A tractor, a sale, and balloon animals

What do these all have in common? Our weekend.
On Friday the kids and I headed out to the farm to tackle the weeds that had sprung up from all the rain we've gotten. It was a beautiful afternoon for pulling weeds and helping Grandpa in the corn rows.
And if it hadn't been for the row of potatoes I accidentally allowed to be dug up, it would have been a perfect Friday. I didn't know there were potatoes planted there. I didn't know it took the Farmer and the kids hours to dig and plant them in the hot sun.And in my defense, there were no visible shoots poking out of the ground. I just thought the stakes were there for ... well some other reason. The Farmer met us out at the farm after a long, difficult, full-of-problems, workday; only to find his vegetables uprooted. His weekend was off to a fine start.

That night the kids helped me, gleefully, stick little sticky price tags on our items to be sold in a garage sale. The wind was picking up, a few sprinkles fell, but we went to bed hoping the rain would be gone by morning. Boy were we in for a surprise.
At 1 in the morning we were jolted out of bed with a tremendously loud BOOM that sounded like the neighbor's house had fallen down. It was "just" thunder. In our part of the world, we just don't get thunder like that. It took some time for my heart to stop pounding and sleep to claim me again. And then the rain started. Pouring. Buckets. Literally. And I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking of my painstakingly crafted Sale signs we had put up previously.
Saturday morning dawned early, 6 am, and the rain was still pouring. If I hadn't spent money on an ad in the local paper, I would have canceled the garage sale. But, no, on with the show.
The kids really got into the whole scene. They set up their table on the front porch, and went looking in their rooms for whatever else they could sell. Cookies and lemonade were the easiest. And they made more than I did. Suffice to say, it was not a good day for a garage sale. And I will never have another one. And this time I mean it.

But what about the balloon animals? On Sunday night I came home to find a zoo in my being-remodeled playroom. The Farmer had spent the afternoon in a "meeting", making balloon animals with his team that is going to Spain in July. I spent that afternoon with our kids and the Farmer's mom at a local airport, watching little airplanes, learning random airplane facts. I can now tell a Grumman apart from a Cessna apart from a Maule. But I might not be able to spell them correctly.