Atherton Family Notes

Following my recent trip to Brazil, I can now make the following extraordinary claim:  I’ve been to Wal-Mart and McDonald’s on four continents (Wal-mart locations: North America: too many to count; Europe: Donaueschingen and Munich, Germany; Asia: Beijing; South America: Sao Paulo.  McDonald’s: Basically the same places.)

How many other people (who don’t work for those companies) can claim that?  I’m not sure, but I’m going to claim that the answer is “not very many.”

I told Sandi that I want this put on my gravestone:  ”Here lies Ken Atherton, Beloved Husband and Father, Shopper at Wal-mart on 4 continents.”

Incidentally, Wal-mart no longer operates in Germany, and as far as I can tell, it has no operations in Europe at all at this point.  But I got there before they closed up.  That’s all that counts.

There are no other continents with Wal-marts on them, but I can still hope to get to a Mcdonald’s in Africa and Australia someday.  Sweet.  I’m not yet finished with my life’s work.

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During our vacation this summer we went the beach in Holland near sunset.  It was a beautiful day, and the girls couldn’t resist getting in, even though they didn’t have their bathing suits on.  I got several pictures of the girls with the sun behind them and I picked one out to make this simple page:

This one is of Sadie, but I got enough good pictures that I might try putting a page together for the other two girls.

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I had a fun time at Holiday World.  I wish I could have been there for a long, long time.  I rode lots of water slides, and one roller coaster, but I didn’t like it very much.  I can’t wait to go back!

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Here’s the page that Sadie and I put together about picking blueberries on vacation.

This page was a lot of fun to do. We used the edges that we trimmed off the pictures to fill in the background. I think it makes a neat effect.

I also like Sadie’s little drawings of buckets filled with blueberries.

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Last Saturday, we drove up to Fair Oaks Farms, a dairy farm in northwest Indiana that offers daily tours of their facility.  It was a very interesting trip.  We learned a lot about the dairy industry, saw the barns and the milking facility and even got te see a calf born.

The entire operation is quite impressive.  The dairy processes its own feed, uses the methane from the cow manure to power the facility, allows the cows to roam freely within the barns, and milks every cow three times a day on a merry-go-round system that the cows actually seem to enjoy.  They get on and off at will, even going around for a second ride if they are finished giving milk.

The farm is really clean, and the methane capture operation they use to generate electricity really keeps the smell down.

Big farming operations often get a bad rap due to the assumed treatment of the animals involved and the conditions they live in, but in the scheme of things, but there would be worse places to live out your life as a cow than at this farm.  

When I was reasearching the trip, I found several links to posts from other people who had been to the farm and were similarly impressed.  In particular, I thought that this post (from someone who is not inclined to be pro-industrial agriculture) was insightful as well.

The kids really enjoyed the trip, especially the play area and seeing the calf being born.  We’ll post some pictures and probably a scrapbook page or two in a few days.

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