A sinking feeling (and babysitting~)

This morning, after our chores were through, my whole family headed up to ice skate. When we were in Bismarck last Wednesday, God helped my brothers and I to find some really great deals on hockey skates, so we had each purchased a pair and really wanted to use them. As the area of our cleared off ice was only about a third the size it should be for a real hockey rink, the guys had the idea to take the tractor up and clear the ice off--if the ice was thick enough. Andrew did some research on-line this morning to see how thick the ice would have to be in order to hold up a heavy tractor, and then he took a drill bit and drilled down through the ice in a couple spots and found it to be thick enough to hold the tractor up. SOOOOOOO..... Dad cleared a lot of ice off in a short amount of time and planned to make the rink a 100x200 ft. rectangle.
However, before he was entirely done, he had a slight change of plans!

Right along the edge of the ice, the reeds had obviously kept the ice from freezing as solidly as everywhere else... Talk about a sinking feeling--for us to see Dad try to get out of the mud and water and also for Dad--as the tractor sank down! The guys had confidence that they'd be able to pull it out later with our other 9030--which they did and everything is OK on the tractor that went in the water, so it's just our ice surface that's not the greatest in that spot... Talk about an adventure. :)

A little before 11:00, I headed home to change quick and then drove over to our neighbors to babysit their children while they did some shopping and spent some time together.

These are the same children that I watched on Thursday, but this time I took my camera along and got some pictures, so I thought I'd share them with you....

Meet Amelia (called MeMe): It was hard to get a good picture of her because she was always on the move! :)

Here's James (or Jimmie)...

And curious Michael--who's getting some teeth in currently...

The twins at the window:

Amelia hard at work coloring a picture:

And the twins once again--with their Cheerios! You can tell that James was more hungry than Michael...

We played together; colored together; read books together; sang together; danced together; watched Winnie-The-Pooh together; ate together; they slept together; and we had an enjoyable time until their parents came home a little after 7:00.

.....The best part of it all is--I get paid to have that kind of fun! (True, dirty diaper dealings aren't the most fun things in the world, but they're a fact of life!!!)

That was my busy day. I'm sure many other things happened around the place here, so perhaps my family will fill you in on that in the next few days....