Saturdays have been my favorite day of the week this July. We’ve developed a routine. Where we live in the Midwest, we are surrounded by country. Gorgeous, wide-open spaces. If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you know that while I’m a hesitant Pennsylvanian-turned-Midwesterner, I adore wide open spaces.

On one of our first Saturdays here, we wondered what we should do with all of this free time. Monday-Friday, the kids go to the pool with my mom in the afternoon while I work. Saturday seemed like a long day without plans.

I suggested the mini-golf place about 25 minutes away. We’d give it a try. We brought a picnic along, and stopped at a park to play and eat first.

Before we could get to the mini-golf place, we saw signs for the steam train, so we had to go and check that out. Loud, messy, but interesting.

Then, mini-golf. Oh dear. With Gus? Just no.

18 holes turned out to be a terribly long game with kids who didn’t really have the patience for it. Plus, 6 people playing mini golf is too many. I don’t think we’ll attempt this again anytime soon.

We finished up mini-golf with ice cream, because we all needed a little pick-me-up after that.

This place does soft-serve in 24 flavors. I got mint chocolate chip with chocolate sprinkles. Yes, please.

The last thing that we wanted to do was stop and pick up some produce from the country stands. In this area, there are a ton of Mennonites who have produce stands Monday-Saturday.

This was one of our favorites. We sampled corn from all of the stands and theirs is the best.

So this became our Saturday routine. Ice cream and “Mennonite Land”, as I called it.

One of my dad’s favorites is this goat farm. He gets eggs and goat milk, kefir and cheese here.

A creative chicken coop.

One of my favorites for the aesthetics. Lots of flowers… and their whoopie pies were delicious too.

Unfortunately, we said goodbye to all of our favorite stops last week, as today we’re heading further west, to our big family reunion and then home to Kansas.

Until next year.