It's all About the Air

With Spring finally arriving (sort of - what's up 30 degree mornings?!), it's got Ben in his 'outdoor project' mode. Saturday he spent most of the day leveling out the landscape around the shed with his skid loader, and by the time he was done, he had a LOT of extra dirt piled up. Of course we couldn't just let it sit in a big ol' pile of ugly dirt. What to do?

Duh.

Jake directing traffic on the course

There goes Will!

Charlie's Turn

Jake bringing up the rear

Show Off!

Not sure how long he'll be content without a motor....

Over-committed

This year, when I started to plan for our annual Family Fitness Event at school, I called upon the girl who organized all the food for last year... she turned me down, saying she didn't have time as she was 'over-committed'. At the time, I kind of snickered to myself, thinking it was a nice (and original) way to get out of doing it.

I even repeated it to a few friends with an eye roll.

This morning, when I went to grab a container for Ben's lunch... and had to deal with THIS for the umpteen month in a row...


I had an epiphany.


(Have you ever wanted to eat your own words?)


I AM OVER COMMITTED! :/

Destination: St. Louis! (Part 2)

I had to separate these into two postings, because the City Museum deserves a lot more page space than everything else. It's a museum in NAME ONLY. It might be the most awesome place on the planet - and everyone... EVERYONE needs to go there right away!

Basically, the CM is an old shoe factory (like 10 stories high and 600,000 square feet) of an artist's imagination gone WILD. It is packed with tunnels, caves, incredible sculpture, mosaics, art activities, INSANE outdoor climbing structures -- I cannot even describe its awesomeness. Even Ben was literally WOW'd. GO THERE! Did I mention it has a SEVEN story slide?

A team of 20 artists are constantly working on this place, welding, clipping tiny beautiful tiles, sculpting, adding nooks, crannies, incredible artwork, etc! We didn't even see everything that was there. We want to go back. Our kids said it was the MOST FUN THEY'VE HAD IN THEIR LIFE. Want to go there yet?

Everywhere you turn there's something to be explored... (keep in mind,

Note the INCREDIBLE mosaic tile flooring everywhere...

Remember that outdoor climbing structure I mentioned?

See that school bus hanging off the top floor? Oh, and yes, that's Ben and Jake climbing inside that arched wire structure waaayyyy off the ground!

Here's Jake inside one of the many caves we explored...

Hidden slides and chutes lurked around every corner. (and I have to mention there was a GIANT pipe organ inside the caves -- like huge. The circus music it was playing just added to the one-of-a-kind crazy artsy fun experience.

This is a view from the bottom of the caves up to the top of the 7 story slide. As you can see, there are steps going in about 20 directions... all different avenues to the top. NUTS!


I have lots more pics, but none of them does this place justice.

We finished off the day with the biggest ice cream floats we've ever had.

F.U.N.

Destination: St. Louis! (Part 1)

Since Spring Break around these parts no longer lasts a full week, it limits our options as to where we can go.. This year, we decided to make the five hour drive to St. Louis. The forecast in St. Louis for the week before and the week after was a wonderful 70 degrees. While we were there... a balmy 35. YEAH.

Our first stop was the National Transportation Museum. It consists of mostly trains, which the kids thought was really cool - BUT, it is a mostly outdoor experience, and considering it started to snow like crazy while we there - cool took on a whole new meaning.



Even though it was still chilly, the sun was shining the next morning, so we hit the ARCH. Obviously, a must-see. The kids really liked looking out the top (which actually made me feel a little carsick).


After that, we hit the Science Museum. We spent over five hours there! The kids were able to build model arches and bridges out of all kinds of different materials. We saw 'Tornado Alley' at the IMAX (awesome), and visited the Grossology exhibit.

Hmmm I wonder if I could install one of these in our house to help with the electricity bill?

A Year Gone By

Yikes.

My kids got a glimpse of a picture from this blog today, and started scanning it like crazy to see what else was on it. Now that they can read and operate a computer, this little bloggy thing has HUGE appeal to them.

And of course, it has sat untouched for roughly a year.

Bad Mom.

OK let, see.... we had Halloween:

We had our family pictures taken

We got two 3-wheelers (don't ask)

We had Thanksgiving at our house

We welcomed a new nephew - Mason Dudley!

We had a Superbowl Party - GO PACK!

We made a HUGE snowman

and
I went to 'Tony & Tina's Wedding' in my crazy zebra dress

I think that gets us up to speed. Sort of. Missing a lot of the fun details - but this will have to do. :/

Up to our knees in trees!

Planting trees has been on our to-do list for a while now, and this weekend, we finally got around to really doing it. After a couple trips to the nursery last week to scope out the selection, and lots of Ben and I standing in different locations in the yard pretending to be trees, we came up with a plan. We selected 1 Ginko, 2 Willows, 2 Apple, 1 Pin Oak, and 1 Autumn Blaze Maple. We planted all but the Ginko and Maple ourselves, which was a lot LOT of work, but it was actually a lot of fun too. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of the tree spade with our two bigger trees!

Success!

So much happiness for only a buck.

Ever since we went to our neighborhood party a week ago, Jacob has been talking about S'mores non-stop. He enjoyed a few s'mores by the fire that night and it left a lasting impression on him - so much so, that it's been the first thing out of his mouth in the morning on many occasions, "Momma, can we make s'mores?" (ummm sorry, not at 6:10 in the morning!).

Yesterday, our town hosted their annual town-wide garage sales, and I promised the folks running our library bake sale that I'd stop by and purchase a few treats. The older boys, of course, wanted to tag along, and being a pair who can't resist a good bargain, they headed out with their piggy banks in tow... literally. After snagging a package of cinnamon rolls (hoping they might serve as a stand-in for S'mores), we started making the rounds around town. At my first stop, I found a case of really neat pilsner glasses FOR TWO BUCKS. Score! The boys were pretty tight with their money for the first few stops, but at about the 4th house, they both hit the jackpot. We found video game books, board games, trading cards, legos, bionicles, a like-new big barrel youth baseball bat (for FIVE BUCKS!!!!) ((seriously, that was the best find ever)), batting gloves, and more.

Our most unique (and hilarious) find was this set of classic FM wireless intercoms.

The box alone makes me laugh! Our original idea was to put one out in the shed so we could talk to dad from the house... but we tried that - and the distance was a little too far. Instead, the boys each plugged one in near their nightstand so they can have pleasant conversations before bed... (WILL!!!! ANSWER ME!!!!)

My last stop on the way home was the icing on the cake. The kids didn't even get out of the car, because they were to engrossed in the backseat with all their new items. As soon as I approached the perimeter of the displayed items, I spied an item we could not live without.... An indoor/outdoor S'mores maker!!! For $1.00!!!

Look at the proof below - happiness for a buck!