One cool thing that I have in Granda Kathy's house is a bug kit. If we find a bug we can put it in this container and I can look at it under the magnifying glass. I'm Pierce. I'm a scientist.

And, as often happens, I fell asleep really fast once Mom and Dad forced me to leave the farm and head back to Des Moines.

Have a great week everyone!

Pierce

A fun week.

Hey, gang. I had a fun week this week. Mom and I played every day after school, I went to the library and even had school pictures plus a birthday party Friday!

Let's take a step back to Thursday. I got a sticker reminding me about school pictures on Friday and I wore it proudly.  This is the first day in a long time that I wore jeans and a long-sleeve shirt.  In fact, after I put on my jeans, mom noticed they were 2" too short so she ran to find new pants!  I guess I've grown a lot!

I also got a package from Grandma Kathy and Papa with cool farm ads that made noise and lit up. They were a lot of fun!

Mom and I took down the summer door hanging thing and put up a fall door hanging thing.

Saturday was Beaverdale Fall Fest and, as always, I got to hang with my pal Maguire. He really helped me rake in the candy this year!

Grandma Maggy marched in part of  the parade and joined us for the last half of the morning.

Thanks to Maguire I got a cool frisbee so she helped me learn to throw it.

I needed to practice my firefighting so Mom had a great idea (borrowed from Aunt Sherry) ... use chalk to draw burning buildings on the driveway so I could practice with my water bottle. Brilliant!

Saturday afternoon Westminster had their annual "Blessing of the Animals". I took Firefighter Fish.

Grandma had Buddy.

I don't know this for a fact, but this may have been the first time Pastor Scott blessed a fish.

Next stop? The last visit to Snookies for the summer. Yep folks, summer is officially over. Sad.

Once we got home Grandma Maggy delivered a fun present ... Uncle Chris! I was very excited to see him!

We're buddies!

Today we met the Fletchers at the Picket Fence Creamery. They had pony rides but I didn't see any picket fences and Dad said they weren't a creamery.

I did get to talk to Grant, Nolan and Karlin about animal husbandry so that was worthwhile.

Have a great week, everyone. I'm back at it tomorrow.

Pierce

Don't blink ... you'll miss it!

This is going to be a very quick update. Mom, Dad and I were pretty busy living life this past week and didn't get a lot of pictures taken. I did really well doing full days of school, helped do a lot of chores around the house, sat like a big boy and got my toenails clipped, golfed with Dad and even got a haircut!

Whew.

Grand-Aunt Jeanne sent me a cool John Deere koozie this past week. She got it at an event and it was super sweet that she thought of me. I'm looking forward to seeing her and her husband Howie soon. (I need him to help me understand horse racing.)

Saturday was our neighborhood block party. There were lots of kids and I took my soccer ball.

I worked so hard I needed two drinks!

Today after golf Dad and I finally got around to painting the spot we patched in the bathroom.

Until next week!

Pierce

A journey ...

The past week was about taking journeys. It seemed like everyone in the family was moving, seeing, doing and starting new things. I started my week walking over the tressel bridge near Madrid with the Hungarian friends Grandma Maggy met on her journey last year. One of them was kind enough to let me carry his sheep.

After our walk Grandma Maggy and I took a trip around the speed bumps in the parking lot!

Wednesday started my journey at Bergman Academy. I'll take my lunch and backpack every day. This is going to be awesome!

Mom helped me get things ready even though I was only going half days week one. The cool thing is that this gave me a chance to practice with my lunchbox.

I'm ready to go!

Here I am walking in.

This is my "I'm so smart I stare off in space and think." pose.

Look what Mom made for me! There was a tree trimming truck with a shredder on my street after school and I told her I had to have one. Awesome job, Mom!

Friday, after we dropped Dad off for his journey to Portland, Mom and I headed to Denmark. It was a lot of fun to help Grandma Kathy cook. She's the best!

Uncle Eric was there too! He bought me a Lego toy and I took a journey of building discovery.  I'm not sure who had more fun - me or Uncle Eric.

Dad was on his journey to check out cool west coast advertising agencies. (I think Mom was on a journey to find peace and quiet knowing I was able to entertain Grandma Kathy, Papa and Uncle Eric for her.)

It rained a lot while we were visiting so we took several drives and explored a lots of places, like Nichtings - my favorite implement dealership.

I spent quite a bit of time playing in Papa's new combine. I can't wait to go for a ride!  (That is after I got off Papa's new Kubota RTV!)

One of the journeys we took in Denmark was to go see Tim and Jill. I really liked hanging out and playing with Allysa.  They couldn't believe how much energy I still had at 9 pm!

Grandma found a Tonka computer game so Papa, Eric and I spent a lot of time playing working on the computer.

We also visited Clayton!  I was a bit mesmerized with the tv.

And, I got a pep talk about the importance of toe nail grooming. Papa is a convincing guy because I let Mom do some trimming and I got my long-awaited treat!

I was so excited that I did a dance all over Grandma and Papa's house!

Uncle Chris and Uncle Matt hadn't heard about my accomplishment when this photo was taken but I can only imagine that this is the look of joy they would have had knowing their nephew had freshly clipped toe nails and a new fireman outfit. (These were their "joy faces" after having spent a couple days with Dad. You can tell they were ready to take him to the airport.)

Standing between me and my fireman outfit was Dad who thought he needed to be picked up at the airport. I ran up to him, told him how excited I was ...

... and then helped with with is suitcase so he would keep moving. We had places to go!

At last we got home! I dug in as soon as Mom and Dad would let me. Bunker gear? Check. Helmet? Check.

Mom had to help me some, but I tried to do as much as I could on my own. (I needed to take my own firefighter outfit journey.)

Boots? Check!

Success! The crowd roars! The journey is complete! I am firefighter Pierce!  Now let the fire calls begin!!

Have a great journey this week, gang.

Pierce