Raising Iowans

And They're Off....

2009-08-24T06:29:00.000-07:00

Today is the first day of school! Big Sis is now a second grader and Lil Sis is in kindergarten. They were up late last night because they were too excited to fall asleep when we sent them to bed. Things were a bit slow going this morning, so we told them they could eat breakfast at schoool. Lil Sis thought that sounded like a good idea. They were both smiling and excited when they got on the bus.

Who Knew Cactus Grow In Iowa??

2009-03-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

The four of us went geocaching this afternoon. The first ones we found were located at the Sand Prairie near Eddyville. We had heard a lot about this area before, but had never visited. Yes, it's a natural prairie area and yes, the ground is very sandy. Yes, there are cactus plants there! In Iowa??? What's the deal?

A few years ago, when a new 4 lane road was built by-passing the town of Eddyville, there was much conflict regarding where the road would be, because the original plan took the road near or through this prairie. The short story: preservation of the prairie won.

We decided March was a great time to discover these caches, as most of them will be more tricky when the prairie grass gets tall and thick. We all agreed to return here later in the spring and summer to investigate tadpoles, frogs, and other plant and animal wild life. This is truly an awesome place to visit.
We found four geocaches hidden in this area. The girls were very instrumental in retrieving all of them. Big sis found the first one on her own. Cool Daddy-O found the second one, but we needed Big Sis to retrieve it (cramped quarters). As a reward for being the first to find this cache, Big Sis pocketed a gold dollar coin. Lil Sis retrieved the third one and it's obvious by looking at the above photo how proud she was.
After we left the prairie, we went back into town where we climbed down a hill and managed to be the first to find this cache well hidden under a big tube. The cache container is actually shaped like a hand (very clever).

This week is Spring Break around here. Today marked our 93rd geocaching find. I think we can hit 100 this week if we go out another day or two. Look out world, here we come!

Face Book Eats My Time

2009-03-09T11:54:00.000-07:00

Um, Yeah. I'm o.k. I'm still here. I just spend too much time on Face Book playing with those silly applications like Farm Town and Mafia.

My one year Blogiversary has come and gone without my acknowledgement. I haven't even checked my stats lately. I'm sure the few readers I did/do have gave up on me weeks ago.

Lil Sis is playing with playdough and I'm listening to Days of Our Lives. I've totally lost track of what's going on there. I used to be a diehard fan and even if I didn't watch it, I read updates on line. It's just not the same anymore. What's going on with Bo and Hope anyway?

The girls and I are struggling with the time change. In addition to losing an hour, we have a brand new feather bed and it is so comfy, it's hard to hop out of bed in the morning. And for some reason, my alarm didn't go off this morning.

Looks like the bachelor (Jason) is on the Bonnie Hunt Show, so I think I'll watch and see what's new there.

I'm also going to try to update the background here. I do not need snowflakes cluttering the background. I need to find something springy.

more soon :)

January Thaw

2009-01-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

When we last left off, Lil Sis was recovering. Let's just say, she's back to her normal self. Enough said :)

One cold weekend recently, we were bored and in need of something fun to do. We were organizing our new markers, crayons, paints, and other Christmas gifts. I came up with the brilliant idea of recycling our old crayons. The girls busied themselves peeling the paper off for a couple hours. They grew weary. I peeled more crayons while watching a movie.

We eventually sorted them by color (a day or two later), melted them and poured them in the above mold.

Voila! The finished product...pretty cool!

In other news, the girls continue to take the camera on adventures in the house. Here's a self-portrait of Lil Sis.

Here's a self-portrait of Snickers....or is it? I think Lil Sis took this one too. Snickers seems to be doing better. We switched up a few things with the litter box and medication. He's not much interested in eating a lot, but he has become one docile, snuggling cat. Lil Sis carries him around, they fall asleep together at night, he sleeps next to me when I go to bed, and spends the day letting Lil Sis do anything she wants with him.

One night during the girls' bath, Cool Daddy-O played a little trick on the girls, HGTV style. We converted the toy room to a bed room and vice versa. They're still adjusting to the new set up, but one of the first days, Big Sis built this structure on her own. Usually, she gets really frustrated when playing with Lincoln Logs, but pulled this off effortlessly. Not sure who took this photo, but I think it's a pretty good shot.

Not sure if this is a self-portrait, but it probably is.

On Inauguration Day, I informed Lil Sis that we'd be watching "grown-up TV" all day. She found it incredibly boring, however, she loved the opportunity to paint and make a mess without getting in trouble. She had fun and clean-up was a breeze.

Unfortunately, our TV decided to die during the Inaugural balls. Fortunately, I was able to watch a lot of it on the internet (thanks to CNN and facebook).
Today we had some awesome weather. Technically, I guess we would call it a January thaw. The temps were close to 50. Lil Sis happily pulled on her snow pants, boots and a light weight winter jacket and ran out and dove in the piles of snow. She had a blast throwing snowballs...

at me! She has good aim!

She also enjoyed playing with a neighborhood kitten. This kitten lives outside. It was -17 a week ago. This kitten looks fat and healthy. Not sure how, but that kitten and its twin sibling must have good genes.

After swinging awhile, she said she was done playing outside and ran in. Tomorrow night it will be approaching 0 degrees again. It sure was nice to be out and soak in some rays today.

Before and After --- An Apple A Day

2009-01-07T11:53:00.000-08:00

Lil Sis has been down in the dumps. We initially thought she had a case of the 24 hour flu that lingered on. She had one bout of vomiting, no appetite, no fever, just lethargic. Last night, we finally figured out, that was no longer the issue. Instead we were battling a bad case of constipation. After several unsuccessful attempts to resolve the problem on our own, Lil Sis said she wanted to go to the doctor. We needed medical intervention on this one.

Our regular doctor was booked up today (which is probably a good thing) so we saw the on-call doc. We explained the situation and asked him to "clean her out". He accommodated us. Even though Lil Sis was asking him to "please stop doing that" and "when will he be done?" and "how many more times is he going to do that?" the whole time, she remained a trooper until the project was complete.

After all was said and done, she walked herself out of the office, with a smile on her face, carrying a handful of stickers. After that experience, I told her kindergarten shots are going to be a breeze.

We met friends at McDonald's for a celebratory lunch. When we returned home she said she was hungry again. I happily gave her an apple and she said it tasted delicious. When I tried to take her picture, she just kept making silly faces.

"Take a picture of my hand."

"Take a picture of the apple."

Nice and relaxed and watching one of her favorite shows. I was surprised she chose to lay on the floor. I think she just needed a change of scenery. She spent the past 3 days laying on the couch or hanging out and snuggling with me. I think she's still in recovery mode and she still looks tired, but things are looking up big time!

2008 -- New Year's Eve -- Celebratory Fun!

2008-12-31T19:19:00.000-08:00

Note: This is the second post of the day. Please enjoy the post below this one first as it summarizes Christmas. Thanks.

This morning, we hopped in the car and headed to Des Moines. We met an old friend of mine from the college days, along with her four kids and celebrated the Noon Year at the Science Center of Iowa. We arrived in plenty of time and had a blast playing.

We created bubbles.

This is my favorite picture of the day.

You'll see a video of the balloon drop at the end of this post. Big Sis sat on Cool Daddy-O's shoulders and caught a balloon. Lil Sis sat on my shoulders and caught a balloon. A friend of ours from our home town caught a picture of us, but I don't have it. I have a picture of our friend's son on his dad's shoulders taken from a distance (not posted).
Here are the girls predicting stormy weather for our forecast. There's a green wall where the kids can stand and view themselves on a TV screen. This seems to be a favorite spot.

After we returned home, Lil Sis thought it was dance party time.

She's so goofy sometimes.

More dancing.

Next came the jumping.

Jumping and dancing. It was a wild scene.

Mid-air for Lil Sis. Post jump for Big Sis.

Big Sis takes off.

Mid-air... someone's head is missing.

More jumping and general craziness.

Celebrating Christmas with Family

2008-12-31T18:18:00.000-08:00

On Christmas morning we awoke and found this on the floor. After reading the note from Santa, the girls looked out the window. Big Sis thought she saw something peculiar in the yard. Both girls immediately grabbed their snow boots and went out to investigate. They found sleigh bells that fell off Rudolph and then spied some "reindeer poop". Hmmmm... There was also a pink tooth fairy angel bear which was accompanied by a letter from the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy told Big Sis that she'll likely be needing to leave her first tooth behind in the next year. When she leaves the tooth in the bear's pocket, the tooth fairy will know it's time to visit. We're still a bit perplexed about how the tooth fairy and Santa communicate.Big Sis said she heard the bells jingling in the middle of the night and knew Santa was visiting. She was very happy about the bells that fell off the sleigh.

We then opened the presents from Santa and the presents under the tree. There were packages of toys, art supplies, and new clothes. Cool Daddy-O got a toy John Deere R tractor and I got a GPS for the car.
We then drove to grandma's house and consumed a delicious lunch and had another small birthday celebration for Big Sis. Next was a visit to the nursing home to visit both great-grandmas. Here they are with their 88 year old great grandma.
Here they are with their 91 year old great-grandma. She lives across the hall. The girls had fun skipping between their rooms.
Lil Sis seems to like her new jumper, scarf and hat. She seems oblivious to the 80 degree temperature in the nursing home.
Now, jumping ahead a couple days, the girls tried out their new baking set. They each mixed up and baked 2 cakes, one heart shaped and one teddy bear shaped.
Here is Lil Sis showing off her completed cake. They enjoyed eating their cakes too.
Now, jumping ahead a few more days (yeah, I could have made a separate post, but I'm on a roll and wanting to wrap things up) to another family Christmas celebration. Here are my 3 brothers cutting and serving the pie made by my sister-in-law (wife to the brother in the middle). It's rare that they are this close and even more rare that all three would be serving up the dessert, so I had to take a pic. They were so busy, they didn't even notice me taking their picture. All of us (except for my second oldest bro) are turning gray at alarming rates. (I cheat though.)
We have a grab bag on my side, but we did get a gift specifically for one of our nieces who happens to be a big Jimmy Wayne fan. We exercised our connections and obtained an autographed photo for her. She was quite surprised.

I'm going to end this post now. There's going to be another one immediately following. Next stop, our New Year's Eve celebratory festivities!

Christmas Eve and Preparations for Santa

2008-12-24T20:52:00.001-08:00

Tonight we celebrated Christmas with Cool Daddy-O's side of the family. We attended church, came to our house, feasted on lasagna, and opened presents. There's a long standing tradition from my side of the family that we're continuing with our children. Prior to opening presents, we sit around the tree and a selected person reads the Christmas story. Usually, this is read from the Bible, although other versions are acceptable if a child is reading the story. This was Big Sis's first time reading the story and she read "The Stable".
Not to be outdone, Lil Sis, noticing that all the attention was focused on her sister, disappeared into the toy room and returned in a princess dress. She promptly hijacked my camera and walked around taking pictures of everyone in the room. She took this picture of one of the illustrations in the book.
After everyone left, we started preparing for Santa's arrival. Big Sis hung the magic key on the doorknob to allow Santa to open our door.
The girls worked together in preparing treats for Santa and his reindeer. Lil Sis had the forethought to include a napkin for Santa to wipe his face.
Next, it was time for Big Sis to write the annual letter to Santa. She wrote this on her own (she did ask for a bit of help on spelling 2 words).
Santa will most likely write a reply when he stops later. Who knows which answer he'll be circling.

After their bath, they put on their new pajamas (another Christmas Eve tradition) and held their favorite presents they received tonight. While the girls were in the tub, I finally figured out how Barbie Mariposa's wings work. I couldn't understand the directions, so I went on-line to read the reviews on amazon. One of the reviews made it quite clear and I was very excited when I got it to work.

Sometimes Christmas toys are very frustrating until you figure out how they work. Sometimes they don't seem to work as advertised, which is also a valuable lesson. Pixos, for instance, will be under the tree. We hope this will be a good gift, but if not, we'll have another lesson in how marketing and advertising make things look a lot cooler on TV and when kids actually try to use them, it can be very frustrating.

Not to fear, there are also Legos under the tree. Legos never fail. They are awesome!!

Well, it's time to go get to work on the tasks at hand. We think this may be the last year we have where both children "believe", so we're going all out to provide evidence. There will be cookies left in the toy oven (tradition), a note on the dry erase board, half eaten cookies and carrots, and outside, there just may be some jingle bells that just happen to come loose and fall off a reindeer in the drive. That same reindeer or one of his cohorts, just may happen to need to relieve himself on our property and leave behind something smelly. Don't worry, no animals will actually be harmed in this process. (I have a friend who raises miniature llamas and he helped out with some of the evidence.)

Cookies - Mixing, Baking and Decorating ... oh, yeah ... and Eating!

2008-12-21T19:34:00.000-08:00

The weather in Iowa has been downright frightful. Ice storms, sleet, snow, blowing, cold temps, wind chill warnings, blizzard warnings. All this in the last 4 days.

In preparation for the storm and Christmas baking, we made daily trips to the store last week. On Thursday, we baked sugar cookies. I wanted to be able to decorate them on Friday if we lost power. Fortunately, we had sleet. Yes, it made the roads slick and canceled school on Friday, but it didn't coat the power lines.

Friday was a fun day for all. School and preschool were canceled. Cool Daddy-O stayed home and worked from home. I spent 3 hours wrapping presents! That was exhausting, but I'm mostly done.

On Saturday, I mixed up a triple batch of frosting. We pulled out all the food coloring and ended up with all colors of the rainbow, plus white.

Lil Sis used most every color of frosting and a wide variety of sprinkles on each of the cookies she decorated. Big Sis was much more exact and meticulous in her decorating style. It's fun to watch their decorating styles evolve each year. I think the first year Lil Sis was allowed to decorate (20 months) she ate more than she put on the cookies. The floor was a lot more colorful that year also. In fact, the girls were transported directly into a soapy bath tub after decorating. This year, a simple wiping of the face and hands was sufficient to clean them up.
Here's a view of the finished product. We decorated a lot of Christmas tree cookies. We also had stars, candy canes, snowmen, and mittens to decorate.
I had a bit of fun with the pampered chef frosting / cake decorator tool. Cool Daddy-O thought I used a bit too much frosting on some of them. Case in point, the star in the photo above and the green tree with frosting garland.
Big Sis declared this cookie her favorite (note the pattern of sprinkles). She chose that one to eat after supper that night.

Today, we made 3 more batches of cookies, including Sparkling Butter Toffee cookies, Peanut Butter Blossoms, and Ginger Snaps. The ginger snaps are chilling til tomorrow.

Cool Daddy-O requests acknowledgement for his help in rolling 1 inch balls to form the cookies, cleaning the floor, running the dishwasher frequently, and keeping up with laundry. To my knowledge he hasn't been sneaking many cookies.

The real reason for all the baking? Well, the kitchen is on the north side of the house. The floor has been cold. The best way to keep the kitchen warm is to have the oven on. We can't just have the oven on for no reason, so we bake lots and lots of cookies!

The girls and I get to sleep in tomorrow morning due to a 2 hour school delay. Unfortunately, this throws a kink into all the fun stuff on the girls' schedule for tomorrow. Lil Sis is supposed to have her preschool Christmas program tomorrow, but the rule is no preschool if there's a school delay. Big Sis is supposed to have a pajama day at school and watch "Horton Hears a Who" for movie day. Hopefully, she'll still get to watch her movie. Due to Friday's school cancellation, she missed her class party.

Our Greeting To You

2008-12-16T06:48:00.000-08:00

Make a Smilebox greeting

Action Packed Weekend

2008-12-07T20:56:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning, we headed to a local tree farm. We bundled up in layers, snow pants, boots, scarves, mittens and went in search of the perfect tree. The girls spotted this small tree and spent some time nurturing it. Who knows, this just may be our tree in a few years.
After walking, throwing snowballs, making snow angels, throwing children in the snow, we finally found the perfect tree. Big Sis and Lil Sis gave this tree two thumbs up. Prior to cutting down a tree, Cool Daddy-O insists all three of us "girls" shout "Cut it down" three times before he'll make the first cut.
Dragging the tree up the hill toward the car. This tree farm also shakes all the dead needles, etc out. After we paid for the tree, we loaded it up in our tree carrying vehicle.
Here it is. Every year, the tree farm owner laughs at us and tells us we need a bigger vehicle. Every year, we laugh back and say, "We can haul anything in a Honda". Cool Daddy-O says this is the 9th year we've hauled a Christmas tree for this farm in this car. We're prepared to do it again next year.
Well, the tree fits in the living room. It's only about 6 inches from our ceiling. It looked so much smaller on the tree farm standing next to the giants. We managed to get the star on top. The star is touching the ceiling.

All done. Big Sis did much of the decorating herself this year. She did pretty good.

On Sunday (today), we had a fun photo session after church. Here's just a sampling of the many silly faces and poses.

There was lots of giggling and saying of silly expressions.

More laughing...

Ahh...this one just might make the final cut for the Christmas card.

After lunch, we headed to Cool Daddy-O's employer's Children's Christmas party. There were giant inflatable slides and jumping areas. Lil Sis spent much time sliding and jumping.
She insisted I make movies of her jumping and sliding. Big Sis spent most of her time throwing bean bags and earning tickets. She then exchanged her tickets for little trinkets.

The only bad part of the day was when the girls were working on crafts in the craft room. Big Sis had an unfortunate run-in with a drop of glue from a hot glue gun. After much sobbing, applying of antibiotic ointment and a band-aid, she returned to earning tickets and having a blast.
I think this may be the first year Big Sis sat on Santa's lap. Lil Sis refused to sit on his lap, but was willing to stand next to him for a photo. Notice the look on her face. She wasn't happy to be there, but she was brave! What a girl!

Second Post of the Day

2008-12-04T12:35:00.000-08:00

This post is just an experiment. I had problems in my previous post and I'm seeing if I can do a normal one without problems. I think part of my problem is the editing within blogger is different on my Mac than it was with the PC. Like, I can't move text or pictures within my posts by dragging them. I can't seem to cut and paste from my word processing program either. I can't figure out how to import pictures and have them not be at the beginning of the post and in the reverse order I want them in.

And then, there was the weird underlining in that last post. How did that happen anyway?

White

2008-12-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

Today I'm writing about the color white. White is the color of the snow that fell yesterday and caused school to be dismissed 2 hours early. The girls played outside for about an hour.

I bundled them up, sent them out, took their picture and then stayed inside and drank hot cocoa while watching them out the window.

When they came in from outside, I decided it was a good time for them to take a bath. I took a picture of them laying down with white bubbles surrounding their heads. They love doing this.

I have no idea why the text is blue and underlined. I am having some strange problems. Leave a comment if you have a solution. I don't even see an option to underline text here, so how do I turn it off??????? I'm quite frustrated I never changed the color of the font either??? What's up with that?????

Now I changed the color, but it's still underlining.

White is also the color of a wiggling animal we saw along the road on our way home today. We turned around to see what it was because all I saw was something white wiggling around in my rearview mirror and I thought it was odd. As we were returning to the site of the wiggly white animal, we saw a truck stop and a guy got out, picked up a squealing baby pig and put it in the back of the truck. Hopefully they are able to return the pig to his/her owner. I guess this is the kind of thing that only happens in Iowa. :)

Well, I'm ending this silly post. It's supposed to be about the color white and in my randomness, I've made it quite colorful!!

Until next time.....signing off.

Celebrating the Season!

2008-11-29T08:33:00.001-08:00

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

There's something about a clean refrigerator...

2008-11-25T20:45:00.000-08:00

How's that for a catchy title?

This morning I cleaned out the fridge. I removed everything (well, I didn't do the stuff in the door...I just realized I forgot that part). Dismantled the shelves, washed them in hot soapy water, dried them, threw out the expired stuff and replaced the good stuff. It looks so nice.

Lil Sis and I went out for lunch to celebrate our hard work. She didn't really help, but she likes to celebrate. We also got a few things at Wal-Mart and then went to our favorite grocery store to buy stuff to refill the fridge. In the spirit of celebrating the upcoming holiday, I caved to Lil Sis's request to use the cart that looks like a truck. She rode for awhile, then we needed her compartment to hold all the stuff and she was eventually ejected from her driver's seat. She was very helpful in loading up the cart and counting gallons of milk (3) and cream cheese blocks (5). I may have overdone the cream cheese, but I firmly believe that you can never have too much cream cheese in the house this time of year. There's hash brown casseroles to make and dips, and cream cheese frosting for pumpkin bars, etc.

We bought a spiral ham (the smallest one I saw) and ordered a fresh turkey (12 lb) that we'll pick up on Saturday for our Sunday dinner. We decided to make two meats this year. Not sure why, we just wanted to have options. I think we'll also have some leftovers. We're cool with some leftovers.

Wow, when I began this post, I thought, what am I going to post about? And now, I'm wondering, how can I babble about the refrigerator for this long?

Yesterday, when Big Sis unpacked her backpack after school, she showed me a turkey she had colored that was attached to a paper. On the paper, she wrote "I am thankful for family and I am thankful for God and Jesus and friends and food and waddr". I asked her what the last word was... it's 'water'. I think that's a pretty awesome list. Note to readers: she goes to public school. So I think this is extra cool!

I'm Here!

2008-11-22T18:57:00.001-08:00

I'm back. I didn't really go anywhere, I just haven't posted. The above photo was taken on our way to Omaha recently, when we stopped at a rest area to geocache. We found the cache and we were supposed to take our picture with the camera enclosed in the cache, however, the camera was full, so we used our own camera.

To celebrate the end of the first trimester, Cool Daddy-O took a day off work and we went to the zoo in Omaha. It was a fun day. After the zoo, we found our first out-of-state geocache. It was pretty easy. We tried to find a second one, but ran out of daylight. It was in a wooded area, it was getting dark and our gps was acting weird.

We have spent the past few weekends doing some deep cleaning, preparing to host a family Thanksgiving dinner. Today's task was washing windows, doors, and curtains. To celebrate the completion of this task, I spent a couple hours at Target.

Well, that sums up my excitement. We're watching the Iowa Hawkeyes trounce Minnesota. It's pretty exciting!

A Snickers update: we've been visiting the vet regularly. For now we've changed his food to prescription diet food and he's recently started taking Amitriptyline for treatment of "litter box incontinence". Things are improving, but not yet perfect. We'll continue this treatment and hope for continued progress.

My new promise to myself. All future cats will be female. No future cats will be persian. I've owned 3 and haven't had such good luck overall. Their personalities have been AWESOME, however, the health problems, not so much fun.

Current gas price: $1.61. How low will it go?

One more thing: I'm going to make an effort to post a bit more often.

Hope & Change

2008-11-06T15:31:00.000-08:00

Two words we've heard a lot lately! The time has come.

I live in a divided political household and have many friends with differing political views than myself. I try not to jump on a soap box very often. Allow me to jump up and down a bit :)

I talked to the girls a bit the day before the election. We hadn't talked with them much about politics, but at the age of 6 and 4, they were able to name both candidates. When asked who they wanted for the next president, their response was "Barack Obama". They don't know much about platforms, etc. I think they just like the name. Who can blame them :)

Since they agreed with me, I decided to take them along to the polling site, so they could be part of this historical election night. Big Sis was watchful as I colored in the ovals and made sure I colored them all in well. She said I scribbled a bit ;)

Some people seem down right discouraged about the outcome. This, I do not quite understand. I can recall voting for only 2 candidates that ever became president. I've tried to keep a positive attitude through it all.

I'm very happy and hopeful for the future of our country. I think we need someone right now who can reunite the people of our country. I think Barack Obama has the charisma to unify and excite us to rebuild the economy, responsibly end the war, and bring jobs back to the good old USA! I want to be able to go to my local discount store and buy products manufactured in the US again!

O.K. I'm jumping off the soap box now. Thanks for reading my ramblings...

Now, I must go have a premature Thanksgiving dinner at church. There's a turkey calling my name :)

I have a lot to be THANKFUL for!

Words Are Fun

2008-10-28T13:18:00.001-07:00

Lil Sis likes to hijack the camera occasionally. Today's subject was Snickers the cat. She took a few photos of the TV too. This is the best one. Since she can't read, I can tell you that she is getting her own camera for Christmas (thanks Grandma and Grandpa). I think she'll be happy!
I normally don't take pictures of my computer screen, but this one is priceless. It may be hard to tell, but I won an on-line scrabble-like game against 2 of my good friends from college. One lives in southern Indiana and the other lives in the Pacific northwest. It took us about 2 or 3 days to complete this game via e-mail. This marks the second time in history (if my memory is correct) that I won a game against D. The other time was on election day in 1992. Kind of ironic that we're only a week away from another election day. I'll keep any other political comments to myself :)

I've been enjoying playing some other word games on Facebook also. My favorites are Word Twist, Twirl and Scramble. I think it's helping my vocabulary a tad bit. At the very least, my scores are improving a bit.

I'm being extremely lazy today. I keep thinking about cleaning, but it's not happening :)

Fun Fall Foliage

2008-10-21T15:23:00.001-07:00

My cousins gave the girls pioneer dresses to wear for dress-up. I read them Little House In The Big Woods and they've been watching Little House On The Prairie episodes on DVD (from the library. They've been spending a lot of time pretending to be Laura and Mary.

Here's Big Sis ... doin' what she does best! She's hanging on with one arm and waving to me with the other.

Burning Bush...it has recovered nicely from the beating it took last winter from the rabbits.

Sedum... usually there are bees buzzing around.

See all these great (green) tomatoes? The past few years the tomatoes really begin production in October... what's up with that?

The only thing other than the tomatoes that had success in our garden. Marigolds and zinnias. Will definitely plant more next year!

There was no school today. We went geocaching with our friends. They had never been geocaching before. There were four girls all together, ages 6 1/2, 6, 4 1/2, and 3. We had a great time. Lil Sis is quite upset at the moment, as she is not in this picture.

Dilemma ... what to do about the cat?

2008-10-17T12:56:00.000-07:00

We took Snickers to the vet yesterday and today. Trying to get a handle on why he doesn't use the litter box 100% of the time. We have to wait on the lab culture, but for now, he's being treated for a UTI. If he resumes appropriate litter box behavior, then we keep him and Lil Sis will be happy.

If he keeps going in the hall... well, we're probably going to have to surrender him back to his breeder. Which will make Lil Sis very, very, very sad. What's a responsible parent to do?

We can't have a cat that pees on the floor and I don't want to break Lil Sis' heart! Hopefully, the right decision will become obvious in the next week or two.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Walmartz...

2008-10-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

I took the girls to their Wednesday evening church activity and decided I'd do some shopping. I went to the dollar store and immediately found a pair of sunglasses I liked for under $4. I looked around the store, but didn't find anything else. When I went to get my wallet out of my purse, I remembered I had not returned it to my purse after paying bills this afternoon.

Initially, I panicked and then realized I probably had a few dollars loose in my purse. No sweat, I had enough.

I drove home to get my wallet. As I was driving back toward town, I pulled out my old sun glasses and tried to put them on. I heard a snapping sound and looked down. They had broken. I laughed out loud. Pretty amazing that I bought new glasses right before my old (actually they're rather new) glasses broke.

Good, eh?

Picture Post!

2008-10-10T18:26:00.001-07:00

Lil Sis took this photo of Big Sis and me at soccer last night. She wants a camera for Christmas.
When Lil Sis wasn't playing soccer last night, I was taking her picture.
Today we spent several hours at Autumn Acres. The girls had a blast running on the large round hay bales and jumping between them. We also attempted to solved a corn maze, but after 40 minutes, we gave up and escaped. It's definitely a job for adults and the girls were out of gas.
We found a nice photo op in one of the barns on the Farm Crawl we attended last Sunday. There was a sign near by warning people not to crawl on the hay bales.
We picked up this hitch-hiker somewhere along the way. Not sure how long he clung on .
This guy sires mules. Does anyone know what he is?
Big Sis balancing on a soccer ball. One of her many tricks that she will be able to perform when she runs away to join the circus in a few years.
Lil Sis can do circus tricks too. She'll probably follow Big Sis to the circus. Hula hooping is another skill they're perfecting.

To follow up on a random thought from yesterday. The Blueberry Cinnamon Crumble coffee was delicious this morning!! I'll make more tomorrow... I just love the smell!!!

I'm here!

2008-10-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm still here. You see, I've been spending my spare time on face book. It's soooo addictive. I really need to blog.

We've been having fun and enjoying fall. I'll post some pictures soon... I promise! Meanwhile, I just completed the task of switching seasons in the girls' closet. It is fall / winter in there now. The Christmas shirts that I bought on clearance at Target last year are all ready to go! They've already worn their new Halloween shirts! We are with it in the clothing department. Now I just have to get with it in the blog department.

Oh, and I finally used the iTunes card I got for Christmas. I downloaded an album by a guy I've never heard of and I love it. The artist is Joshua Radin. I also downloaded a few tunes by Patty Griffin and Dave Barnes. I'm listening to them now. It's nice to have some new music to listen to. It's also nice to save a Christmas present this long and enjoy it in October.

I just remembered this time of day, this time of year, the sun blinds me when I'm sitting at the computer. Fortunately, the leaves are still on the tree and are just beginning to turn shades of orange. Yeah, I'll post some pictures of the tree too... later, after I check face book :)

Help me!!!!

One more random thought. I bought some coffee beans (Blueberry Cinnamon Crumble) at my favorite coffee house today with a 20% off coupon. I think I just got a whiff of it and had to write about it. Can't wait until I can make a pot!

A Fun Weekend!

2008-09-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

We had a good weekend with lots of fun! I already posted about Friday, so I'll begin with Saturday.

We went to a fall festival celebration at a Pioneer Farm. We saw how to build a fire using flint, the girls made necklaces, ropes, and yarn dolls. We also learned about candle dipping, soap making, honey / beekeeping, popcorn popping over a fire, living in a log cabin, etc.

Lil Sis receives the rope she just made.

Big Sis churns butter.

The girls sit in at a desk in the one room school.

The girls loved playing in this corn pile. They dumped corn out of their pockets at home.

Here's a bit of trivia. This is the only mule cemetery in Iowa.

Cool Daddy-O drove the tractor in the parade. While we waited on the parade to start, the girls had fun rolling down the hill. I'm sure pioneer kids rolled down hills for entertainment also.

Saturday night, we went to a marching band competition. Big Sis passed the time coloring and playing with her Leapster. Lil Sis actually watched the show and decided she will be a member of the color guard when she's in high school. She says she'll play an instrument too. For now, her decision is to play trumpet. I'm sure she'll change her mind a few times before she decides on one.

On Sunday, we went to church. I accompanied Lil Sis to her Sunday school class. Today was the first day of class and she was a bit nervous about staying alone. I'm glad I stayed. She was fine, and I was able to help out a bit with the other kids while I was there.

After a quick lunch, the girls went out for some fun with Cool Daddy-O. They rode bikes, practiced soccer and played at the elementary playground. While they were out and about, I printed out some information for geocaching and ran some errands.

We all met up again at the elementary and finally found the cache we'd unsuccessfully looked for several times. We remained in town and found 3 more caches. I'm proud to say I spied all four of them first. Usually, Big Sis is able to spy some first, but the girls were a bit distracted today.

The weather was very nice and warm this weekend and it was quite pleasant to be outside. Lil Sis is prepared for the first day of fall tomorrow. Happy last day of summer everyone.

We visited our local drug store today and they were stocking their Christmas merchandise today. I don't think walmart even has their Christmas stuff out yet.

Geocaching In A New Town

2008-09-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

Big Sis had the afternoon off from school. Since the weather was so nice today, we went geocaching. I remembered the GPS was in Cool Daddy-O's car. We went out of town to get the GPS and stayed there to geocache. Above, is the first one hidden on the railing of a bridge by the river. We left a key chain and Big Sis grabbed a quarter.
The second cache we found was the most fun. It was near an area where workers were moving gravel, sand, etc around after the flooding was resolved in this area. They looked at us and I could tell they wondered what we were up to. We were parked in an area off the beaten path. We told them what we were up to and they jumped at the chance to walk with us for the last 100 feet of our search. One of the guys actually spotted the cache and then stepped away to let us find it on our own. I think they welcomed the diversion on a Friday afternoon.

While we were preparing to hike out of the hiding spot and back to the car, Cool Daddy-O called and was ready to join us. He helped us with the last two.

At the third sight, we spotted grasshoppers, deer tracks, butterflies, and some pretty wildflowers. We also found the cache, eventually.
The fourth and final cache of the day was near a gas station, in a small wooded area. The above picture shows how well it was hidden. The clue was "natural camo". It was well hidden, indeed. At this spot, Big Sis carried a monarch butterfly around for awhile. Apparently, monarchs are migrating right now and are quite plentiful in Iowa this week. Sounds like they like clover. Big Sis also informed us that predators stay away from Monarchs because they're poisonous. Monarchs eat milk weed, which is what makes them poisonous. Not sure if this is all making sense, as Lil Sis is having a major meltdown while Cool Daddy-O is getting her ready for bed. Sorry.
To end the perfect day, Big Sis had a soccer game. Here's an action shot of her preparing to kick as she was warming up before the game. Her team didn't win tonight, but that's o.k. because the weather was warm, it wasn't raining, and she had fun. What more could you want.
During the game, Lil Sis commandeered the camera. She keeps asking if she can have a camera of her own. I think she got a pretty good picture of Cool Daddy-O tonight. We'll see if Santa has any cameras in his pack of goodies this year.

Too Good To Be True?

2008-09-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

I have blisters on my hands from using a broom this morning. I was helping a friend by cleaning the floor of a new building. It was a good workout.

Lil Sis has been her strong-willed self lately. Otherwise, not much new here to report with the girls.

Yesterday, Lil Sis and I went to Iowa City for an oil change. We returned some items that we no longer needed / wrong size / etc. and went to Target and started stocking up on little Halloween favors.

One thing we bought today (which seems entirely too good to be true) was a Halloween treat pack at McDonalds. For a mere $1 (cash only) was able to purchase a little booklet of 12 coupons, each good for one of the items on the dollar menu. Um, let's see, that's $12 worth of product for $1. I'm still wondering where the catch is. The small print says only one coupon per person per visit and they must be used between November 1 and December 31. I thought it was a great deal. I bought 3! I might buy more later.

I agreed to be the room parent for Big Sis's 1st grade class. Part of the responsibility is helping to organize the fall (Halloween) party, Valentine's Day party, and snacks during the Iowa Basic Skills testing week. Between my trip to Target yesterday and the purchase of the dollar menu coupons, I have a great start on some awesome goody bags for Halloween.

Soccer Fun

2008-09-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here's Big Sis taking a break during her game last Friday. It's fun to watch her play this year. She's learning lots of new skills and all the girls on her team are about the same skill level and are working well together.
Here's Lil Sis kicking off during her scrimmage on Tuesday. She's still extremely shy during the first few minutes of soccer, but then warms up quickly and runs around chasing the ball. It's her first official season. It's fun to watch little 4 year olds running around chasing the ball. She just needs to gain some self confidence and she'll do good. She's smiling the whole time she's out there (except for the beginning when I have to hold her hand the whole time).

The weather is a bit dreary today. I'm hoping it improves and we have another fun night at soccer practice.

On another note, we recently purchased an iMac. I've been busy transferring data from the PC to the iMac. It's been pretty easy, just time consuming getting used to everything. Overall, I would recommend the Mac. It seems very intuitive. There are a lot of things I need to figure out, but I'm up for the challenge!!

First Day of the Last Year of Preschool

2008-09-03T16:30:00.000-07:00

She wasn't looking forward to going to preschool this morning. She tried pulling the old, "I'm going to miss you" routine. It didn't last long.
Here she is waiting for the elevator. She loves riding it and was instantly snapped out of her funky mood.
Here she is happily standing in the elevator. We walked toward the classroom, deposited her back pack in her cubby and then did our hugs and kisses routine (kisses, hugs, cheeks, ears, eyeballs, forehead, and chins, with the grand finale big hug). We walked into the classroom, where she instantly reverted back into the funky mood (see photo #1). We did the hugs and kisses routine again, wrote her name on a coloring sheet, and I told the assistant teacher I needed some help. She engaged lil sis in conversation and I left. She didn't cry though. I didn't either.

When I went to pick her up, she was so excited (much like she is in photo #2) to show me the little book she drew in class. She drew a picture of her house, family (I think she forgot she had parents, because we weren't in the picture) and herself.
The other day, Big Sis tied Lil Sis up. They were playing some version of Wacky Races and Lil Sis filled the role of Penelope Pit Stop. They switched roles later, but had the most fun this way.
Over the weekend, at one point, the girls were being kinda wild and crazy, so we sent them to the toy room. They returned to the kitchen a few minutes later looking like this. It's not uncommon for them to dress up silly when they're in a bit of trouble. I think they've found it lessens the tension in the house when they do this.

Soccer Season Starts as a Cool Front Approaches

2008-09-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Lil Sis' first ever soccer practice. Not surprisingly, yet ever so frustratingly, she was extremely shy and refused to participate at the beginning. I struggled between holding her hand and walking her through the steps, to standing with my hands on my hips in frustration.

I finally had a little heart to heart. She said she wanted to play soccer, but wanted everyone else to leave. I reminded her that soccer is a team sport and they need to play together. She then asked if she could still keep her shirt if she didn't play. I told her no, she'd have to give it back. Her shirt is her favorite color (yellow) and I knew that would have an impact on her.

Soon after that, she started participating, first taking turns kicking the ball across the field with me....then before we all knew it, she had this huge grin on her face after she kicked the ball! From then on, I was able to stand on the side lines and cheer her on. She returned often for high fives, low fives, etc.

Near the end, her team had a scrimmage with another team. She did her thing and was soooooo cute with her shin guards, soccer socks, and soccer cleats on. Once after a big play where another kid kicked the ball when she was trying to, she came walking toward me with a weird look. I thought her feelings or foot had been hurt, but when I asked her what was wrong, she said she was thirsty. She got a little drink and ran back on the field. Next time we'll encourage her to wait til there's a break in the action, but at that point, I was so happy that she was participating, I didn't care.

After practice was over, Lil Sis insisted on staying at the soccer fields and kicking the ball some more. Fortunately, we had our 2 soccer balls in the trunk, so the girls went to one of the full sized fields and practiced scoring goals against Cool Daddy-O!

On another note (pun intended), the song that Uncle John plays drums on is #1 on the Country charts this week! WhooHoo!!! Big Sis wants to know if that means he's famous now. Kudos to Jimmy Wayne and "Do You Believe Me Now"!!! If you're looking for some good music, go buy the CD or download it! Yeah, I'm biased, but I think it's pretty awesome, and I'm not really even a big country music fan! I just like all good music!

My Geocaching Nightmare

2008-08-28T10:28:00.000-07:00

I had a bad dream last night. In my dream, we were at a geocaching event...we were competing with other teams in northeastern Iowa to find all the hidden treasures first. In the dream, Cool Daddy-O and I were in the house of a little old lady who was no longer living in her house, but had left all her stuff there. We found the cache in a cedar chest in her bedroom and when we went to leave the house to look for our next geocache, we saw a woman vandalizing our car. She made a comment (as she was keying the car) "your car looks too nice to be a used car" and continued to scratch it. She then was able to get in somehow, and put it in reverse and crash it into a tree, completely smashing in the trunk, where all our geocaching treasure information was. We were then out of contention. I then realized that she was a crazy geocaching woman and didn't want us to win. I tried dialing 911 on my cell phone, but kept dialing the numbers in the wrong order and never did get any help. That's when I woke up.

It was the most detailed dream I've had in a while and thought I'd post about it before I forgot it. The dream was very realistic!

In my real life, not much exciting is going on. I did manage to get the house clean enough to host a group of moms for a play date / meeting about our moms group. This year, I'll be the "table mom coordinator" and I had a meeting with the table moms today to talk about the upcoming year.

I guess it's not such a bad thing that the toy room was a mess when they arrived, because now, it actually looks better than when they got here, if that's possible. We have some more organizing to do, but it's getting better.

When everyone was here, I had one of those moments when I looked up at the ceiling and was appalled by all the cobwebs attached to the ceiling. It was rather gross and disgusting, actually. I guess I should attack the ceiling with the Dyson sometime. I hope everyone else was content to keep their eyes away from the ceiling. At least the floor was clean! :)

My Ill Fated Attempt To Clean the House

2008-08-21T13:13:00.001-07:00

Lil Sis: I'm having so much fun today!

Me: Why?

Lil Sis: Because I'm making a big mess! (loud laughter to follow)

I think I've lost control! I'm attempting to organize and throw things away today....we also call it taking control of horizontal surfaces. As I'm making progress in the living room and kitchen (slowly), the living room floor is being covered with game pieces...Memory, Go Fish, Candy Land, and a Little People fishing game. There would be another fishing game in this mix, if the pieces weren't soaking in soapy water.

Yeah, we had a wasp in the house and sprayed poison to kill it. Well, in our haste to kill the wasp, we didn't remove everything that was exposed to the poisonous fall out before annihilating it. The good news, we successfully killed the wasp. The bad news, I had to wipe down a lot of stuff that the spray dripped on. You see, the wasp was in the living room light fixture and ... well, I had a little lesson in gravity.

Fortunately, Snickers (who was also chasing the wasp) seems to be o.k. In fact, it was Snickers who alerted us to the wasp flying about the light fixture.

Hopefully we don't suffer any ill effects from spraying poison in here. I did turn off the A/C for the first time in many weeks and all the windows are open. It's a cool day and kinda nice to have the fresh air in the house.

Just last night, we moved all the games to a spot where the girls can have easy access to them, in hopes they'll play with them more often. I guess my wish has come true!

Oh, and she's still wearing her jammies! I think she's really getting into her element of being the only kid at home during the day.

It's the First Day of First Grade

2008-08-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

The title sounds like the Veggietales song in the Jonah movie...I did that on purpose ;)

She's off to first grade. The first picture was the first day of kindergarten. This morning was much less stressful than last year's first day of school. She was a bit nervous prior to meeting her teacher and seeing her classroom the other night, but then she decided that first grade would be o.k. after all. The major change this year is a different bus number and a different driver. As long as she gets on the right bus, all will be well.

Below, you'll see just how relaxed and goofy she was feeling this morning as she waited for the bus. I asked her what she was doing...she said she's celebrating going to first grade.

So far, this morning has been better for Lil Sis too. She stubbed her toe when she got out of bed, but after she recovered from that, she's fine. In fact, we're going to watch "Jonah" (Veggietales) so we can hear the song I referred to earlier. A year ago, she was sad for a few days.

Highlights of the 2008 Iowa State Fair

2008-08-18T21:36:00.000-07:00

Kids 5 and under get in free at the fair. We just had to take a picture of Big Sis with her first admission ticket...purchased in advance at Fareway, of course.

The Butter Cow....only at the Iowa State Fair. We had a butter Shawn Johnson this year, too.
The Little Hands on the Farm exhibit lets children explore the life cycle of crops grown in Iowa. They plant and harvest a garden vegetable, pick an apple, grow corn and soybeans, feed the corn to a cow, milk a cow, process their soybeans into biodiesel fuel, drive a pedal tractor, shear a sheep, gather an egg, sell all their produce and earn a dollar to spend at the store on the way out for a little snack. I think the girls went through this exhibit more times than we could count.

A new exhibit this year featured butterflies. For a $3 admission fee, I was able to teach Big Sis a lesson in butterfly reproduction. Where else can you photograph 2 butterflies mating in your daughter's hair?

The girls went down the slide with their cousins holding them.

Lil Sis and I stood around a long time waiting on this little guy to hatch. I took a 5 minute video before this one and then gave up and started over. You can hear how excited the onlookers were when he finally broke free. All week long, new life entered the world at the Animal Learning Center.

Here's a cute little lamb. The vet said the sheep haven't given birth yet during the day. They seem more comfortable delivering during the middle of the night. Here's a cute piglet. Big Sis was quite intrigued by a sow that had just given birth and watched the vet help deliver the placenta for quite awhile. You can be thankful I didn't take a video of that (kinda gross).
I missed the delivery of triplets by a few minutes.
Here's the big bull. There were 2 children brushing him while we were there. He seemed quite happy with the brushing. Based on the t-shirts they were wearing, I surmised they were relatives of the owner of the bull. They don't let just anyone in the pen with the "Super Bull".

Here's the Big Boar....the biggest big boar ever. He was so big, I couldn't get a picture of his whole body.
The last day of the fair is known as extreme Sunday. Cool Daddy-O and I had tickets for the grandstand show, featuring Garrison Keillor and Suzy Boggus. The performance lasted 3 hours and was very entertaining. Instead of taking a break during intermission, Garrison sang a song about urination and invited people to leave as they needed to. He asked the rest of the audience to stand and sing. We joined him in "America the Beautiful", "Home on the Range", "Old Man River", "The Iowa Waltz". He closed the show with another song with the audience. Immediately following the show, there was a cool fireworks display. I had fun experimenting with the fireworks setting on the camera.

Well, I think I'm caught up now. It's hard to capture all of the fair in one post. We went two days with the girls and two days without them. We saw everything we wanted to see, but didn't see everything. It was a record year for attendance and we can't wait for next year!!

Daddies and Daughters Week

2008-08-18T20:28:00.000-07:00

On our first full day in Colorado, we drove from Loveland to Fort Collins. We went west on Hwy 14 and drove near the site where dad lived at a camp for about 2 1/2 years (1944 - 1946). Dad was amazed by everything that has changed over the years. Towns turning into cities, old bumpy roads becoming smooth 4-lane roads built for speed. We even had to slow down for the cattle that roam freely in the area.

We continued west through the Poudre Canyon and drove to the spot that inspired us to name Lil Sis.

We then re-entered civilization and drove on I-25 from Loveland to Colorado Springs. I was unable to set my cruise control during that drive. Even though the speed limit was 75 mph, the right lane moved at about 70 mph and the left lane moved at about 73 mph the whole way.

We drove south of Divide to visit my cousin at Rocky Mt. Mennonite Camp, located at 9000+ feet elevation. M gave dad a tour of her cabin, the kitchen, and dining hall. My cousin took this pic of my dad and me. We also had a picture taken with my cousin in it...that's not unusual. What's unusual, is that the photo was taken by a young Amish woman. (It is against the Amish belief to have their picture taken, not sure if they're supposed to take pictures with a camera, or not.) There were two sisters from an Amish community here in Iowa, that were volunteering at the camp for a week. It was fun to talk with them.

After a delicious supper, we were on our way back north toward Longmont. I was tired of the interstate, so we headed north on Hwy 67 toward Denver. It was a beautiful drive. Traffic was very light and we were able to enjoy the twisting curves and beautiful views. We arrived in Denver around sunset and drove straight north through the western suburbs. It would have been faster to jump on interstate, but it was more relaxing the way we went.

Had I been traveling alone, I would have stopped at Whole Foods in Lakewood. I'd never seen one, much less been inside. Maybe on my next trip. It looked really cool from the outside, though.

We eventually wound up exactly where we needed to be, without even consulting a map (I got lucky and found the right road). The mattress was exactly as I'd remembered it from our vacation last year. I slept very well and woke up early, ready to drive again.

On Thursday, we drove through Boulder, Nederland, Central City, hopped in I-70 for a bit, and then drove north through Granby, Rocky Mountain National Park, and ended up visiting the shops in Estes Park.

By this time, I was missing Cool Daddy-O and the girls!!!! Since we had completed all of our goals in Colorado, we decided to drive about 5 hours and spend the night in Nebraska. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and ended well, however, driving through severe thunderstorms in northeastern Colorado is not something I want to do again soon.

By the time we hit the Nebraska border, I'd never been so happy to be in Nebraska. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful evening.

The drive home the following day was uneventful and I was able to spend the evening eating out at our favorite pizza place and our favorite ice cream shop.

Cool Daddy-O kept the girls busy while I was gone. In fact, he told them they were having a contest to see who could have the most fun. Considering I was homesick most of the time, I think the girls had the most fun.

Colorado is my favorite place to visit and vacation, however, without my little family there to experience it with me, it just wasn't the same.

All that aside, I'm very thankful I was able to spend time with dad, helping him live out a dream to return to Colorado again and enjoy looking out the window as we drove through farming and ranching country, large lots with feeder cattle, enormous dairy farms, newly constructed wind turbines, lodge pole pines and Colorado blue spruce, snow capped mountains, and everything in between.

Driving Across Nebraska

2008-08-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

We made it in 12 hours! Didn't need a radio. Just listened to an old farmer comment on all the trees, the crops, lay of the land, condition of the road, and how even though we kept stopping at rest areas, we kept passing the same semis over and over again. It was kinda fun! There was so little traffic today, that the trucks we passed repeatedly became our "highway buddies".

Tomorrow we're off to reminisce some more near Fort Collins and then will drive to Divide to visit my cousin. I'm sure I'll hear how things have changed since 1948 and what life was like back then.

Now, I'm Going On Vacation!!

2008-08-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

The past week has been excitingly chaotic. On Wednesday, we began our little family vacation by going to the zoo in Omaha where we met up with friends. We then spent two nights in our capital city and attended the Iowa State Fair. We had a blast! Most of our time was spent experiencing "Little Hands On The Farm", the "Butterfly Pavilion", and the "Animal Learning Center". We highly recommend all three activities for children of all ages. Lil Sis and I watched a chick hatch. We have the video, actually. I'll post pictures at a later time.

We had so much fun at the fair, that Cool Daddy-O and I returned on Saturday while the girls had a slumber party with g-pa and g-ma.

On Sunday, we attended a family reunion. Following the reunion, we were talking about our little vacation and my sister-in-law asked how we liked staying in Iowa. I told her it was fun, but we would have rather gone to Colorado. My dad immediately said he'd love to go if someone would take him. He's 82 and recently widowed and loves Colorado. He even offered to buy gas, lodging and food for anyone who would take him. After I realized he was serious, Cool Daddy-O and I had a little conference outside. He had an awesome idea and we're going with it.

Dad and I are leaving in the morning and we're driving straight to the front range. We'll spend time sightseeing in Colorado for 2 days and then we'll drive home on Friday. Cool Daddy-O is going to spend the rest of the week at home, half working, half vacationing and having fun with the girls.

Lil Sis and I cried when I told her the plan. Big Sis begrudgingly said it would be o.k. for me to take grandpa on his vacation. Cool Daddy-O has promised lots of fun going to the park, playing with play dough, painting, a slumber party in the living room, and swimming in the little pool if it gets hot. They're pretty excited about the whole deal now.

We're calling it Daddies and Daughters week. I hope to be able to post daily from the road about our adventures. I won't be able to include pictures, but I'll describe things best I can.

For the first time in a long time, the backseat of the Accord is "empty" and void of any signs of children. We moved the Britax seats to the Civic, so the girls can ride in style this week.

Gotta get packing...more later from the road!

No, I'm Not On Vacation...Yet!

2008-08-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

Edited on 8/11/08 to add the photos previously described.

Oh, Man! I've read about people having problems uploading photos in blogger before, but, until now, I've never had a problem. I have cool pictures, too! Bummer!

My first non-existent picture is of Lil Sis sitting on Cool Daddy-O's lap with her eyes closed at a restaurant in Amana. We met my dad, brothers and their families there for breakfast on Saturday. Since only 3 of my immediate family members had their eyes open, we didn't have to pay for Lil Sis. We had a very nice waitress who understands shy 4 year olds. There were just too many people there, and she was overwhelmed with all the attention, I guess.

We did enjoy some yummy family style eats: fruit, toast, pancakes, sausage, bacon, fried eggs, fried potatoes, coffee, juice, milk. Too bad Lil Sis missed it. Poor Cool Daddy-O was stuck holding her the whole time. Big sis complained about the flat pancake (she's used to the fluffy pancakes I make). The girls had been up very late the night before and we had to wake them early to get to Amana in time for breakfast.

This weekend was the annual tax-free holiday in Iowa. All clothing and some select other stuff (like diapers) isn't taxed on the first Friday and Saturday in August. On Friday, I took the car to the dealer for some routine maintenance. I rode the Honda mobile to the mall and hung out for a few hours. I bought some good stuff at Target and I've been so busy since then, I haven't even unpacked all the bags.

The most fun things I bought were new cell phones for Cool Daddy-O and I. We both have new numbers and they're actually easy to memorize.

My next grouping of pictures includes one of Lil Sis standing by a baby zebra (her favorite zoo animal). We spent Sunday in Sigourney where there was a big celebration for the local John Deere tractor dealer's 10th anniversary. There were inflatables, a petting zoo with camels, goats, llama, baby zebra. There was also a monkey show, but we missed that part. The food was provided by Cookies BBQ (an Iowa company), chips from Hy-Vee (Iowa based grocery chain), and music by the Oak Ridge Boys. The only bad part was the 95 degree temperature with high humidity.

We managed just fine. Our next picture shows Big Sis spraying me with water. We carried the spray bottle with us everywhere and regularly sprayed the girls. During the Oak Ridge Boys performance, Big Sis was putting ice in the spray bottle and spraying me. It was AWESOME!

Today, the girls had swimming lessons and Big Sis had "reading camp" at a local college. In the afternoon, I filled up the little pool on the deck. The girls spent 4 hours there. I had grand hopes of doing some organizing of new purchases, etc. but I ended up sitting in the shade programming numbers in Cool Daddy-O's new phone. I did spend some time with my feet in the pool. That was nice.

Big Sis's big swimming lesson accomplishment today was holding her breath under water and blowing bubbles. She also was able to move from one side of the pool to the other today without the noodle while wearing the flotation cube thingy around her waist. Lil Sis was able to blow bubbles under water today. She's afraid of holding her breath under water, but she was moving around in our pool today holding her breath with her head above water. All in good time. She's getting more comfortable with the water...it's just going to take her some time.

Well, hope you enjoyed my non-existent pictures....I'll try to upload them another day.

Collecting Ribbons and Coupons

2008-07-27T22:39:00.001-07:00

This evening Big Sis and I went back to the fair to collect her artwork and ribbons. She earned a whopping $4.50. We haven't yet talked about what she'll do with her winnings. Perhaps we'll just put it in the bank. Or, perhaps, she could use it to pay me to clean the toy room. Yeah, there's a story that goes with that statement :)

This afternoon, I asked Big Sis if she'd help put toys away in the toy room while I folded and put away her clothes. I gave her the option of earning 50 cents if she did it herself, having me help her and earning nothing, or paying me 50 cents to clean the toy room. She got out her coins and we counted her money. She decided she would be happy to pay me to clean. I told her we should talk to Cool Daddy-O about her decision and see what he thought.

After discussing all the options again, Big Sis decided that she would rather clean the room on her own and make some money. She worked for awhile and made nice progress. Finally, she decided she needed a break. She became engrossed in a TV program and said she'd finish later. I decided to reward her and give her half the money since she had completed much of her task. She said she'd do the rest tomorrow.

Here's a close-up of the collage that won Best of Show in her age group.

The other highlight of our day was a family effort. One of the local gas stations offers a free newspaper with the purchase of gasoline. There was a coupon that I wanted multiples of. So, we took both cars to 2 gas stations, where we each purchased the amount that qualifies for a free paper. I went to a 3rd gas station and squeezed in some more gas in my car and got a 5th paper. What was this coupon? It's a buy 1 get 1 free coupon for the hair color I use. Since I have so much hair, my hair stylist uses 2 boxes to color my hair...and I color it every 6 weeks. Each box costs between $7.50 and $8.70 depending where I buy it. So, we figured we saved about $40 in hair color expense, or looking at it another way...it makes the gas much cheaper.

Yesterday I had a great afternoon. I was able to spend a couple hours hanging out at Target. We needed to get a second car seat for the second car. I'll be taking the primary kid hauling car to Iowa City on Friday and Cool Daddy-O will need to drive the girls around town for various activities. The new booster seat has 2 cup holders. The old one doesn't have any. Big Sis is willing to share her extra cup holder with Lil Sis. What could be better?

She Decided To Stay...

2008-07-25T20:41:00.001-07:00

We've been going to the fair a lot! Yes, we're crazy! Yesterday, we went to the 4-H and FFA horse show. It rained all day, so it was good to be inside. Big Sis had her 3rd corn dog.

Tonight we returned to the fair for supper and the demolition derby. Big Sis ate her 4th corn dog. I had my second tenderloin (yum). The girls lasted through 4 heats and a final round of the compact car class. Then they were done. Cool Daddy-O made arrangements for me to get a ride home with our neighbors and he took the girls home. I'm glad he did. There was only one heat of full-size cars, but they were DEAFENING! It was fun to watch.

Cool Daddy-O said it was kinda hard for him to watch the cars get demolished. He's very much into vehicle maintenance and getting as many miles as we can our of our beloved Hondas. On a good note, there were no Hondas or Toyotas in the derby. Fortunately, they're mostly still out on the road.

This morning, the girls were not allowed to watch TV (in part due to yesterday's behavior -- long story). They decided to play with Lincoln Logs and then Big Sis built a log cabin she was quite proud of. After that, the girls became quite irritable with one another and a fight broke out. I decided I was going to put the Lincoln Logs away and out of reach for a consequence. oops!

Big Sis came unglued when she discovered what I had done! She stomped back to her room, screaming and crying. After some time had passed, she stomped out and placed a hand written note on the kitchen table. Here's what it said:

I am going to the othr sid the wrld. frome big sis

I took the note back to Big Sis's room and talked to her about it. I couldn't quite understand what it said, so she told me she was packing up her things in her backpack and she was going to leave to go to the other side of the world. I asked her how she was going to get there. Her plan was to take a plane. I was able to talk her out of running away and all was forgiven.

Here is Big Sis pretending to be sad and posing with her run away note.

On another note, the girls had their first swimming lesson on Wednesday. We finally convinced Lil Sis to sit on the edge of the pool and dangle her toes in the pool. I think she will be more brave next time. It's too bad the lesson only lasted 30 minutes and half of that time was sitting outside of the pool talking about safety. I think another 15 to 30 minutes and she would have been in the water too. At least they both left wanting to go back.

That's all for now. We're going to hang out at home tomorrow and will do some cleaning, laundry, mowing, etc.

Ribbons At The Fair

2008-07-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

The girls and I went to the county fair this morning. Big Sis entered a few drawings / pieces of artwork in the Junior Arts competition. Last night she worked on a collage using the technique she learned earlier this summer at a class she attended. I'll upload a picture of it later. I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it yet. It turned out pretty nice. She also entered several other drawings she had colored with crayon, markers, tempera paint, and another crayon design. She ended up with a red ribbon, several blues, and one purple (for the collage).

Other cool stuff we saw:

a showering sheep...he was NOT happy about it
a friendly lamb whose best friend is a horse
an Angus calf named Hershey's
a pen of pigs enjoying a bath
an attacking turkey (don't worry, it didn't hurt, but it did scare the sh*t out of me)
crowing roosters
furry bunnies

I know it's not healthy, but, Big Sis ate two Jumbo Corn Dogs today. For an afternoon treat, Big Sis got a huge chocolate ice cream cone and Lil Sis got a blue raspberry shaved ice. Big Sis got full, so Lil Sis ate the rest of the cone. I got the rest of the shaved ice. It was definitely a WIN - WIN situation!

We send out Kudos to Uncle J today on being part of a #10 Country song. WhooHoo!

Swimming lessons commence tomorrow. The girls are excited!

I'm hoping to stay away from the fair tomorrow. We'll definitely go back later in the week. We have to pick up Big Sis's prize money!

*Dryer Update: I think I forgot the share the good news. The dryer was fixed quickly. It is working better than ever!

Pioneer Girl

2008-07-18T18:36:00.000-07:00

Big Sis spent the last 2 days at Pioneer day camp. She made a candle, wrote her name with a goose feather dipped in ink, and milked a goat. She got bit by a kid (the baby goat variety) and cut and pinched her finger on something that she describes going up and down and then getting stuck. She's pretty proud of her injuries.

It rained most of the day today. Fortunately, Big Sis wore her raincoat all day. Her coat was muddy and her face was covered in chocolate ice cream. I'd call Pioneer camp a success.

Lil Sis and I hosted a fun play date today. We ate sweet corn and other good stuff. Days like today, I wish I had a bigger, more open kitchen. An island would be nice. Otherwise, I really like our house. The best part about hosting a play date? Having a clean house! We really need to do this kind of thing more often.

Next week is the county fair. It's a nice warm up to the state fair. We made hotel reservations for two nights in August. We plan to spend the night in Des Moines and get up really early and try and be part of a new world record corn dog chomp. We may go to Omaha to spend part of the day at the zoo and then return to Iowa for some more state fair fun. This may be the closest thing we get to a vacation this year. WhooHoo!

Sunday Trip to the Zoo and Pondering the Number 4

2008-07-16T13:19:00.000-07:00

On Sunday afternoon, we made a spontaneous trip to the Blank Park Zoo. It was the elephants' last day (they were visiting for the summer). The girls didn't seem interested in watching the actual show, so we just watched them get ready for their show. We watched them get brushed and washed up for their performance.

We also visited the Baby Brazilian Sea Horses. They were born in May. To put things in perspective, they are in a regular sized fish bowl. Yes, they are extremely tiny. They are black.

It was feeding time for the bats. Bats are Big Sis's favorite animal. I think it's fun to take pictures of them...I get to use the Night Scene mode on my camera, which I think is COOL!

We had some down time while in line for the train. I decided to take some close-ups while we were wasting time. Here is Big Sis. She's starting to get a little bummed out that she doesn't have any loose teeth yet, however, we pointed out that she wouldn't be able to bite into an ear of corn if she had a loose tooth. Hopefully, that will boost here spirits for a few weeks.

Lil Sis enjoyed a little down time also. Looks like she's planning something mischievous. She's kind of like that. It's just her nature.

Today, we struggled a bit. She refused to sit in a chair at little kid story time at the library. After 3 failed attempts to sit in a chair, she ended up sitting on my lap in the play area at the library in a time out of sorts. I didn't allow her to play with toys, however, I explained to her she could rejoin story time if she wanted. We remained at a stalemate and we just sat there.

I continue to struggle with the whole 4-year-old thing. I know it's an important stage...increasing independence (can also be viewed as stubbornness), wanting to do big kid stuff, yet scared to and wanting to stay close to a parent. It's frustrating for all of us involved.

And, finally, our favorite part of living in Iowa in the summer. SWEET CORN aka CORN ON THE COB!!!! Very delicious!! The girls are getting very good at husking the ears. In fact, Cool Daddy-O and the girls husked the corn while I made a peach cobbler for dessert. We grilled hamburgers, too.

There's no way we can top that meal tonight. In fact, I'm not sure what we'll have tonight. Better sign off and think of something...I'm getting hungry!

Who Doesn't Get Excited About Their Dyson?

2008-07-11T21:19:00.000-07:00

Check this out! I spent the afternoon cleaning off my desk, going through my pile of things to do. The girls hung out in the basement playing and watching TV.

As I was dusting the desk, they came upstairs. It was like pulling teeth to get the girls to help pick up toys. Lil Sis became interested in helping with the dusting. That set Big Sis in motion....she just had to do something too.

So, she got the vacuum out of the closet, asked me how to plug it in and turn it on. She was on a mission and did a fantastic job. She vacuumed the living room, hall way, her bedroom, and mom/dad's bedroom. She was so excited! Cool Daddy-O was quite impressed when he arrived home and found her in her room pushing the vacuum around! She even came back to the living room when she was all done and caught a few spots she missed the first time.

Lil Sis tried, but said it was too hard to push around. She did her part, though, and unplugged it and helped wind up the power cord when Big Sis finished.

Cool Daddy-0 and I went out on a date tonight. We had a delicious meal and then headed to Menard's to hang out. We had so much fun and when we finally checked our phones to see what time it was, we freaked out. It was 9 p.m. and we hadn't done our shopping at Target yet. We had coupons we had to use!

All was well. We paid for our books (yeah, I know, it's not a book store, but they have great prices on books). The trip to Target was successful, yet uneventful.

Pay It Forward - My 2nd time

2008-07-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

Title Of Blog I Would Like To Feature Is: Heart On The Line

URL To That Blog: http://www.heartontheline.blogspot.com

I Like This Blog Because: This is a fairly new blog. I found it through a parenting message board I frequent. Anyway, she takes awesome photos and is in the process of adopting a little girl from Korea. She has 2 little boys, and an awesome husband. She is someone I respect and admire (in a non-stalking sort of way), even though I've never met her.

Here Is A Post I Enjoyed: Back to the House

Come on, join us for PAY IT FORWARD FRIDAY! HERE'S HOW!

My Boring Week

2008-07-10T08:50:00.000-07:00

The lack of posting is due to lack of excitement around here. Let's see, we had lunch on the porch one day. They weren't very excited about getting their picture taken. Big Sis is taking a big bite of cauliflower. Notice the dresses...they've been choosing their own outfits this week. They've worn dresses nearly every day. They have shorts, but the dresses must feel cooler. Notice, their purses are from Happy Meals and they each are armed with a magnifying glass to check out any ants that come to visit. Here's a picture of the steak, mashed potatoes/ice cream sundae (not sure which it is) and green beans I was served during a marathon play dough session. Yes, they used real plates.

I think the highlight of this week is the cat faces they apply with eye liner pencils. Big Sis came home from school one day with a cat face. Below, you'll see Lil Sis after she applied her cat face. Totally independent, I might add. She's good. Soon after this photo was taken she washed it off. She said it felt funny. Silly girl. We have yet to go out in public with the cat faces.

Cool Daddy-O informs me that the dryer is no longer producing heat. The repair guy is coming to check it out tomorrow. Hopefully it's repairable. We are saving up for both cars to have major service check-ups at the Honda dealership this summer / fall. A new dryer isn't exactly what we're planning for. Our 11th anniversary gift to ourselves was a dishwasher. Perhaps the 12th anniversary gift is supposed to be a dryer. I guess we'll find out tomorrow. Tune in and see....

Who Can Sleep With All That Noise?

2008-07-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

We've had a busy weekend so far...and it's only Friday night!

Yesterday, Lil Sis was "plugged up". We made a team decision and bought some prunes. After her first "dose", she was snuggling on my lap and before long was twitching....that tell tale sign that she was falling asleep. She fell asleep at 4:45 pm and didn't wake up til after 6. Her "problem" resolved itself during the evening. She was soooo HAPPY! She was also quite AWAKE, so she helped me make brownies and hash brown casserole. She finally fell asleep around midnight.

This morning, she was bright eyed at 7 a.m. and ready to go to the parade and family reunion. The bag of candy and other stuff rivaled anything they could dream of after a night of trick-or-treating.

We spent the rest of the day visiting with various family members. We headed home, the girls bathed, then we put on sweats, jackets, and drove to the soccer field to watch fireworks.

We arrived about 30 minutes before the fireworks started. The girls grew increasingly impatient. By the time the fireworks display started, Big Sis was snuggled up on Cool Daddy-O's lap and Lil Sis was snuggling with me. During the "grand finale", I noticed Lil Sis wasn't moving or talking. I assumed she was faking it and was really awake, because who would fall asleep during a fireworks finale??? She was really asleep! Cool Daddy-O lifted her out of my lap and placed her in her car seat. Big Sis made it to the car, but by the time we were ready to get her out of the car, we noticed she, too, had fallen asleep! That was the easiest bedtime routine we've had in a long time.

The Scent of the Ocean

2008-07-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

Big Sis just asked if G-ma and G-pa were back from their vacation in Florida yet. I told her she would see them tonight at the band concert. She gasped, and in a quiet, yet excited voice, said, "They'll smell like Florida!"

Hmm...what does Florida smell like anyway?

Another Dam Update

2008-06-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we worked outside in the garden, pulling weeds, etc. The garden is not something worthy of pictures. Let's just say we mowed about 2/3 of it because the weeds were the only thing that grew. We did manage to uncover 4 tomato plants, 4 pepper plants, 3 broccoli plants and 3 small rows of zinnias and marigolds. The girls attempted to swim and play on the slip n' slide, but they were soon freezing.

After all that hard work, we drove through McDonald's and traveled to Lake Red Rock. The girls insisted on checking out the flood status over there. There is still a lot of water. The walkway to look closely at the spillway was closed. The pavement was buckled and there was a lot of debris along the way. We were able to stand near the rocks where there were lots of splashing waves.

We stood near this man for awhile. I think he was having a GOOD day! He gave 15 to 20 fish to a family who was fishing near him while we were there. He told them he had 150 fish in his truck and had given away over 100 fish so far that day. As we watched from a distance, he continued catching more fish.
This guy walked up to him and they were talking for awhile. And sharing fish.
It was very windy today and mostly cloudy. The clouds moved on in time for the beginnings of a beautiful sunset. It was even more beautiful on our way home, but I didn't get any pictures (our camera batteries died before that).
The girls LOVED getting splashed! Big Sis DID NOT want to go home. It wasn't pretty. Lil Sis happily skipped to the car, while Cool Daddy-O carried a kicking and screaming Big Sis. Big Sis doesn't act this way very often. She's begging to go back tomorrow. We just might do that.

Our Cherry Tree

2008-06-28T07:50:00.000-07:00

The girls have been helping pick cherries this week. In the 11 years we've lived here, we've only kept the cherries one year. We let our neighbor pick them ....we usually end up with some pie out of the deal. That's enough for us.

Big Sis helped yesterday for the third time this year. She really enjoyed climbing the ladder. And talking. Our neighbor said she was quite entertaining.

Little Sis spent her time outside whining about why she couldn't climb the ladder and other little stuff. She decided to come inside and resume playing with Legos.

We went out for pizza last night. Mmmm! We've finally found a pizza place we LOVE! Have I mentioned we've lived here a long time?

Pay It Forward Friday!

2008-06-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

An Iowa Mom is hosting Pay It Forward Friday. It's where I link to one of my favorite blogs, and so on. Go, check out the link and learn more :)

Title Of Blog I Would Like To Feature Is: A Lazy Organizer

URL To That Blog: http://laragallagher.com/blog

I Like This Blog Because: She gives great organizing tips, yet she's human and is sometimes disorganized. She's funny and has great ideas. She also has a newborn.

Here Is A Post I Enjoyed: Oh, they're all good...just check out her side bar entitled "paper trail" to check out past posts.

FOR MORE PAY IT FORWARD FRIDAY'S, VISIT AN IOWA MOM.

Go check out the Lazy Organizer. Then go read An Iowa Mom and create your own link to your post on your blog.

This is my first week doing this....I plan to make it a habit. Join me, if you will.

Some people wonder why there's a bucket in my trunk...

2008-06-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

I only have one interesting tale from the past couple days. Today, after story time at the library, we went to Wal-Mart and our favorite grocery store. As we opened the trunk to get out our re-usable grocery bags, I remembered that the car was sitting outside in the rain today. I grabbed the bucket that resides in the trunk, and held it under the left tail light to collect the rain water that would otherwise drip in the trunk. The girls were laughing about the car peeing.

A retired gentleman walked up to his truck parked near by and appeared curious about our activities. I told him we had a problem and the repair would cost $300, so we just decided to carry the bucket with us. He agreed that the bucket was a much more economical solution. He then added that it's a good conversation starter. He laughed and said he could tell others, "Hey, I saw a lady milking her car today!" So, yeah, I'm the lady that milks my car.

Don't Look Now, but I Think We're Being Followed

2008-06-21T18:43:00.000-07:00

We had a very interesting day. Cool Daddy-O and I participated in a geocaching event with several other participants. We arrived at our favorite coffee house and listened to the rules of the day. The first part of the event was not unlike The Amazing Race. We were given a piece of paper with the name of a local business with a question to ask when we arrived.

Before we started our journey, I ordered a cup of java to go. As I was waiting, the organizer of the event came up to me (Cool Daddy-O was sitting outside waiting on me) and asked if I minded being on TV. He then asked if our local TV station reporter could accompany us on our adventure. Before I knew it, I was wearing a microphone and telling Cool Daddy-O what was happening.

Our first clue took us to the library where we posed the question, "Where are your bookworms?". We had to sign in that we were there and then we received our next clue. Each of the ten clues we collected contained parts of the coordinates that were needed to find the hidden caches at one of the county recreation areas.

At the carpet store, we asked where the shag was. At a jewelry store, we asked for a green jewel. At a grocery store, we asked if they had sardine ice cream (it was on back order). At a local cosmetic store, we asked if they painted frogs. We looked for elbow grease at the hardware store. We learned that the local shoe store doesn't carry size 24 ballet slippers.

Yes, all of this was videotaped. In a small to medium sized Iowa town on a Saturday morning. The customers in each of these businesses gave us very odd stares when we walked in with a camera man in tow. They were also quick to get out of the way so they wouldn't be filmed.

We didn't even try to explain what was going on. First of all, so few people know what geocaching is and secondly, not everyone knows about our local TV station. Hopefully, they'll all learn a bit more after the show airs later this summer. For those of you who are curious about this, just leave a comment and I'll let you know when the show will be on. It may also be available to watch on the station's website.

Once we had our coordinates collected, we fought a tremendous number of bugs to find the five hidden caches along the hiking trails. I only fell once...I was tripped by some weeds that "grabbed both my feet" and I went down on all fours. I thought I was unscathed as my hands and knees were fine. When I arrived home, I discovered that the 2 spots on my legs that felt hard and swollen (I though they were bug bites) were actually giant bruises. Apparently, I was attacked by some branches during my fall. I've always bruised very easily...so it looks a lot worse than it feels.

We also met some new people and got to see what some of central Iowa's geocaching celebrities look like. There are some people who view this hobby as an addiction of sorts and some are quite competitive. So far, we're just in the hobby for the fun and exercise. I think we're going to continue to meet some pretty cool people too.

This weekend we attained our 50th find (although we haven't figured out how to log the most recent 5). For more information on geocaching, you can check out the link under "fun stuff" on the right side of the blog.

There's a First Time for Everything

2008-06-20T18:58:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow Cool Daddy-O and I are participating in a Geocaching event. We're leaving the girls behind with a sitter. The girls don't know what we're doing. So, I decided to take them on their own geocaching adventure this afternoon. There were four new caches hidden in town that had not yet been logged. We found all four and we were the first to find each of them! Whoo Hoo! Sometimes, there are prizes for the first person to find a cache. We found $1 in the first one and $3 in the last one. The last one was hidden on the side of one of our favorite buildings in town. The place we affectionately call "the ice cream store".

Here they are after they finished their cones. Notice they are wearing huge t-shirts. These shirts were gifts we received from a friend during VEISHEA. Initially, we decided to use them as paint shirts. We recently discovered they make excellent ice cream shirts too. Chocolate is the favorite flavor of our little ones and I just got tired of chocolate ice cream stains on their shirts. They think they're pretty cool to wear, and I don't stress out about their clean clothes. Cool Daddy-O loves his new shirts too! They all have cute little slogans on them about not getting drunk and causing riots during ISU's VEISHEA celebration. It's actually pretty amazing that Cool Daddy-O wears something with ISU on it. He is a Hawkeye, you know.

Today was the last day of Bible School. The girls had a blast and enjoyed singing along with the music CD as we were driving between cache sites this afternoon. They also LOVED playing on the monkey bars at the church's playground.

Next week, we're going to be lazy and sleep in. We're going to wear jammies until 10 or 11 every day. Then we're going to hang out at the library and learn about bugs.

I'll try and post more geocaching tales tomorrow after our fun date / outing!

Why Is the Playground Flooded?

2008-06-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a photo of the spillway at Red Rock.

We traveled to Lake Red rock again on Monday. I wanted to show the girls the changes since last Wednesday when we played on a playground near the spill way. We were able to drive over the dam and look down as we drove across. Sure enough, all we could see of the playground was the very top of the swing set, and the little roof tops of the climbing parts. Little Sis kept asking "why?". We spent some time at the visitor center and talked about the animals escaping the flood waters.

Big Squirt checking out the lake

The girls are attending Vacation Bible School again this week. This morning as we were driving to the church, we talked about what we're thankful for. Little Sis is thankful for mommy, daddy, cats and stuffed dogs. Big Sis is thankful for family, our car, friends, animals, etc. Her list went on and on. I'm thankful for blue skies, good health, two wonderful little girls and an awesome husband. I'm thankful for cats, too. :)

Thoughts on the Floods of '08

2008-06-14T22:20:00.000-07:00

A beautiful sunset reflecting in the flood waters

***********************

I don't know where to begin. So much has happened since my last post. My brother was rescued while evacuating his mother-in-law in Cedar Rapids on Thursday. We went out during a severe thunderstorm warning to drive 12 miles to get Cool Daddy-O his birthday pizza for supper, and we didn't even use the windshield wipers (didn't get wet either). That was weird. Played a community band concert inside. Some of the songs we played were Blue Skies, Rainbow Connection, The Thunderer....the theme seemed appropriate for the night. As we were playing, the skies were clearing from a very stormy day. I found myself feeling very thankful that our town was dry.

On Friday, we met an author / illustrator of a children's book, saw a magic show, watched artists demonstrating their techniques, ate ice cream for supper, ate lasagna for dessert, drove to a nearby town to see the river escaping its banks, and entertained an out of state visitor.

Today, we had chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, walked around an outdoor art show, sat in an art class with Big Sis, and went to a birthday party for Lil Sis's friend.

Tonight, Cool Daddy-O and I went on a date. We took lots of pictures of the nearby river's escape. We saw a very cool, outdoor, historical, theatrical performance. We ended the evening with dessert at our favorite coffee house and read The Des Moines Register's account of the flooding as we ate.

Usually, by this time of year, Iowa is a giant cornfield with an interstate going through it (or so it sometimes seems). Now, it seems to be an ocean filled with rooftops and trees with an occasional island of rolling hills and high plateaus. I'll close with several pictures I took today.

Cool Daddy-O works here. See that evergreen in the middle of the water? He estimates it is 15 ft tall and there really shouldn't be any water in this picture.

New bridge across the river where Cool Daddy-O works. The river is usually about half this wide. Sounds like this bridge could be closed if the water level rises another 4 feet.

We were treated with a horse drawn trolley ride at the end of the outdoor performance. The narrator told "horse tales" during the ride.

Thanks for sandbagging efforts, we have clean water in our town!

Rising Rivers Road Trip

2008-06-11T17:26:00.000-07:00

Couldn't help myself today...had to go on another road trip. My main mission was to see the area where the girl scouts are going to have a ceremony this weekend. Couldn't get there, but we could see the beautiful new ~~water slide~~ playground equipment. The area where they are going to camp out is on high ground, though.

The girls and I then hit the gravel road running parallel to the river, to check things out a bit more. They had a million questions, which I tried to answer, but my patience was wearing thin. We saw evidence of people evacuating and moving all their valuables and vehicles to higher ground.

As we continued on, we drove by these cows. I know the commercials say "Happy Cows come from California". Well, I've never been to California, but I think Iowa cows look pretty happy, too. Big sis was impressed that the cows stopped what they were doing to watch us. Fortunately, there was no one else on the road, as we stopped and took some photos.

We eventually found our way back to the Lake Red Rock area to see what had changed since last night. Most notably, we were unable to drive to the spillway like we did last night. Instead, we parked down stream where we usually watch bald eagles in the winter and walked closer.

As we were walking along the path, we noticed a very tall thistle. Upon closer inspection, we saw a bumblebee enjoying the flowers. Thank goodness for zoom...I wasn't in the mood to get stung trying to get a close-up.

We had the most fun and the best view from the bridge on the hiking trail.

They were releasing considerably more water today than yesterday. Sounds like it going to increase more over the next few days. It's hard to see in this photo, but crews from Musco Lighting were installing lights on the dam. I guess they want to keep tabs on the dam overnight. That would be a cool sight.
The girls enjoyed playing on the playground equipment in the campground area near the spillway. It was a major challenge getting them away from it, but they persevered and managed to get back to the car on their own 4 feet. I surprised them with a stop at Smokey Row in Pella.

Then we made our way home where we met up with Cool Daddy-O to attend a reception for an art show. Big Sis has a picture on a traveling display in our town this summer.

ROAD TRIP...turbulent waters

2008-06-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

Parts of Iowa are experiencing significant flooding this week. Since we have nothing close to look at, we took a road trip tonight to check out a dam. A lot of other people had the same idea. There must not have been anything good on TV tonight.

Here is the view as we were leaving the parking lot, walking toward the spillway. Followed by a close-up of the rushing water.
Here is Cool Daddy-O pointing out the height of the flood waters in 1993. Cool Daddy-O is 6 feet tall. Something tells me, we won't be back to this spot for awhile. They're going to greatly increase the outflow of the dam in the next 2 days. Once the water from Des Moines /Saylorville Dam gets to Lake Red Rock, things could change here.
The sign on the right draws attention to the possibility that the sidewalk ahead can be slippery when wet due to algae growth. Children should be closely supervised. Don't worry, Cool Daddy-O is out of view to the left about 2 feet. Also, they didn't cross the line between the black top and concrete until I was walking beside them. We stayed on the dry areas only. Thus, we were safe!

We hope we can go back in a couple days and see how things will change...that's if we can still get to this spot. If not, perhaps, we can get a view from a higher point.

Little Pizza Chef

2008-06-09T15:14:00.000-07:00

Here is lil sis helping make pizza the other night. She has greater interest at helping in the kitchen. For the first time ever, I actually made a double batch of dough and made 2 full size pizzas for our family of four. One cheese pizza, one Canadian bacon plus mushrooms and basil on half. They tasted delicious. So far, we've enjoyed 2 meals, and it looks like there's at least enough for one more family meal and a lunch or two for the girls.

Splashing and Skating

2008-06-08T19:51:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, it was hot, so hot, in fact, that we surprised the girls by setting up our little pool on the deck. Last year, we determined we needed a level surface and the only level surface we could find was the end of the driveway. Thanks to our 6 year-old's brilliant idea, we tried it on the deck. Whoo-Hoo! It was awesome! We sprayed the girls with sunscreen (best invention in recent Years) and Cool Daddy-O and I sat in the shade near the house and watched them.

Today, Big Sis was invited to a birthday party at the skating rink. She had never skated before. To prepare her, we watched a couple skating instructional videos on You Tube. I think it actually helped. There were tears, frustration, a painful wrist following a few nasty falls. Then there was snuggling time, followed by time spent getting comfortable staying balanced and taking small steps on the carpet. Soon, she ventured off on her own again. She seemed to gain confidence with each lap. She didn't win any awards for speed...she couldn't keep up with her friends, who were skating at a snail's pace, but that didn't seem to bother her. She would become frustrated, and we'd snuggle again and chat. And before long, she was off on her own to try another lap or two. She even made two attempts at the limbo competition. Her subsequent falls were more controlled and less painful. She wants to go again sometime. In fact, the owner / manager of the rink came up to her and gave her a coupon for free admission the next time she comes. He commended her on her progress today.

We think she'll be able to hula hoop on roller skates before the end of the summer. Well, we were joking about it anyway :)

A Maple Tree...

2008-06-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

is under the pillow. Lil Sis pulled a "baby Maple tree" out of the ground this morning. Big Sis found it under Lil Sis's pillow. Perhaps that's just her hiding place for all of her treasures.

We're enjoying a sunny and breezy morning. Snickers and Lil Sis are having fun hanging out by the window enjoying the breeze.

There seem to be baby Maple trees popping up everywhere, especially in our garden. In fact, Maple trees seem to be the ONLY thing growing in our garden. I think we're going to need to replant some stuff.....when it finally dries out.

There's a rock under her pillow...

2008-06-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

As I was making Lil Sis's bed this morning (rare event), I noticed a rock under her pillow. The other day I found the same rock under her pillow and placed it on top of her headboard.

Me: Why is their a rock under your pillow?

Lil Sis: It's for hopscotch.

Hmmm....I'm still wondering why it's under her pillow. Do little girls wake up in the middle of the night and go play hopscotch on the sidewalk?

The Beginning of All Things Sisterly

2008-06-04T07:27:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of school. It should have been a good day, right? Lil Sis wasn't impressed. AT. ALL!!! After screaming at the top of her lungs at WalMart, "You Bad Word, I don't like you anymore!" And hitting her sister if she got close to the cart. Yes, Lil Sis was stuck in the cart alone. They started out sharing the cart, but that's when the screaming and hitting began. We had a couple things we needed to buy and then a thing or two from our "want" list, including a ball to kick around (because they've managed to break 2 recently). Needless to say, we did not purchase anything fun. At the end of the trip, Big Sis received a smiley face sticker. Lil Sis did not. She almost always gets one.

Before our haircut, we stopped briefly at home to pick up a few things, including a peanut butter sandwich for each girl...that's another long story (I won't go there now). Then on to our neighbor's house for hair cuts. They did nicely during the last half of the appointment. The first half was rather tumultuous with more screaming and hitting. Mostly Lil Sis beating on Big Sis.

In the evening, after some private discussions, we came to the conclusion that Lil Sis wants Big Sis to keep going to school everyday. Despite loving each other and loving to play together, the thought of having to share mommy time has put Lil Sis over the edge.

To celebrate the end of the school year, I took Big Sis to the library to pick out some chapter books we can read together. One of our choices was "Alice In Wonderland". Believe it or not, I've never read it and I'm getting curious. Fortunately, I have someone I can read it to, so I don't feel so silly checking it out. We finished our outing with a trip to our favorite coffeehouse for a celebratory cookie. Then home for a bath and bed.

Jump with me now, to this morning...

We eventually managed to mix up waffle batter. That was a challenge. The girls got in a bit of a tiff over who got to add each ingredient....I lost my cool and sent them to a different room. Big Sis did manage to successfully break an egg into a bowl, which sent Lil Sis into a tantrum, because she's not yet allowed to do that task.

Big Sis opened her present from her Godfather this morning (instead of a Christmas or Birthday present, she gets a baptism anniversary present from him). She received Magic Tree House books, Magic School Bus books, and a geometric coloring book. We're looking forward to reading some good books.

Since breakfast they've been playing fairly nicely. Then Lil Squirt appeared declaring, "Big Sis hit me right here on purpose." She was pointing at her wrist. My response, "What do you think we should do with her?" She got a huge grin and retorted, "Throw her in the garbage can!" I think she feels all better now. Sometimes you just have to vent frustrations a bit.

I think we're going to have a good summer.....we just have to get through this nasty transitional period and re-establish every one's roles in the house.

All will be well, trust me :)

Note: Lil Sis really was calling Big Sis "BAD WORD". At least she used restraint and didn't say any bad words. Big Sis and I just looked at each other and chuckled that she was yelling "BAD WORD" rather than actually saying one of the bad words she knows.

Just hanging out

2008-06-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

Wow, I just realized I haven't written anything for a few days. I just got caught up on the blogs I read. My goal for this week is to update my blog with the list of blogs I read regularly. The list is growing as I find more cool blogs to look at. I especially like looking for blogs written by fellow Iowans, and enjoy the fresh perspective on life (and the weather/climate) from people who live elsewhere.

On Friday, we were awoken soon after 5 a.m. by our weather radio. The first couple announcements were severe thunderstorm warnings or flood watches. The one that got us out of bed was the tornado warning for the central part of OUR COUNTY...pop up out of bed, is what I did. Big Sis easily awoke and went running toward the steps. I gently told Lil Sis what was up and I picked her up (didn't have time to grab 'blankie') and headed downstairs. We turned on the TV. I realized we were ill prepared to ride out a real storm. The batteries in the flashlight were dead and the portable weather radio was in the car (smart). I ran upstairs to quickly grab fresh batteries. Cool Daddy-O made a made dash to get the favorite 'blankies'. I cleared out the area under the pool table...where were going to head there if things got loud. Fortunately, no tornadoes attacked our nearby vicinity. We returned to bed.

The phone rang early and we learned we would be starting school a bit late due to a power outage. WhooHoo...the girls slept in and then we had a repeat of that breakfast we had last week....the not so healthy Double Chocolate muffins.

After Big Sis got on the bus, I hopped in the "green car" and drove to Iowa City to get an oil change at the dealer. On my way, I listened to 1040 AM/WHO radio and listened to some gas saving driving tips. At that point, I decided to drive no more than 5 mph over the speed limit that day. (Apparently no one else on the road knew that you could save money by driving under 80 mph....except for the truck drivers....they were being smart.)

Some of the highlights of my day alone in Iowa City: buying stuff at the new Menard's (COOL), eating at Culver's (YUM), browsing a bit at the big mall, and fulfilling my list at Target. I also had to go to WalMart to get hair color with my awesome coupon. (I've used 4 buy one get one free coupons in the past 6 weeks and now have 6 boxes on deck.) On my way home, I stopped a bought some 'unmentionables' at the mall in Williamsburg. It was a very fun day!

NEWSFLASH! Lil Sis declared she's going to leave her eyes open around Grandpa now, since it's summer, and all. To celebrate, Grandpa and Grandma stayed for lunch on Saturday. For the first time in 5 months (no I'm not exaggerating), we ate a meal with the grandparents and everyone had their eyes open the entire time! Lil Sis sure can be head strong. I think this ability will serve her well later in life in the career of her choice.

Big Sis caught her first toad last night as she was sitting by the fire in her jammies. I wasn't able to locate the camera in time. "No", I told her, "you can't keep it".

Kindergarten Field Trip

2008-05-28T20:27:00.000-07:00

Today was Big Sis' fieldtrip. They toured a grocery store, went bowling, ate a sack lunch, and played at the park. Lil Sis and I joined in the fun for lunch and playing. We met up with them at the bowling alley and were saddened to learn Big Sis wasn't having fun bowling. A couple of lanes had bumpers and she was in a lane next to the bumper lanes. She was really frustrated about her repeated gutter balls, as she was watching some classmates knock over pins with every throw.

I guess we need to go bowling as a family some time. I haven't bowled since I was about 15. I had such a bad experience (I think my score was 29 or something bad like that) that I've not played again since.

She had a blast at the park, though. Unfortunately, the fun ended early due to raindrops. The kids whose parents were there were allowed to go home for the day. We decided to stay and play at the park a bit longer. It was really just sprinkling. We decided everyone else was just wimpy. Little Sis continued practicing her new trick.

Before we left, I let the girls climb to the top of "the rocket". Big Sis said her teacher wouldn't let them climb it, but the other kindergarten class was able to. I explained to her why her teacher had that rule. Then I let her go up as long as she agreed to help Lil Sis down. Lil Sis has a rule that she can only go to the very top if Big Sis or another responsible big kid is with her. It's the climb down (vertical ladder with 4 or 5 rungs) that makes me more nervous than the climb up. Big Sis did an awesome job of making sure Lil Sis got down safely. By this time, another group of children (upper elementary aged) from a different school district were getting excited about the rocket also. After going down the slide a few times, we went home too.

The white rectangular shaped object is the top of the slide. The girls are looking out of the top. Yeah, it's way up there!

Home was nice. We popped popcorn, watched a Veggietales movie, and then they watched the Barbie Island Princess movie while I fell asleep on the couch. All in all, it was a pretty good day, despite the bowling disappointments.

Two Days Ago

2008-05-28T19:59:00.000-07:00

I just downloaded my photos from the weekend. I had forgotten about the fun we had on Monday. After lunch, we headed to town in search of an elusive geocache. After searching in a tree, up, down, in and out, all around, we gave up. Fortunately, the tree was very close to a pond, which happens to be very close to the elementary school.

On Friday, Big Sis and her kindergarten class visited the pond as part of their unit on frogs. They released tadpoles and tasted cat tails. She said they were good and a little spicy. She also expressed she did not get a chance to touch a tadpole and she wanted to touch one. All we had was a stick, so she settled for stirring the water with a stick and seeing them swim around.

We continued walking around the pond and soon saw two boys. They were carrying nets full of tadpoles. They had caught them in the pond and were releasing them. I asked them if Big Sis could hold one. They were very kind and handed her one.

As we finished our walk, we saw three goose families swimming around. It brought back memories of my elementary school days and visiting the pond near my school. I'm glad our girls will have this pond to explore during the next 6 years or so. We have a cool county conservation naturalist that makes learning fun for the kids too.

We finally ended up at the playground. We have a cool playground too. Lil Sis especially likes sliding down the pole. It is really high and she's been doing this all year. It makes me nervous, but she's quite confident. The part I find unusual, is she's afraid of similar poles at our city park, even though they're lower off the ground. I think it may be the horizontal distance to the pole from the platform that's the issue, rather than the vertical height.

We eventually returned to geocaching on the trail. We looked for three more, but only found one. At least we got some much needed exercise on Monday.

A Lot of Mulch

2008-05-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

What a difference a few bags of mulch can make! Cool Daddy-O was on vacation yesterday afternoon. The weather was cool and breezy, so we worked outside all afternoon. We borrowed a neighbor's truck and went to town and purchased 30 bags of mulch. I arrived at this number by looking at the bill we got from the landscaper 3 years ago, and decided to buy the number of bags he used on our project. We were quite liberal with the spreading of the mulch (we are very tired of the weeds coming through the weed mat). We got about 1/2 done with the area around the house and had used over 1/2 of the mulch. We also had another area in front of the house that we needed to freshen up. So, while the girls and I went to the vet clinic, Cool Daddy-O returned to the store to get another 30 bags. This time, we took the $2 off coupon from the paper.

We then continued mulching the rest of the yard. Good news...we had 5 bags left over, that we can use if we find some areas that need more. The weather for the rest of the weekend is supposed to be warm, wet, and stormy. We're very glad we mulched when we did, because it was very comfortable working outside with a jacket on.

Our Memorial Day "grilling" party is going to turn into a "homemade pizza" party. Grilling outside during a severe thunderstorm (predicted for Sunday night) does not sound fun. We already have experience making pizza during severe storms, and we've been successful. It's possible to hang out in the basement while it bakes and eat down there if necessary.

I'll close with one more picture of our mulching success.

Snickers Update #3 (good news)

2008-05-24T06:09:00.001-07:00

The vet clinic called yesterday at 4 p.m. with an update. His fever was down, however, he hadn't eaten anything, thus hadn't expelled anything either. They recommended he come home so that he would feel comfortable enough to eat. When we got him home, he ate his normal amount. Within a couple hours, he was meowing and pawing at the door. When he saw the cat food can, he got an excited look in his eyes. I fed him some more and he snarfed it down. This morning, Big Sis went to check the litter box, and she reported success. YAHOO! Hopefully, this new found success continues. He has a different antibiotic that he needs to take for the next 5 days.

Snickers Update #2

2008-05-22T09:19:00.000-07:00

The past couple days, we noticed Snickers wasn't quite himself and wasn't pooping well. Yesterday, I decided that if he wasn't all emptied out by this morning, we'd take him back to the vet. I called this morning and made an appointment and described his symptoms. Just as we were getting ready to walk out the door, he went in the litter box, and he tried his best, but it just didn't work. So, off we went.

They weighed him, took his temp (104.5 = fever), and discussed options. Dr. P. wanted to keep him at the clinic to monitor him, start a different antibiotic (he has been on one for the past 2 weeks and still has a fever), give him fluids and an enema. Poor guy. Little Sis got teary, which made me get teary. We were sad as we left the clinic. Little Sis was saying, "I miss Snickers a whole, whole, whole, whole bunch" and sobbing. Oh, Man....I get teary eyed just typing this. Sounds like there is a possibility of mega colon. I haven't googled that yet, but sounds like if that's the problem, he could need daily meds on an ongoing basis.

I talked with the vet about our history of bad luck with persians. Our last one, Maggie, developed a seizure disorder and had her own account at Wal Mart for her phenobarb prescription. She also developed a stomach problem which required daily meds. With both those meds high enough to prevent seizures and control her tummy, she eventually became lethargic and sad and we made the very difficult decision to say good-bye. Not long after that, our old cat, Allie, age 15, wasn't doing well and we took her in to the vet to say good-bye. That just left us with Sparky (now age 9) who was rescued from a parking lot as a kitten.

Oh, and just a bit more cat background, since I'm going way back. In 1990, I got my first Persian. All was well with him for about 8 years and then he died following his second asthma attack.

I was hoping that when we got Snickers, we had done thorough research and had found a cat with healthy bloodlines. Now, I'm bummed and .... well, if this doesn't work out.... I don't think I'll be able to get another Persian. We've had the best luck with plain old boring short-haired cats that are free or dirt cheap.

Hopefully, I'm getting ahead of myself here. And we'll find out that he's going to be o.k.

Another issue that I'm concerned about is Snickers' food. I put a painstaking amount of research into his food. After the recalls a year ago, I learned a lot about cat food ingredients and decided to feed our cats Blue Buffalo dry and Wellness moist. Since it's not the vet's recommended Science Diet brand, I'm afraid they'll try and get me to switch. I'm very leery about switching foods at this point. It took forever to find a food that Snickers liked and would eat. He's a very picky cat. Well, that's enough for now. I thought this was going to be a very short post, and it's ending up being a long vent. Oh, well....I feel better now. Thanks for reading this if you made it all the way through.

Breakfast Reward

2008-05-22T05:05:00.000-07:00

The girls have had difficulty going to bed when it's still light outside, despite being so tired they can barely stand up. Last night when they were headed to bed, I promised them something special for breakfast. When Big Sis woke up this morning, she smelled chocolate. The best thing? I woke up early enough on my own to make them and thus, I'm not groggy. I am looking forward to some coffee with those muffins. Gotta go pour the milk :)

Yet Another Nice Day

2008-05-21T20:19:00.001-07:00

A few hours ago, this flower was quite droopy. Yeah, not good. Little Sis and I determined a cold drink of water would be the answer. And it's a good thing. After watering the plants on the porch, we ventured to the back yard. Oops...things didn't look so good there, either. We simulated a brief shower for the garden. The tomato plants look like they'll live, after all.

I spent much of the afternoon organizing all the preschool and kindergarten papers that came home recently. Our "horizontal surfaces" (aka counters and other places that collect paper) were in bad shape. Things don't look a lot better, but I did throw away and organize a lot of stuff today. However, while I was doing that, the girls drug out more toys and now it looks like a tornado went through the living room, destroying Little People land. I will continue this project tomorrow. And. I. Will. Win!

The school was spared from the tornado.

However, the minivan suffered major damage.

Before we could make supper, we had to run to the grocery store. We were only gone 30 minutes (we were moving really fast in the store) as we had to get back before Big Sis got off the bus. We had to go before she got home, so I could get started on supper. We ended up stocking up on the essentials, even though we only had mushroom soup on our list. I actually cooked a yummy meal for supper, too. We had baked pork chops with a mushroom gravy sauce, baked potatoes and corn casserole.

Upon arriving home after school, Big Sis declared today to be the worst day ever. Her 7th grade buddy visited today and they were playing basketball in P.E. She said they were playing and all of a sudden she was hit in the cheek with a basketball. I gave her a hug to console her. I also told her she was lucky the ball didn't hit her in the nose. I told her that would have hurt even worse. (Yes, my glass is half full.)

Tonight, while Cool Daddy-O was cruising the neighborhood in the old John Deere, the girls were running on the concrete driveway. Note: they've been warned it is not safe and it would hurt really bad if they fell. Well, Big Sis fell. As she was crying big crocodile tears, little sis was crying sympathetic tears. She was scratched up, but barely bleeding. We sat and snuggled on the porch steps. We talked about what happens when running on concrete and falling down. Little Sis soon arrived carrying baby wipes. She wanted to help Big Sis get all cleaned up. We managed without band-aids.

After Cool Daddy-O returned, he and the girls pulled a bunch of weeds. Big Sis kept declaring her super strength when she pulled the weeds up by their long roots. We're very happy the girls like pulling weeds and are taking full advantage of their enthusiasm, because we know it's just a phase they're going through, and all good things must end at some point.

Just As Good As Yesterday, If Not Better

2008-05-18T18:18:00.001-07:00

Here in Iowa, we put up with January, February and March weather, so that we can enjoy days like today. It was clear, breezy and reached a high of 70. We celebrated by spending the afternoon outside. We planted seeds in the garden. We developed a nice little system and the girls and Cool Daddy-O placed the seeds in the soil and I covered them up. Hopefully in a couple months, we'll be posting pictures of our bountiful harvest (or at least enough for a few nice meals).

A row of peas

While Cool Daddy-O went on another tractor ride, the girls and I planted some annuals in pots to decorate the front porch.

Coleus, ivy and some impatiens

Gerber Daisy

I love weekends like this. The interior of the house suffered, but we can clean that another day. On a day like today, we just can't work inside. I think we'll all sleep soundly tonight.

A Beautiful Saturday in Iowa

2008-05-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

This photo sums up our day's progress. We spent most of the day enjoying the outdoors. We spent the morning brainstorming plans for the day. As a result, we borrowed a rototiller from a neighbor and re-established our garden area that had been reclaimed by our lawn for the past several years. Now that the girls are older, I can no longer use an excuse of having a baby or a toddler. In fact, I think this year, I have little weed pullers. At least, I hope that's what they're going to do.

After tilling, we worked in some peat moss and cow manure into the soil. While the girls and I ran to town, Cool Daddy-O rescued the tractor from winter storage and took it out for a spin. While we were out we bought seeds, including: zucchini, green beans, lima beans, peas, and carrots. We also bought some bunny repellent (little sis suggested this as a way to keep rabbits away). I didn't even know such things existed. After our break, we planted 7 tomato plants, 6 pepper plants, and 3 broccoli plants. We forgot to sprinkle the anti-bunny granules tonight...we'll do that tomorrow. I hope the bunnies don't eat stuff tonight. We planted our basil plants (we grew some from seed and bought one established plant) in our deck container. We also bought a mint plant (our neighbor sprayed poison on ours), and seeds for oregano and chives. I think that's all the gardening excitement. After tilling and starting the tractor, Cool Daddy-O is preparing for extremely sore arm muscles tomorrow.

I'm ashamed to admit that we finally removed the snowy penguin themed welcome mat from the front entrance to our home today. Now, I need to replace it with something more seasonally appropriate.

For supper, we drove to Country Inn Pizza a few miles to the north. We had heard great recommendations from friends recently about this little restaurant. Tonight we were brave enough to try something new. We declare the pizza to be most delicious. In fact, Cool Daddy-O commented that he wouldn't mind if that pizza was waiting for him at home some night after work. He had sausage and Canadian bacon on his half and declared it an awesome combination. I had pepperoni and mushrooms on my half. Also quite tasty, although I'm daring enough to try additional combinations. The girls each had a corn dog and shared a tossed salad. Much to our surprise, they chose water for their beverages.

On our short drive home, I saw something cool, slowed down, made a U-turn in the middle of the highway and drove back to see it again. What was worth turning around for you ask? 2 Canadian Geese and their 9 goslings following them and waddling around. It was so worth it. As I was admiring them, Cool Daddy-O said he sees that sight at work all the time, and didn't think it was all that out of the ordinary. It's just not fair that he gets to go to a job he loves and sees baby geese every day in the spring/summer months.

Bubbles, Bubbles, Everywhere

2008-05-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

WARNING: The following post may be less than dramatic and filled with flowery, bubbly talk.

The most exciting thing we did today was blow a million bubbles. Yesterday, the wind blew the bubbles away and the girls chased them around the yard. Today, the wind was calm and we watched them float up, down, around, and finally blow away or pop.

It felt like it was going to rain all day, but it only sprinkled once. I surveyed all the perennials today. The tulips and fern leaf peonies are just beyond their peak. The lilacs are reaching their peak. Most of the blooms are above my head and I can't get a good whiff of them. The peonies and irises are looking great. We'll have some nice colorful flowers in the next couple weeks. I trimmed off the dead parts of one of our dwarf burning bush. Thanks to those nasty rabbits, a few branches were dry and crispy. There is some nice growth coming out of the bottom branches and it shows promise of surviving. The other burning bush looks good despite being chewed on.

O.K. I don't have anything exciting to say today (in case you haven't already figured that out). I just noticed that I've been posting at least once a day since last Thursday and I'm going to try and go a week without missing a day. So, if I have to have a boring post, so be it.

While baking tonight, I noticed we're critically low on our supplies of flour and cocoa. We're also out of Diet Pepsi, chocolate milk and orange juice. Guess where we're going tomorrow after lunch?

Also, I think I'm going to be referring to the girls as Big Sis and Lil Sis from now on. I noticed my blog is getting visited by people that probably aren't looking for a "family friendly" blog when they Google the words I've been using for them. :)

An Activity Filled Mother's Day

2008-05-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

We traveled to Ames today for lunch. We realized as we were leaving that we would be arriving at Hickory Park at 10 minutes til noon. Not good. We drove through the parking lot and determined we could go have fun for a couple hours and come back later. We picked up some bagels for a snack.

Just to be nostalgic, we drove by the dorm where I lived. The semester just ended and we saw a lot of overflowing dumpsters. The red bud trees were in full bloom and beautiful. I think the Iowa State campus is at its height of beauty in May. In this photo, you can see Lyon Hall, red bud trees, and an overflowing dumpster (in the far left).

We also attempted the three geocaches we hadn't located VEISHEA weekend. We STILL can't find them. However, after I got home tonight, I figured out the coordinates for the mystery cache I was trying to solve. Now I'll just have to go back there again some day.

Our lunch at Hickory Park was delicious as always. The girls opted to get nickel candy instead of ice cream. So, they had dessert for 30 cents.

To add more to my Target story from yesterday, I noticed that 2 of the items I purchased were in this week's sale ad. I received $2.14 credit. We then spent just under $3 on drinks and received a coupon for $2 off the hair color product I buy with the receipt. Gotta love Target!

Snickers is sitting on his "roost" on the back of my chair as I'm typing. He's keeping my neck quite warm. He continues to make nice improvements.

Fun Numbers

2008-05-10T20:16:00.001-07:00

We enjoy odometer patterns and sequences. As I was driving home the other day, I realized this sequence would be coming up. I just happened to have my camera with me. I wanted to take a picture to show Cool Daddy-O, as he was at home with the girls. It's the car he primarily drives and I didn't want him to miss out. I was also very aware of my speed being documented for all eternity, so I kept it under the limit :)

Pyramids .... in Iowa?????

2008-05-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

I ventured out on a solo geocaching / shopping adventure this afternoon. Out in the "middle of nowhere" I found this.

It was part of a "virtual cache". There are 3 pyramids on the edge of this rural cemetery. I also spotted a fox sitting in a pasture, however, it ran away when I slowed down to take a photo.

As I continued on my back roads journey I spied some train engines.

I used several coupons at Target today. I ended up saving $23.98. I think that's my personal best coupon experience. I also was able to find a wind proof/water proof jacket at 63% off. All in all, I'd call it a good day!

Snickers update

2008-05-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

Snickers continues to improve! When I woke up this morning I found a pleasant surprise in the litter box, indicating that things are moving along as they should. The swelling is going down also and things are light pink rather than red (in the nether regions). He had his last dosage of pain meds this morning. We will continue the antibiotics for another 11 days. Initially, he seemed content to stay in the bathroom. Last night he started pawing at the door. I really don't want to let him out until the swelling goes down and he's feeling more perky. I don't want Sparky to beat him up or anything. I also don't want Snickers to go hide somewhere in the basement where we can't find him.

We had a delicious Mother's Day Eve brunch consisting of whole wheat pancakes, scrambled eggs, orange juice, milk, and coffee. We just finished and think we can feel good til supper. Yeah, that means we don't have to cook lunch. If the wind stays calm, we may have s'mores this afternoon for a snack.

For fun, I'm going to make a solo run to Target and perhaps place a travel bug in a geocache on the way...well it's kind of out of the way...but it's not too far out of the way.

He's on the mend

2008-05-09T18:52:00.000-07:00

Snickers ate some food last night. He also ate a couple times today. He has gone #1 in the litter box a few times. No #2 yet, but for some reason, I wouldn't expect that til tomorrow. He hadn't had anything to eat for a few days (that stayed down, anyway). He even jumped up on the bathroom counter to hang out for awhile tonight. His bottom is still very swollen and sore looking, but it's improving some.

I volunteered at school today for grandparent's day. It was fun watching all the kids with their grandparents.

Little Squirt just realized she's watching "grown up TV" and declared, "It's not scary at all". She's watching HGTV, because the show I would rather watch, would be classified as scary for her. She had another 2 hour nap today. She fell asleep when grandma and grandpa were here and she had her eyes closed (for some reason, it's grandpa that causes the closed eyes now). Cool Daddy-O mowed the entire lawn during her nap. So, she'll probably be up really late again tonight. She's been doing backward somersault/flips off the ottoman, but just declared it is time to brush her teeth and she left the room trotting.

Tomorrow, I hope to do some geocaching on my way to and from Target. Due to the high gas prices, it's important to combine shopping with fun in any way I can :)

Soccer is officially over until next fall. We're looking forward to summer programming at our local library!

Thanks to everyone who has expressed concern about Snickers :) He says "meow". That means "thanks" in cat lingo.

I'll spare you the photograph of my morning so far

2008-05-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

Little Squirt and I had to take Snickers (aka the sick cat) to the vet this morning. I knew it was bad when I called the clinic at 8 a.m. and after explaining all his symptoms, they asked me to come in at 9 a.m. To make a long story short, I'll just use a few descriptive words, but not go into the really gross details. Not eating. Not pooping. Vomiting. Stinky. Poop stuck on butt. Hard poop. Shaved butt. Swollen anus. 105 degree fever. Pain medication for 3 days. Antibiotic for 14 days. Subcutaneous fluids at clinic. Expect diarrhea for 3 days. Hope for some kind of BM in 24 to 48 hours or call on-call vet. Hope appetite returns by tomorrow. Hope he's back to normal in a few days or we go back for more testing. All for the bargain price of $85. Sad, sick, mopey cat. Sad family. I explained to the vet that Little Squirt is his person. We don't want to spend a ton of money, but he is a valued member of our family despite the fact that he gets mad sometimes and doesn't use his litter box appropriately.

Little Sis attains new personal record

2008-05-05T22:02:00.000-07:00

It's currently 12:07 a.m. (approx) and Little Squirt is still awake. I attribute it to a couple of things. First, she's anticipating me leaving tomorrow (Tuesday) morning and not returning until Wednesday night. This will be the first night I've spent away from Cool Daddy-O since we were married in 1996. I'm going to be helping my cousins prepare for an estate sale. It's an overwhelming task, and I decided to help for a couple days. Due to the 60 mile distance from home and the price of gas, I'm going to spend the night at my brother's house... incidentally, I'll be sleeping in my childhood bedroom.

O.K. Back to my story...I got a bit side tracked there. Sorry.

Little Squirt and I did our regular Monday morning and noon routine. After lunch, we went to the "gray park" walked around a tree again looking for a geocache. Didn't find it. I had started wondering if the robin was fake and it was the cache. However, when we returned, it was facing the other direction. So, either someone is playing a cruel trick on me, or that isn't the cache.

We then played at the wooden playground for awhile. While we were swinging, I remembered I had a girl scout meeting tonight to prepare for. I also remembered that we were making mother's day presents at the meeting. So, off to Dollar Tree to buy some tissue paper. After that, we went to a garden center / flower store to check out the annuals and perennials. Little Squirt began her "melt down" there. When we got home, she insisted she couldn't walk and proceeded to have a 30 minute tantrum. She ended up falling asleep on my lap within 5 minutes of picking her up. She slept 1 1/2 hours or more. Side Note: she hasn't taken a nap in well over a year.

She's still pretty happy, although it's obvious she's getting tired. She's lying on the couch with "blankie' and watching HGTV. She also recently remembered her show and tell for Wednesday is a picture of mommy. I found a picture of her, daddy, and me that was taken at her birthday party. She's holding it now.

Every once in awhile, she says she's going to miss me and has been following me from room to room as I pack my things. I'm trying to prepare for all scenarios... extra clothes (I fell in the mud the last time I was there), weather radio (severe weather outbreak is possible tomorrow), etc.

Not sure if I'm being coherent or not. It is after midnight. Like I said in the beginning, there were several factors contributing to this staying up late by LS. Mid afternoon temper tantrum, anticipation of missing me for 2 days/1 night, and a girl scout meeting that big sister gets to go to. It seems she has a rough time every afternoon there is a meeting as I'm preparing for it. Another year and a half and she can be a Daisy too. It's tough being the younger sister.

Big Squirt has been asleep in her bed for a few hours now. Little Squirt, Cool Daddy-O, and I (mommy squirt) are going to turn in soon. We're going to let her snuggle with us for awhile as she falls asleep.

That's all for now. Cool Daddy-O is now talking to LS about all the fun stuff they're going to do tomorrow.

Good Night.

We looked and looked and this was what we found

2008-05-04T19:34:00.000-07:00

Big Squirt and I went geocaching this afternoon. We stayed close to home today and found 3 of the 4 we were searching for. Big Squirt found this robin in a tree that we were searching in. We didn't find the hidden cache, but thought this was pretty cool. I took a couple pictures from different angles, and she didn't even flinch. We'll have to check back here in a couple weeks and see what's happening.

We had a fun afternoon hanging out together. She even commented it was nice to talk without Little Squirt interrupting us all the time. I found that kinda funny. I think Big Squirt is always interrupting my conversations with the rest of the family.

While we were gone, Cool Daddy-O and Little Squirt built a fire and we made s'mores. Spring truly is here.

2008-05-04T19:32:00.001-07:00

Big Shoes to Fill

2008-05-03T20:54:00.000-07:00

After a cloudy start this morning, the blue skies prevailed at last. We drove to Pella for the annual Tulip Time celebration. We scouted out a cool spot out of the wind and planted our chairs between a huge tractor and a wagon full of spectators. The parade was complete with Dutch costumes, marching bands, awesome floats, and a martial arts entry complete with a broken leg. I didn't see it happen, but I did see a young man that landed on the ground after jumping to kick a board. His leg was bent between his knee and ankle. I was a bit squeamish at this sight. His fellow participants quickly picked him up and carried him away. Not sure if they should have moved him in such a manner. Within 10 minutes an ambulance was nearby and he was taken away for treatment. A few minutes later, we saw another ambulance picking up someone else. I bet the ER was busy today.

The Squirts each ate a corn dog and Cool Daddy-O and I had brats or Sinterclaas Sausages as they're called in Pella. For dessert we had funnel cakes and for a mid afternoon snack, the girls shared cotton candy.

After our snack, we set out on a 6 stage geocaching expedition. The clues took us to the stage on the town square, then to Central College, then to the VerMeer Mill (windmill), and finally toward Lake Red Rock. Cool Daddy-O spotted the cache and then gave the rest of us clues to find it. We found three other more simple caches today also. We found our first travel bug and will place it another cache soon to continue its travels. We found and logged our 21st cache today.

We enjoyed a delicious supper at Pizza Ranch in Pella. I think it's Big Squirt's favorite place to eat. She loves the chicken and mashed potatoes there.

The girls were asleep within a few minutes of hitting their pillows tonight. I think we'll all sleep well after spending the day in the fresh air.

Maple tree

2008-05-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a series of shots of Big Squirt practicing her "new trick".

She needs a boost between the second and third shot. She tried reaching the branch last summer, but wasn't even close. Now, it's a breeze.

The fourth shot shows her preparing for her dismount. She got a little scraped up on her hands from the bark, but no major injuries.

She'll probably be "hanging out" here this summer.

Meanwhile, Little Squirt enjoyed playing in the clubhouse. We moved all the "kitchen toys" out there the day before yesterday. They love taking the screen out of the window and playing "ice cream shoppe". She's busy preparing the next treat in this picture.

We watched Big Squirt play soccer tonight. She has some awesome kicks...it's just that there was a future soccer star on the other team that always seemed to block our team's kicks when we got near the goal. The kids are improving and having fun and that's what's important.

Big Squirt gets out of school at noon. Not sure what we'll do, but I'm sure we'll find something fun to do. We have options of geocaching and going to a parade and looking at tulips. Or, we could stay inside the house and be dry :)

There's some short grass in the yard

2008-04-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the recently maintained Lawn Boy, about 1/3 of our yard is nicely manicured. I'll work on it more tomorrow. It was getting too dark to take a picture.

The girls and Cool Daddy-O played outside. Big Squirt even sat in the Maple tree in the play area for awhile. Looked like she was having fun up there.

The weather cooperated for soccer tonight. We made supper before soccer practice and Big Squirt realized that yellow peppers don't have much flavor, so she ate them in the pasta primavera we made. She was sobbing during the first few minutes, but once she tasted it, she kept eating. Little Squirt wasn't as enthralled with her meal. I think they just need more exposure to different veggies.

Updates

2008-04-29T06:12:00.000-07:00

The plants are still covered for another hour or so. It was cold out there this morning.

Big Squirt's rash is gone. Dr. M. agreed that it was a reaction to the grass at the soccer field or some chemical that was put on it. She had to wear long sleeves on Friday due to the frigid temps. Perhaps we'll encourage her to wear long sleeves again tonight. Strong thunderstorms are predicted for Thursday. That means soccer will probably be canceled again!

Little Squirt and grandma are good buddies again. Last week she started asking about grandma visiting and said she wanted to play with her. They played on Saturday like the last 4 months of "closed eye stuff" had never happened. That's the good news. The bad news is now she's transferred the closed eye stuff to grandpa. Oh, brother. It will be interesting to see how long this stage lasts.

On Sunday when we visited the great-grandmas at the nursing home, both girls were good. When we got to grandma and grandpa's house, Little Squirt's eyes closed. She did enjoy some delicious pizza that grandma ordered. With her eyes closed. Squawking like a baby bird. Silly kid!

All tucked in

2008-04-28T19:20:00.000-07:00

The girls are asleep, the perennials are covered up and we're watching TV. Yes, that's right, the perennials are covered up.....it's the end of April! Actually, all we covered up were the fern leaf peonies (4), peonies (9), tulips (2), and delphinium (3). The day lilies and sedum (too numerous to mention) are on their own. Hopefully, they'll be tough and not be harmed.

Cool Daddy-O vacuumed while I went to a PTO meeting tonight.

That's all of the excitement for today. Oh, yeah, I organized the toy room closet today. Tomorrow....perhaps the rest of the toy room and maybe the kitchen toys can go to the club house for the summer....yeah, once the temperature rises above 32 degrees in the morning.

She does windows too...

2008-04-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

A day at home, at last! We cleaned the bathrooms and started on other rooms. Little Squirt insisted on wiping the mirror over the double sinks. She did a good job and seemed to have fun with it. She also did the inside of our storm door. I'm hoping we can wash all the windows in the house the next time she's feeling this helpful!

Big Squirt has the day off tomorrow due to kindergarten round-up. In the morning the girls get a hair cut and in the afternoon they have their well child check-ups. Perhaps we'll find out the cause of the itchy rash on Big Squirt's arms. The rash first appeared after soccer practice Tuesday. It was improving, but seemed to get itchy again tonight after soccer. Hmmm. Allergic to grass? or does she have one of those non-specified child rashes / viruses. It's not causing much discomfort though.

Chasing trains

2008-04-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

So far today, our highlights of the day are chasing a train, finding a geocache and walking around a furniture store. After preschool, we heard the train a few blocks away. We were able to catch up with it and see it at several intersections. We never did find its destination, though. We were able to log another cache find. I didn't even need the GPS for this one, as the clue was really good.

At the furniture store, we looked at bunk beds and coffee tables. I think we'll need to invest in a set of bunk beds at some point to conserve some floor space. I think it would make our house seem bigger :)

Little Squirt is requesting a trip to the "gray park", so I think I'll take her for a bit. Not really sure why we call it gray, because the only gray there is the slides. Big Squirt just started calling it that when she was 2 and the name stuck. We just decided we'd wait until Big Squirt gets home and maybe take her along. It'll be even more fun that way.

GOAL!

2008-04-22T20:05:00.000-07:00

I missed all the excitement on the soccer field tonight, as I was helping with a preschool spaghetti supper. The bad news was Big Squirt's team lost their soccer game tonight. The good news was her team scored one goal, and she was the one who kicked the ball really hard from far away and the ball went in the goal. Yahoo for Big Squirt!!

The weather radio woke up the entire household this morning. The girls ran into our room. I then abandoned ship and went to the girls' room. I was unable to go back to sleep though. The storm had not yet arrived and the birds were singing really loud outside. Once the rain and wind hit, the birds quieted down, however, it was about time to get up. The girls were greeted with pancakes for breakfast. I think they were happy. After the morning storm, the day turned beautiful, warm and sunny. Looks like tomorrow will be a beautiful day also.

I love this time of year, even if the birds wake me up in the morning!

Monday is a Fun Day!

2008-04-21T18:27:00.000-07:00

We did our usual Monday stuff this morning...school, preschool, lunch at McDonald's. We spent the afternoon with friends and found a geocache near their house. The weather was sunny and warm. Both girls wore capri pants today and were able to play outside without coats! Fun!

We made cards for nearby nursing home residents at our Girl Scout meeting tonight. They will be delivered for May Day.

Just looked out the open window and saw the flags waving in the breeze. It's a cool site at night with the light pointed up at them.

Tomorrow is a soccer night and a special fund raising dinner for preschool. Yea, I won't have to cook! I do need to make some brownies, though.

Everyone is invited to the dinner tomorrow night at preschool. Spaghetti will be served from 4:30 to 7:00 pm. There will be a free will offering.

Found 8 of 9 after school

2008-04-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Due to parent teacher conferences, Big Squirt came home 2 hours early today. The weather was beautiful and we decided to go geocaching. Here is Big Squirt posing with the first one we found. It was the smallest we've found thus far. She spotted it soon after we sat down and began looking for things that looked out of place. She found half of our finds today. Cool Daddy-O helped with the last 4.

Near the end of our journey today, the girls needed a rest. They decided to make grass angels.

Here she is with the last micro cache she found today. It was sticking out of a broken branch in a tree. I don't think we'll be doing much geocaching without her....she has a good eye!

Little Squirt shared her Birthday party with Grandpa

2008-04-13T19:32:00.000-07:00

Little Squirt and Grandpa celebrated their April birthdays with cake and ice cream today. Grandpa was surprised by the cake.

The squirts thought it was funny to pose with the cakes with only their heads showing. Both girls got to open a few birthday presents. Due to the snowy winter, we never had Big Squirt's family birthday party either...so they shared the event today. I surprised both of them with their own balloon bouquets!

VEISHEA and Geocaching

2008-04-13T19:14:00.000-07:00

We awoke to snow on Saturday morning. We immediately altered our plan to drive to Ames for the VEISHEA parade. Instead, we slept until the girls woke up, ran a few errands, and arrived in Ames just as the parade was ending. We met up with some fellow alumni and ate lunch at Hickory Park. Little Squirt enjoyed the birthday serenade when her ice cream arrived.

We then went geocaching with a friend from college and her 11 year old daughter. We soon were glad that S. is tall and nimble for her age. After we put all our brains together she was able to scale a dead tree to capture the cache. We felt pretty good following the find, despite being 200 yards from a tent pitched by a homeless person. This cache was rated average difficulty with an above average terrain. After this success we felt ready to tackle some easy rated ones.

We looked for 3 and found none of them. On the third one we went on a wild goose chase. The first clue was that the cache was not at the stated coordinates and gave a clue where to find them. We found some numbers and plugged them in and those coordinates were within a mile of where we were, so we jumped in the cars and left the park we were in. The clues had something to do with Charlie Brown and It's the Great Pumpkin. As we were driving to the next coordinates, we met a car with personalized plates "pumpkins". We were a little freaked out, but took it as a strange sign that we were on the right track. When we arrived at the new coordinates, we discovered it was a park with a name of one of the Peanuts characters, and found that to be interesting also, and thought we may have been on the right track. We wondered around the park and found nothing. I'm very baffled by this one.

Some day, when we find this one, we're going to laugh about this day.

After saying farewell to our out-of-state friends, we stopped at Target and used some coupons. I think we left with about $15 worth of savings and only spent about $62. That was fun. The squirts also had some fun money to spend and they had fun choosing coloring books and movies.

Happy Birthday Little Squirt!

2008-04-11T20:08:00.000-07:00

Little Squirt declared today the best day of her life. She licked the frosting spatula for breakfast, took cookies to preschool, got to wear a crown at preschool and give little treat bags to all of her classmates. She also got to play with friends and a new toy (marble run) she received for her birthday. She even had some prime rib for supper.

She's in bed now and I had to get her picture after we had turned the lights out, because I'd forgotten to take her birthday picture today.

Tomorrow we're going to Ames to watch the VEISHEA parade and perhaps introduce some friends to geocaching. Unfortunately, the forecast (which I hope is wrong) is for a high of 38 degrees. It's not the first year we've needed mittens for the parade.

Happy Birthday little squirt! We're glad you're in our family!

Food tastes better when your eyes are closed

2008-04-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

Today after story time at the library, we decided to go to Target to get some supplies. During the car ride, Little Squirt and I discussed where to eat lunch. Her first choice was the snack bar at Target. I do like eating at Target if they have Pizza Hut pizza (Super Target), however, the Target we were going to microwaves little frozen pizzas and they just aren't as good. LS finally suggested she would like to eat at Applebee's and she would eat teeny tiny cheeseburgers. I was happy.

When we got to our booth, Little Squirt hit her ear when she fell into the table. At this point, our adventure went sour. The good news was she didn't scream....she just snuggled and whimpered. The bad news...this lasted for a LONG time. She insisted on ordering 2 cheeseburgers for her lunch. I thought one would have been sufficient, but she strongly disagreed when I suggested that to the waitress. Since we were already in a precarious situation, we ordered two.

When the food arrived (I had spinach salad and tomato basil soup, in case you're wondering) she still had her eyes closed, however, her mood improved somewhat. Believe it or not, she ate both cheeseburgers... with her eyes....closed. She quietly squawked like a bird each time she wanted a bite, and I put the burger up to her mouth. She also drank most of her chocolate milk in this manner.

As we were walking toward the car after our meal, she opened her eyes and was back to her old self. I'm wondering if she'll now close her eyes every time we go to Applebee's.

We bought party hats and party favors for LS's birthday party. She is pretty excited about her party. We're having her party at McDonald's with her friends and she is hoping for a Tom and Jerry birthday cake. We'll see if we can pull that one off.

It rained all day long. No soccer. Bummer!

Soccer Game #1

2008-04-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

Big Squirt had early dismissal from school today. We spent the afternoon organizing the toy room.

Tonight was her first soccer game of the season. They only had one practice this week due to the weather. BS was pretty frustrated at times because both teams kept kicking the ball out of bounds. Toward the end of the game, she got really tired. She didn't have a very big snack before the game....gotta remember to give her more food before the game next week.

BS is going to have a sleep over at her grandparents' house tomorrow night. She is looking forward to it. Little Squirt says she'll miss BS, but she isn't yet ready to spend the night. We're hoping she'll be a bit jealous of all the fun they have together. We also think they're going to miss each other and that might have an impact on LS.

We're having fun now!

2008-03-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

Today was a busy day. School, moms group, lunch, preparing for Daisy Scout meeting, buying supplies for meeting at Wal-Mart, picking up Big Squirt at school in the rain, going to story time, getting ready for scout meeting with Little Squirt's help, scout meeting, and Pampered Chef party. Whooo! I was glad to see the wine at the last event! Overall, it was a fairly good day.

As I was doing stomach crunches this morning and counting out loud, Little Squirt asked if she was in time-out and asked what she had done to be in time-out. I had to explain that I was counting how many exercises I had done, and she was not in trouble. It was kinda humorous.

After we picked up Big Squirt at school I was asking her to tell me about her day. As she answered I felt like I was in that new Tide commercial, where's there's a talking stain. Little Squirt was yelling gibberish as Big Squirt was talking. LS finally started screaming. BS and I both encouraged her to scream louder and louder. At one point, BS said "mom, if she keeps screaming like that she'll lose her voice"! I told her that was exactly what I was hoping would happen. We then resumed telling her to scream louder and that we couldn't hear her. Hee-hee-hee. Finally she grew tired of screaming.

At our Daisy meeting, the girls who attended completed 2 more petals by doing 2 crafts. We're half done with the petals now. It's kinda crazy, but it seems the girls are having fun.

Yesterday, we played outside a lot. After Big Squirt got home, the girls transformed the tower into a pirate ship complete with signs declaring: "we are pirates. we are mean. we are rich. we have a lot of gold." Unfortunately, the rain we had this morning demolished the signs. Seems they didn't weather proof the pirate ship like they did the doll house.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the weekend. No big plans here, but I'm sure we'll find something fun to do.

The Easter Bunny hopped through the snow

2008-03-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

Big Squirt was about as excited last night as she was Christmas Eve. She kept coming out to the living room after she went to bed to report that she just couldn't fall asleep. She went on and on saying it was weird, but she was probably going to stay awake all night and then the Easter Bunny wouldn't bring her anything....and on and on. She eventually fell asleep.

When Cool Daddy-O and I turned in for the night, it was snowing lightly. We had a light dusting of snow this morning. Fortunately, Mr. E.B. left the Easter packages inside the storm door to keep them safe from any critters (aka the neighborhood feral cats).

The girls were delighted with their stuff. Fortunately Little Squirt didn't make any comments about any of the stuff that was purchased when we were together. I think it was long enough ago that perhaps she had forgotten we had purchased the items.

On our way home from our zoo trip, we stopped and purchased a "little sister" dress and some matching pony tail holders . Here they are in their dresses (and sweaters) before we left for church. We were in a hurry and didn't have time for a really good shot...so Big Squirt doesn't look very happy.

After lunch we hid the plastic eggs once and the girls put on winter coats, mittens and boots and found them. BRRRR.....it was COLD and windy. The girls still had fun and grandpa and uncle D. got to watch them running around. It was worth it, as they were able to eat more candy.

I think we'll take a break from the candy tomorrow and focus on carrots and cauliflower. Spring Break is officially over and the girls return to kindergarten and preschool in the morning.

Even though there still may be a teeny tiny pile of snow at school, I am NOT sending snow pants to school tomorrow :)

Fun with eggs

2008-03-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

Today's fun included boiling eggs, coloring them, and then hiding plastic ones. Big Squirt sat on the counter watching the eggs bubble as they came to a boil. Little Squirt had a lot of fun making orange and green eggs. Big Squirt was in charge of the other colors. Both girls were much more independent this year with this process. In total, we colored 2 dozen eggs. Only a few were cracked, but we decided to color them anyway. I'm looking forward to some egg salad sandwiches for lunch this week.

Cool Daddy-O and I then put small pieces of candy in the plastic eggs. Big Squirt searched for pink and purple eggs and Little Squirt searched for yellow and orange. We also hid 4 bonus blue eggs in exceptionally tricky spots. We hid them twice and then the girls hid each other's once. After that, they came inside and sorted out the good stuff inside the eggs.

Tonight I prepared some food for our family dinner tomorrow. Perhaps I'll include pictures of the desserts in tomorrow's post....made 3 so far...one should look very "Eastery" when it's done.

The highlight of the day? Well, that was finding perennials popping up through the spring soil, including: daffodils, tulips, peonies, fern leaf peonies, irises, and sedum.

WhooHoooooo.... It's SPRING at last!