Kite Flying, Coloring Books and Other Things
A continuation of I Do, Again
Laura and Almanzo all learn a little something while babysitting the Ingalls kids while Ma and Pa are away on a second honeymoon.
“You have everything?” Almanzo asked his arms around his wife’s shoulders.
“Yep, I do,” Laura answered kissing her husband lightly. “And I have to thank you for the hard work you did helping me with my latest school project.”
Almanzo smiled. “You know your Pa helped, too.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, smiling. “But it’s just going to have to wait until he gets back. I’ve got a big supper planned for tomorrow night when Ma and Pa return from their second honeymoon.”
Almanzo frowned. “I thought we were going over there.”
Laura smiled and kissed him. “It’s the next night, Manly. Remember, we talked about this last night. You know, when I told you about your sister’s book and we talked about Sleepy Eye and…”
Laura’s voice trailed off. “Manly, are you alright?”
Almanzo smiled up at her. “You know, if we weren’t outside and you weren’t up in that rig, I’d climb up and kiss you right here in front of everyone.”
“Okay, Almanzo James Wilder, I dare you to come up and kiss me.”
Manly’s eyes widened and so did the smile. “You shouldn’t dare me, Laura Ingalls Wilder,” he said as he started to climb into the seat.
“What in the world are you doing, Mr. Wilder?” Laura asked as Almanzo made it to the top of the buckboard and sat down next to her.
“What does it look like, Mrs. Wilder?” he answered, as he put his arms around her and pulled her close. “I’m kissing my wife in front of everyone.”
“Who is everyone, Manly? Do you mean like a passing squirrel?”
“Shh,” he said as he leaned in and….
“Almanzo,” a voice called out. “I didn’t know you were tagging along.”
Manly and Beth turned around at the sound of Albert’s voice. He had just come out of the farmhouse holding Grace’s hand. Laura’s gaze turned to Almanzo, who she found was already staring back at her.
“Fooled you, didn’t he, Albert?” Laura whispered as they stared at one another.
“You shouldn’t have dared me,” he whispered, smiling at her. “I love you, Beth.”
“And I love you, too, Manly.”
“You sure you don’t want to come?” Albert said, smiling as Almanzo jumped off the rig.
“I’ll see all of you later at the schoolhouse. Grace and I have a date this afternoon, don’t we?”
Grace nodded. She looked up at Almanzo and held her hands out, a sign that she wanted to be picked up.
And Almanzo did just that.
“Yep, we’re gonna go for a little walk, just the two of us, maybe even have a little picnic. How does that sound?”
Grace nodded again as Almanzo placed her on his shoulder.
“See you at the school later on,” he said as he watched Laura drive off.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Laura and Almanzo were downstairs at the Wilder farm clearing up the supper dishes.
“So, how did your day go?” Manly said, as he put down the towel and walked over to where she was standing. He wrapped his arms around her waist and swayed her back and forth. “That was another great project you thought up, Beth. Those kites were the talk of Walnut Grove.”
“Hey, don’t be so modest Manly, you and Pa did plenty of work on them yourselves,” Laura said, standing of tip toe to kiss him.
“We only made six of them. All the kids couldn’t fly them at the same time.”
Almanzo looked at her curiously. “So what did you give them to do?”
“The new coloring books and paints came in,” Laura told him. “I made sure that the kids switched off. Some of them used the coloring books, some of them flew kites and believe it or not, some of them, like Albert, studied.
Almanzo’s eyes opened wide. “Albert was studying?”
Laura nodded. “Albert will be graduating next year, Manly. He is thinking of becoming a doctor. I’m giving him my books so he can prepare for them. “
Almanzo smiled. “Time does fly, doesn’t it?”
Laura nodded. “Speaking of time flying ,” Laura said, “where’s Albert?”
“Right here,” Albert answered, as he entered the kitchen, “Almanzo, you and Laura are hereby requested to come join us for some kite flying.”
Almanzo looked at Laura and smiled. “Are we up to it?”
“Only until it gets dark, Albert,” Laura said, looking at her husband.
But Albert hadn’t heard, he was already outside with his sisters.
Almanzo smiled and released her. “He’s all excited.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“The kids learned all about Benjamin Franklin and kite flying today,” Laura said, “It’s actually something that you see very rarely on the prairie.”
“In about an hour and a half, it will be way past Carrie and Grace’s bed time,”
“Well, Grace’s anyway,” Laura said, taking out some of the lemonade she had made. She put the glass pitcher down, took out the glasses and handed them to Almanzo to carry out.
“We can sit on the porch and watch them,” she told him as she picked up the pitcher again.
“Correction, you can sit on the porch and watch them. I want to fly at least one those paper kites,” Almanzo smiled and walked out the front door with the glasses in his hand.
Laura was right in back of him.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
“Manly, I’m sorry about tonight. I actually wanted a quiet night, just you and me…”
Almanzo smiled and wrapped her up in his arms.
“I had a good time, Beth. It took me several tries to get that kite up, but I managed to. After school was over, Carrie taught me and Grace about catching frogs down by the creek and Albert and I helped her get her kite up. We all learned a little something.”
“What about Grace? She can be fussy eater.”
“Oh, Beth, she’s a cutie. She ate up all of your leftover eggs and we took a little walk into the wooded area out back. I showed her some birds and some flowers and she was so attentive and interested that I thought I had finally found a friend. “
“And then it was time for supper.”
“And bedtime,” Almanzo said, “but this time I was ready for her. I told her all about Cinderella and do you know what?”
“She fell asleep?”
Almanzo smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know how you did it, Beth, but I couldn’t get her to go to sleep at all. She wanted to hear more about the birds, the plants and the flowers and I started to explain them to her. When I started talking about all the different birds she saw today, she fell asleep.” He smiled. “If you ask me, I don’t think she cared one way or the other.”
Laura laughed as she slid closer to Almanzo. “If that’s the case, do you think we’ll still need that fairy tale book when we go there tomorrow night?”
Almanzo looked at her. “Wait a minute, didn’t you tell me that we were…”
“Well,” Laura said, looking at him. “I got the day wrong. You were right. Remember yesterday when Mrs. Oleson called me over to the Mercantile? That was them calling to tell me”
Almanzo sat up and frowned. “So when are we going over there?”
“I’m sorry, Manly. I was just so busy that I forget to tell you they were coming to pick up the kids at our place tomorrow night instead.”
Almanzo frowned. “You knew all this time and you didn’t tell me?”
“I was going to, Manly, They were supposed to be here tonight, but Pa decided to stay a little longer.”
Almanzo looked at her. A shy smile was beginning to form on his lips and folded his arms across his chest.
“So that’s how you knew?”
She nodded.
“Beth?”
“I just wanted to see if you were paying attention, Manly, I guess you were.”
Almanzo shook his head and put his arms around her waist. “Well, there’s something I forgot to tell you too, Beth.”
“What’s that?”
“You know that fairy tale book we were talking about yesterday? Well, I mentioned it to Albert and he just smiled. And…”
“And?” Laura said, looking at him curiously.
Manly untangled his right arm from Laura’s waist and stretched it out to retrieve something behind him. He fumbled with it at first, but in the end, he managed to bring it forward.
Laura’s eyes opened wide as he plopped it down on the bed. She looked at it and then she looked up at him.
“Where was it?” she asked, picking up Eliza Jane’s fat book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales.
“Same place you remembered it being, Beth, underneath your old bed in the loft. Albert used it for a while, but he told me that the Cinderella story stopped working on Grace a while ago. So he gave it to me when I asked him about it. He thought we could use it when our baby is born.”
“You had it all the time and you didn’t tell me?”
Almanzo slid his right arm around Laura’s waist again. He tried not to smile. “I guess I just wanted to see if you were paying attention."
“MANLY,” Laura said, trying not to smile. She put her arms around his waist.
“Maybe we should look into getting a copy of Audobon’s book on birds instead. I saw a few of them in the Mercantile last week. Maybe we should…”
But Almanzo never let her finish the sentence.
Author’s Note:
A few things to mention:
Kites and kite flying have been around since 450 BC. They started in China, but spread to Europe in the 14th to 15th centuries . From there, they moved to Maylasia and Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries. Eventually they made it to America around 18th to 19th centuries.
They were used for all kinds of things including, weather,military and scientific experiments. The Wright Brothers and Alexander Graham Bell used their skills as kite flyers to perfect the early aeroplanes. Later on, in the 50’s and 60’s, they would be used for parachutes and hang gliders. In the 70’s and beyond, they were used for fun and for sport. But kids and adults have been flying them since the 1600’s.
Coloring books were started in the 1870’s and 1880’s with the Little Folks’ Painting Book. Watercolor paints have been around since the cave man and was used for everything from artistic painting to coloring books.
Watercolors were used by John J. Audobon while documenting his famous book of birds which I also mention in this story.
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