Iowa Road Trip

We recently took a road trip to Iowa to visit my sister and her family, see my cousin and attend the Iowa State Fair. My sister Karen lives less than 4 hours away and that drive is nothing for our kids anymore. Living in India made our kids world class travelers for sure! We had a great time visiting. My cousin Lynne and her son Blayne from Minnesota also drove down. I haven't seen Lynne for years and had never met her son. It was a great time and the boys had fun meeting their cousin! We only wish Lynne's husband could have made the trek down.
The state fair was awesome. Some of the highlights were the butter cow (yes carved from butter a full size cow), an enormous size bull and boar, lots of animals, quilting display (I was the only one that liked this) and seeing Ricky Carmichael (some famous Nascar driver the boys know). Emily loved seeing the cowgirl contest where not only the cowgirls wore hair extensions but their horse did too! I have never seen so much primping going on in a horse barn. I was amazed when Karen informed me that the western show saddles cost around 5K!
While at Karen's we got to ride one of her many horses. Emily loved it! In fact she asked the whole way home if she could please have a horse. Matt (Karen's husband) has recently become a bee keeper so we to watch him check his hives and no one got stung! When we left Iowa we left Karen and Matt with a few less animals...a new bunny named Mr. Oswald and kitten named Griffin. Before leaving we headed to a nearby reservoir where the kids had fun playing in the water and burying Logan in the sand. It was really a great weekend!

Karen and Emily doing the cowgirl wave

Logan and Allyson

Matt and his bees

Mason, Blayne (their cousin from Minnesota) and Logan

Lynne, Karen and Jennifer

Griffin and Mr. Oswald road home together

Logan, Emily and Mr. Oswald

Logan being buried by Mason

Karen and I had fun meeting these guys...cardboard ones that is!

Ricky Carmichael

Life's been busy!

Life has been really hectic these past few weeks. I have lots of things to share and photos to post so hopefully within the next few days I will get them posted. Here is what we have been up to:
Camping/hiking trip
Trip to Iowa to see my sister and attend the Iowa State Fair
Getting ready for school
School starting
Sea shipment arriving
Trip to Indiana to see our niece Bethany marry Andrew

So several weeks back we decided in the interest of time Ted and the boys would camp down at Jubilee State Park, Emily and I decided to sleep in the comforts of home. In conjunction with this we thought we would take advantage and hike the many miles of trails they have. We just didn't realize how poorly the trails were maintained. Lots of weeds and lack of signs. We set out on a trail suggested by park staff. We hiked for about an hour and the path kept getting worse and worse. But our logical thinking kept saying just keep going left and we're bound to head back to the campsite...wrong. We realized this when the path just pretty much ended, I think it was just a deer path. At this point I am grateful that there are no animals that will be eating us and no poisonous snakes to bite us! We realized we were totally lost when we heard a car off in the distance. We decided that we needed to head in the direction of the car instead of trying to retrace our steps back through the woods. We finally saw the road, climbing through 10 ft high weeds and climbing a barbed wire fence we reached the road! The road though just happened to be about 4 miles from the park entrance and then a few more miles to our campsite. I of course and wanting to stop and hitch hike. At this point I would have hitch a ride with a prison escapee (okay, maybe not). We kept walking and walking and walking. We reached the nearest highway. I constantly was telling Emily and Logan to get over because there was car coming. Ted being related to the Green's is about 1/4mile ahead with Mason, leaving me behind with Emily and Logan who are tired and thirsty. Yes, not only did we not have a cell phone or gps we had no water. We kept on walking with this guy stops and ask if we need help. I explained how we had gotten lost and asked how much farther the entrance to Jubilee Park was. He asked if we wanted a ride and I said I would love one but he had better ask my husband who was up ahead. Not dreaming Ted would accept a ride I couldn't have been more thrilled when Logan says that he was the hunter safety instructor for his class the previous week. Ted too recognized him and before you know it we were all hitching a ride back to the campsite. We felt pretty stupid but he hunts in the park and admitted himself to getting twisted around before. The next day after packing up the tent we toured Jubilee College and the kids played on the playground. We had beautiful weather! All in all it was a great time and one we can have lots of laughs about in the future. Of course the camera was around my neck the entire time so at least I had fun taking photos of our adventure!

A gorgeous day

Setting up camp

Playing with the fire...our kid's favorite thing to do!

The beginning our our "hike"

Logan picked me a bouquet of flowers

What we hiked through to get to the road

Mason has the right idea

Trying to figure out where we are

Logan and Emily resting

A herd of deer at dusk

Jubilee College

Playtime!

Logan and his new board

Logan recently bought a new skateboard and he is having so much fun with it. He likes me to take photos of him to see how much "air" he is getting. He will go outside for hours and jump around on this thing. Mason plays around on a friend's extra board. Mason is still trying to decide if he wants to buy a skateboard or a new airsoft gun. Decisions decisions. I just hope no one breaks anything while playing around.

Being back in the US has meant a lot of work in my flowerbeds. I really like planting new flowers and seeing what comes back. Perennials are by far my favorite but annuals can add such a splash of color. Sydney has left most of the plants alone but she has done quite a bit of damage to one flower bed, but it will come out of it next year and hopefully she will get out of that puppy stage. Sydney is now four months old and is really growing! Millie loves to play with her. They are both great dogs!

Trip to the zoo

Last Sunday afternoon we headed to the Peoria Zoo to explore their new Africa! exhibit. The weather was fabulous, sunny with a light breeze but not too hot. Evidently we were not the only ones who felt the zoo would be a good activity for the day as the line was really long to buy tickets. But we soon discovered if you bought a membership at the table outside you got instantly in...well guess what we are now zoo members! We had actually considered buying a membership anyway as we just need to go once more for it to pay for itself. The zoo wasn't as good as we expected it might be but it is definitely an approval. They did do a very nice job on the Africa! exhibit, they just need to add elephants. The giraffes were probably our favorite. After leaving the zoo we walked across to the Botanical Gardens. Then we ventured to a really large wooden playground, but just Logan and Emily played. It appears that our teenager Mason is no longer interested in such things. They are all growing up so fast! Of course there were lots of other people out enjoying the park. Kids were riding bikes, people having barbecues, people were walking their dogs and snakes...yes that is right. There was a man that walked down the sidewalk with an enormous snake around his neck!

Mason and Logan in the botanical gardens

Mason

The guy walking a snake

Ted and his tractor

Ted has always loved tractors. He has an old John Deere B (I think 1947) that he likes to play on. He plows our garden, plows the snow and grades the road with it. Yes I did say road...we do pay taxes, a lot of them actually. We just happen to have a road commissioner that we have butted heads with many times and thus our section of the road is still gravel. Our neighbors really wish it wasn't but I actually don't mind the gravel. I figure it slows down the cars somewhat. So for now we just are content with our gravel section of the road and Ted can play on his tractor while the road commissioner does something other than fix our road!

Here are just a few other photos I have taken.

Ted's truck~ we can't wait for snow as it is a 4X4

Logan and Sydney

Millie and Sydney going for a swim

Just an old barn down the road

Mason at the 4H cat show...Cleo was terrible!