Jim and Bonny: Trip to Indianapolis, IN October 2010

We had a sidewalk chalk welcome when we arrived at the Christensen's! Julie and Olivia had been busy.

How fun is that!?!

One day we took a picnic lunch and went on a drive to the Oliver Winery!

Beautiful colored mums!

The fall colors were peaking!

Pumpkins everywhere!

The tree over our picnic table!

More pumpkins!

Gavin & Olivia

Gentlemen, start your porkchops! We know we are back in Indiana.....

Time for Jason to grill!

Enlarge this photo and tell me.......

what is wrong with this picture????

Besta and Olivia had fun drawing on the sidewalk.....

Then Mommy took out the Halloween decorations and found Olivia's witch hat. It didn't take her long to find the broom!

Gavin wanted a hat too! ( :

We played on the neigbor's playset!

The little witch did tricks!

Gavin

On Sunday we drove to Fair Oaks Dairy Farm in Northwest Indian. We met Jaki and Jeremy there. Fair Oaks Farms is home to 30,000 dairy cows located on 10 separate dairy sites.

To grow silage, corn and alfalfa to feed these 30,000 cows it takes approximately 17,000 acres which is the equivalent of 56,000 football fields.

Environmentally sound farming practices are used to protect the soil and water for future generations; and, more than 3,000 acres are set aside to protect the streams and watersheds, and to provide habitat for wildlife.

Each of the 30,000 cows is milked three times per day, and more than 80,000 milkings are performed everyday, in a 24 hour, 365 day-a-year dairy farm that never shuts down.

To care for these cows, a staff of veterinarians, nutritionists, and herdsmen are available 24 hours a day to attend to any cow's health needs.

This highly trained team also cares for an average of 80 calves that are born on Fair Oaks Farm everyday.

Each of the cows produces almost 10 gallons of milk per day, and in total, Fair Oaks Farms produces enough fluid milk to supply all the citizens of Chicago with milk each year. 4 million glasses of milk are produced each day.

We took a 45 minute bus tour of the farm and saw how 72 cows merrily get milked all at once on a giant carousel.

We drove through one of the 10 barns that houses 300o Holstein cows. We saw where they process manure to produce electricity and fertilizer.

We saw a baby calf born in the birthing barn!!

And had great fun on the jumping pillow!

Olivia is a natural when it comes to trampolines. She could jump all day!!

Mom & Dad didn't do too bad either!

And I had great fun taking pictures of everyone in the air!!

Jeremy drove his John Deere!

And Gavin pushed!

Hard work!

The hard work paid off with an ice cream cone!

Ymmm!

These cows made great chocolate milk also!

We practiced putting the milking machine on the cows!
Bestefar was the fastest, but he has had lots of practice!

Besta & Bestefar (Granny & Pa)

Jeremy, Gavin & Olivia
We all had a fun day!

Then it was time to say good-bye and head back to Indy, Jaki and Jeremy back to Huntley!

As we drove on Highway 65, north of Lafayette, there were miles and miles of wind turbines as far as the eye could see, on both sides of the road. They are amazing!

We were lucky that the rain stayed away all day but made a beautiful rainbow for us on the way home.

Aunt Jodi handed down Connor's tool table to Gavin. He was very busy with his tools.

Bestefar reading to Gavin.......

Olivia dressed up in her princess dress for Besta.

(I sewed this dress for Christen and now it fits Olivia. Thanks for sharing Christen! Olivia looks as beautiful in it as you did!)

Then Olivia modeled her Mermaid costume! I loved it!

The morning of the day we flew back to WA there were tornado warnings with sirens for Jason & Julie's subdivision. So we spent some time in the basement in the dark (no power) before we left for the Children's Museum. There were many trees down and siding was torn off of homes. Luckily no damage to their home.