July 14-18 • John Deere Homestead
Well, it seems that I took on this blog thinking I would have so much time to organize my thoughts, photos, and events in our life to share with all of you. Alas, I have proven yet again that it isn’t that easy to make time in the day for me to keep up with this blog. I’m working on it and will try to do better to get more updates out and maybe even get caught up before the new year.
Today I’m going to take you back to when we spent the week in Davenport, Iowa, and our adventure to the John Deere Homestead. It had been a really busy couple of weeks leading up to this so we decided we would take a small family vacation to wind down and explore with the kids. When we decided to hit the road we wanted to do a lot more exploring but life has proven to make it harder to explore and vacation as we still have to figure out all of life’s ups and downs along the way.
I know it has been a while but this blog will be a continuation of The Trek to Davenport, Iowa, if you missed that blog, you can go back to catch up. Since America was built around these states, there is a lot of history in the soil of these Mid-Eastern states, so we had some history lessons to take. Kevin had come to the John Deere Homestead when he was working for The Town of Hinton. They sent him on a manager’s trip and he got to experience all this and has since wanted to bring the family down here so we could all experience this with him.
A little side note, I collect Starbucks mugs from all over, and I’m currently working on collecting every state. Since we have been living in our camper I haven’t been able to purchase mugs from all the states we have been to yet, due to storage issues. I’m so happy when Kevin came down here a few years ago he already got me Aspen, Denver, Colorado, Illinois, and Iowa for my collection. If you keep up with our blog you will know that we have now signed a lease for a house in Iowa and I’m super excited that from this point forward I’ll be able to keep my collection going. You might see from this point forward some of the mugs I’ve found for collection. Here are the mugs Kevin got for me on his trip in 2019.
Ok back on task, if you know me I write my blog the way my brain thinks and that is all over the place. Hope you are keeping up. 🙂 We are now on our second day in Davenport, and our plan is to head to the John Deere Homestead in Grand Detour, Illinois. The drive from our hotel is about an hour and a half drive So we set out after breakfast and headed straight to the John Deere Homestead. It is super cool that all of this is free admission, they do a guided tour, live blacksmith demonstration, and a history video of John Deere and his life.
Our family enjoys exploring and learning along the way. This was so much fun to learn about how John Deere started his company and grew his business with innovative ideas. This really is a look into what the American dream was and what it is today. We all have ideas and ways to make things better but we just have to act on them. One thing we can learn from history and people like John Deere is you have to take chances and believe in yourself along the way. The dream is still real today, and we can even make our lives better by taking our ideas and going with them.
With homeschooling, I have learned so much this year not only from tours like this but also from talking and exploring things with our children. It is really cool how spending time together and learning new things can open our eyes to what steps we can take to better our lives as a family. My view on school and education has taken a complete turn. I’ve now realized there is so much more out there for all of us to learn and grow from not only in history but right in front of us. I honestly think I’ve learned more this year homeschooling than I did in school myself. There is so much out there for us to learn, so we just have to embrace it and take it all in.
I know I’ve told you all this before but we started a postcard writing project with the kids that they get to get a postcard at new places or states and choose whoever they want to send them to. We love getting pictures back of the people who have received them! Here is Grandpa Garry and Grandma Dianne with their postcards.
