dinosaur park revisited

Last week we just needed to get out of the house after dinner. So we did a quick trip over to Shari and Jesse's and then Dinosaur Park. Shari and Jesse just moved to town from the ranch and now live in an apartment at the base of the park. So convenient!

I took the kids to the park for their first time last summer while Terry was in Mexico and they were very keen to visit it again. Except last time Samuel was so little he was strapped to my chest and therefore was in no photos. Here he is now! Oh, and me too. Thanks Terry.

Evie is perhaps admiring the fact that all the dino's were recently were repainted. Samuel's working his quads.

Not such a bad view. Looking west to the hills.

Not bad at all. Looking north to M-Hill.

Jesse kept joking about how Samuel looked like a coach with his shirt tucked into his shorts and his belly sticking out (it was a onesie and he had just had a good dinner). Now Jesse wants to get him a whistle.

It's a little embarrassing that Evie is wearing the same capris as last summer...

Our kids are cute.

Especially this little guy. I love to tickle him and hear his funny little laugh.

Noah builds and daydreams

Noah built this little Lego guy yesterday all by himself. I was impressed.

He used the Star Wars Lego's he received for his birthday. He had preferred to leave all his Star Wars sets put-together on his shelf and rarely play with them (what is the use in having them then?!). But after playing with Eli's big bucket of Lego's a couple weeks ago, he insisted on taking all his figures off the shelf and disassembling them so he could make his own creations. Well, he did a good job.

Also, I will share here something Noah said last week that made me laugh. He does a lot of day-dreaming during the day and it's mostly about his Skunk (Skunk is usually saving the world from bad guys and from what I understand it's pretty similar to a video game. I told him someday we need to write these stories down. He was not into that.). This particular instance he was by himself making some weird noises that made no sense whatsoever. That's when he said to himself, "What am I saying? I have no idea." I'm glad we can agree on that.

dog/kid park?

A couple weeks ago we went for a family bike ride. Terry pulled Noah and Evie and I had Samuel behind me in his seat. It's a few miles west to the end of the bike path (i think) and when we reached it I noticed a picnic area off the path by the creek. So we headed over there. It was so pretty.

I thought we were in a place called Cleghorn Canyon, but there were a lot of dogs around. After talking to a friend, I think we may have brought our kids to a dog park. ! I'm still not certain but feel a little silly nonetheless.

We had a good time regardless.

At first we tried to keep Samuel away from the water.

Evie had her special kitty with her that we would have forgotten in a bush had her motherly instincts not kicked in.

Samuel was getting more and more wiggly...

Noah still had his red cast so we wanted to keep him out of the water too.

We stayed too long because eventually we lost the battle over not entering the water. Samuel was the first to go in. Then Noah and Evie followed suit. Hopefully they didn't walk in any dog pee...

petting reptiles

Since Monday Terry's been with the middle school students biking the Mickelson Trail. That means I've had to manage 3 small kids on my own - no small feat. (here's a map for you since i know you were dying to know. they camped at Deadwood, then Rochford, then Custer and finally-tonight- Hot Springs.)

From past experience, I knew it was important to stay busy to prevent us all from going crazy. So that's exactly what we've done. Tuesday we went to Reptile Gardens and then drove an hour into the hills to see daddy at Rochford. Wednesday we went to the ranch and then drove well over an hour to Custer to see daddy. Today we are hanging out at home, counting the hours til daddy gets home tomorrow. I have put 200 miles on the van in two days!

At any rate, I gave Noah a quick review about what reptiles were before we left and before we knew it, we were face to face with real life reptiles. Check out them snappers.

We went with my sister-in-law and good buddy Shari and "baby" Grace (as Evie always calls her)

We learned the difference between alligators and crocodiles and how they have two sets of eyelids - one transparent one to protect their eyes under water. We also learned how to correctly "wrestle a gator" like his shirt said.

We went to a bird show next, which, incidentally was the kids' favorite part and quite pointless to get pictures of, and then to the kids park where I tried not to lose any children. Here's Samuel and Grace in the tube play thing.

Next we went and saw something completely native to me but never seen up close by my kids: Prairie Dogs. Oh, and Evie saw a rattlesnake and we all saw a python though I was the only one brave enough to touch it. I must be a Gryffindor at heart right?

Next were the giant tortoises. Noah was far too interested in it's "long neck" to look at the camera as instructed. That other kid did good though, aside from the blink.

These two tortoises were only 40-45 years old. Methuselah died last year after 130 years. Oh and I almost forgot: This one gave me a priceless memory - the sound and smell of tortoise gas as I walked behind him. Yummy.

Next we headed into the tropical-like dome. Pretty flowers and uninterested boy. There were some that smelled like chocolate!

Turtles and more turtles. I love turtles.

And a pretty waterfall. But the best part of the trip is that though it was expensive to get in, we have passes that will last until November 30! Next we'll force Daddy to come along. :)

slippin

Terry had a wonderful suggestion while I was at Target last week. He told me to get a slip 'n slide. It was only $5 and it's brought so much fun to our back yard.

Noah, of course, did not have the fun that the other two had the first day due to our laziness of not wanting to wrap his cast and the fear of not knowing if said wrap would protect from water. So Noah watched longingly at first.

Then he got creative and began spraying his siblings.

Evie didn't mind. Perhaps because she's so cute.

The water pressure here isn't very good so you had to step on the blue tube to get it to spray like it's supposed to. Or perhaps that's because the slide was $5.

Mommy and Daddy watched comfortably from the shade. I guess my comfort was impeded due to wet-diaper-baby sitting with me.

Wet-diaper-baby (later wet-and-nasty-diaper-baby) had a fun time on the slide also and even figured out how to do his own spraying, squirting fun.

Until he slipped and fell.

Don't worry though. He's fine. His first instinct is to scream bloody murder and once he's been comforted, he's off again.

Trekkies

I have a confession to make.

I'm a Trekkie.

So I guess that makes me a geek. That along with my love for Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

However, I only love Star Trek: The Next Generation. So I'm not a complete Trekkie. I don't know what it is about make-believe worlds, but I'm a sucker for them.

But I have to say, I was raised to appreciate sci-fi in general. We often watched Star Wars and all the other Star Trek shows. My mom was and is a fantastic cook. Luckily I took after her. She used to make pizza once a week and our whole family got to eat it in the living room while watching Star Trek Next Generation (a tradition I've carried on but with a family movie night instead of the STNG). So perhaps what happened is that the good fuzzies associated with the best pizza ever became combined with the STNG and I came to associate them together. Good feelings.

And then there were the Wardyns in Nebraska:

I don't remember how it happened, but we discovered we both shared a similar interest in STNG. They had the DVDs!!! And they very graciously borrowed them to us. For a long time.

I didn't realize how long we'd had them until we finished the last episode of the entire SEVEN seasons this week. Which by the way, is where all the warm fuzzy feelings are coming from which led me to write this ridiculous post that no one but the Wardyns, Terry and I will appreciate.

We've been borrowing those DVDs from the Wardyn's for over a year. I remember feeling sad that I couldn't watch Star Trek with Terry while he was away in Mexico for two weeks last summer (we only watched together. awwwwww.). A year later, the Wardyns even let us take the DVDs to SD with us since we weren't finished at the time we moved. They are so nice.

So now the warm fuzzies are associated with the Wardyns, Terry and family STNG pizza nights. I love this show.

green cast haircuts

The boys received some much needed haircuts by mama last night. Noah did well. Samuel was freaking out, but it was only his second haircut experience. He'll get over it someday. Like when he's five, if he's anything like his brother.

Also, we took Noah in the the orthopedic doc today for another checkup. The x-ray showed that his arm is healing very well. It had a cute little bubble of new bone growth around the break. The doc said that it would take an adult six weeks to heal that much. It's been only three and a half weeks for Noah. So they sawed off the his two week old red cast and I thoroughly washed his stinky hand and arm and then they re-casted him. He picked green to match his outfit. Plus it's daddy's favorite color. This cast comes off July 2. Woot woot!

red paint

Since we found a house that we love, we will not be staying at my grampa's place. So that means my family wants to spruce it up to sell. The sprucing began yesterday and continued today...and for many days to come I am sure.

Noah begged to do some painting yesterday, but since they were working up high scraping and painting the gutters, his dreams weren't gonna come true. But today Grampa had the great idea of letting Noah paint the gate. He was so stoked.

Gramma worked on stripping old paint off screens.

My Uncle Jeff (and Uncle Danny) added more paint to the gutters, eaves and windows.

Then my dad and Jeff worked on painting the screens.

Noah and Evie were super helpful a gofers. They brought screens back and fourth between Gramma and Grampa/Jeff to tape and paint. I helped too - I pulled off paint tape. Yeah, I was workin hard. Next up, the inside!

the 5 bears on bellewood

We found a new house!

We just had the home inspection completed today and Terry gave me the clear to finally write a post about our good news. The inspection turned out nothing unusual or troubling so we are moving along with this house. The appraisal is next. Closing cannot be until late July due to the sellers request so that is a bummer. But time goes fast so it'll be here before we know it!

We were sad to leave our great house in Nebraska that was perfect for us and knew it would be difficult and much more expensive to find a similar home here. But after much searching we found one. (There were two other houses that fell through - one was going into foreclosure so was off-limits and another had a superior offer put in at the exact same time we put ours in.) It's kind of funny because this is the very first house we physically looked at once we had moved (I'd been searching online for months).

I discounted the house because I wanted to be close to the church and this one is 20 minutes away. However, after weeks of frustrating searching (I know it could have been worse), we came back to this one at Terry's request. We agreed we needed to make some concessions (What? We can't have it all?!) and we really liked this house otherwise. It's great for us because it's four levels, which is the same as our NE house. It works good for our kids to have some separate play areas that aren't "too far" away, like it feels in my grandpa's ranch house we are renting now.

Plus, we needed a back yard that would accommodate our play set that Grampa and Gramma B got the kids a year ago. So here's the back yard! We love it! The porch is wonderful and even better...

...is that there are no neighbors behind us as it is national guard land.

Here is the front sitting room viewed from the front door.

The living room connects to the dining room which is open to the gorgeous kitchen. I love the kitchen. That door leads to the garage. There is a island that doubles as a breakfast bar, which was another thing we were partial to.

Here is the next level down - a family room and laundry and half bath.

And below that is the unfinished basement that we can finish to our desires. I do want to finish it and even add an egress window (hopefully) so we can have another bedroom down there. There are three bedrooms and two bathrooms on the uppermost level but as our kids get older we'd like the option of not having to share a room...and the ability to have guests stay...and room for homeschooling supplies. But other that this, the house needs very little work - just paint (We didn't want another remodel as we just did that in NE).

So...YAY!

the red cast

Noah broke his arm on Tuesday, May 22. We went for a follow-up appointment five or six days ago where they put fiberglass over what had been just a splint - and it will stay on for two weeks. Noah was very excited about his red cast. As soon as we got home he was all about us signing it. Just today at Storybook Island, his friend Asher signed it as well (yes, can you believe I had a Sharpie in my purse?!). In another 9 days he will have this cast sawed off and a shorter one put on for another two weeks. Then he'll finally be done. And he can go swimming. And ride his bike (with bubble wrap on). And take his own showers. And go to the bathroom unaided. But most importantly he will be able to wash his stinky hand. Ug. Mama can't wait.

Like the photos of Noah reading (above) and doing math (below). We are no longer letting the broken arm be an excuse and are trucking along, trying to just finish his kindergarten math book for the summer. But I am having him read some first grade worksheets (yay!). And we will continue reading books through the summer. Currently we are almost done with The Wizard of Oz. We are loving it. It's much better than the movie (of course) and so much less scary (thankfully).

botched science experiment #?

We are behind in school because of our move, looking for housing, a broken arm, etc. However, Noah really wanted to do this particular science experiment - probably because it had to do with rainbows. The idea was to illustrate evaporation by mixing sugar with water and food coloring and waiting a couple days to see that the colored sugar crystals were all that was left after the water had gone "into the air," as Noah says. At least he understood the concept because the sugar crystals were a failure.

Turns out, there was a reason foil was supposed to be used. Only after the experiment when the sugar was becoming one with the plates, did I understand that. What I failed to comprehend from the directions (very unclear I might add) was that if I chose not to use a foil container, I was to cover a plate with foil. Duh. The sugar was rock hard.

The kids didn't let it stop them from enjoying the sugar though.