Years ago, Mother gifted one of my sisters with a Fisher-Price barn set. Lancaster Co didn’t have anything on us after that- as we created the most pristine farm scenes on the kitchen floor. Our animals were well fed with Cheerios or whatever cereal mother had on hand.. We were the best farmers around.

The farm set doesn’t get quite as much use these days- our little visitors don’t hesitate to get the animals out and set up shop whenever they get a chance, and I’ve been know to get it out occasionally

That accident-prone Farmer Stan was one good reason. (More about that book here) My sisters were pretty sure that the tractor rollover and ambulance scene in this one would traumatize children. But I don’t think we realized how tough children are. I’ve even enjoyed watching my cousin and his adorable daughter in his living room acting out Farm Stan’s ambulance ride to the hospital 😂 I sure hated to tell my fam about that video 😉😂

Round 2 happened when Farmer Stan waded into an equipment war via poetry and tried to decide which brand of equipment was best. That post is here.

And so Farmer Stan is well established. But it so happens that I have an adorable nephew named Isaiah Stan AND an adorable nephew named Uriah Ray. See my predicament?

Enter my bargain shark sister Julia who discovered an entire Fisher-Price gold mine in the Bargain Buys in the newspaper and proceeded to buy herself multiple sets as well as a different one for each of her sisters. And my need to “even the score on the book” detail.

The stage is set to introduce to you: Student Ray.

Student Ray is a schoolboy with an assignment to select a profession for Dress Up/ Career Day. He interviews everybody and their brother to get a variety of ideas for job opportunities.

Aunt Em has advice…

And Grandfather has advice…

Aunt Deb even speaks in Spanish… (and yes I did actually drag these toys the entire way to Nicaragua for this pic 🙈)

He gets the plus side on custom harvesting, roofing, becoming a pilot, and a number of other jobs.

But in the end Mama sings him a little song ( found here ) which may or may not have been the foundation for this entire book 😉

I won’t ruin the punch line by telling you who Reader Ray decides to be. But Em declares the ending “cheesy” 😂 and it is.

But the truth is- no matter what life brings to my little men- I pray that they chose to be what this world needs most- another godly man ❤️

Luv you buddies,

Aunt Ken

Bonus Pics:

I had so much help with this project. Occasionally more help than I wished for:

And Jul insisted that I include her sneaky photography too… so this is her addition to my project 😝

And on a completely unrelated note- we enjoyed our first radishes from the garden. I get all starry-eyed over that initial toast, butter, radishes, salt and pepper sandwiches 😍

My mom: I never could grow decent radishes until I learned about German Radishes. These came from Berlin.

My dad crunching away in his sandwich: East Berlin or West Berlin?

My mom looking confused: Ohio! Berlin Seeds 🤷🏻‍♀️

Us: Ooooooh

So much for German Cuisine 😂

And finally I made the picture perfect s’more the other eve… Expectation:

vs Reality 😩 Dumb dog rocketed in out of nowhere🤷🏻‍♀️