Field trip: Henry's Plant Farm

Our church music class summer field trip a week and half ago was to a place called Henry's Plant Farm.

It's a nursery with all sorts of plants, but also animals and gardens to walk around.

Trying to take a nice photograph of this frog on such a pretty lily pad.

All the kids checking out the frog. Princess Sparkley is crouched in the middle with the purple shirt. Boy is standing on her left in the stripey blue shirt.

Boy checking out the frog.

This is hugely brave for Princess Sparkley. She's totally terrified of petting farm animals. She went up to these donkeys on her own.

(As a side story, a few weeks ago we were at the Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa Zoo where she refused to touch any of the animals in the petting zoo. The next exhibit were giant tortoises. They were fenced in with little logs standing on end. There was a space of about two inches between two of the little logs and one of the tortoises had his head lined up right there looking out. Princess Sparkley immediately touched his nose. We were so proud of her for being so brave, it's totally in contrast to how she is. But at the same time, she'd just pet a wild zoo animal, a tortoise, sure. But it wasn't in the petting zoo.)

Princess Sparkley learns to swim... sort of

Princess Sparkley had swim lessons the first two weeks in June. She did great, way better than I would have ever expected. Mainly because they kept the level one class (4-5 year olds) in the zero depth entry part of the pool where the deepest it gets is about two feet. She didn't pass to level two, only because she failed every part of swim lessons that involved getting her face in the water. She'd even cheat. When the teacher would say, "I still see some tops of heads that are dry, you better dunk your head under." Princess Sparkley would cup her hand and dump a tiny handful of water on the top of her head to get her hair wet. So tricky.

Last week and this week I'm in swim lessons with Boy. (He was three in April, so he's the biggest kid in the mom and tot class by a long shot, but he has to be with me until he's four.) We went swimming as a family on Saturday and Princess Sparkley let me dunk her head in the water a few times. Much improvement. And Boy is destined to be our little swimmer. He doesn't cling to my arms for dear life like his sister always does.

Princess Sparkley is the furthest person to the left in the purple bathing suit.

On the last day of class they turned on all the water features.

Princess Sparkley and her teacher are being the alligators, chasing all the other kids back to the wall.

It was so nice to know that she was really enjoying herself. She had a blast.

Potty Update

We've been trying to get Boy to use the potty for what seems like forever now. Our kids are less than two years apart, so we never really packed up the little potty once Princess Sparkley was done with it. I've been bribing Boy with movies. He can watch some video if he sits on the potty while he watches. And he'll sit there for like 45 minutes and nothing will come out. Then he requests a diaper and within minutes has peed or pooped in it.

Finally they other day he peed. My husband threw him a parade and they marched around outside and waited for me to return from the store. Since then he's peed about once a day. He earns ice cream each time so we've made it his assignment to make sure he earns us all ice cream each night because it's so hot.

And at last he pooped, sort of. He showered after swim lessons really quickly and then I handed him off to Princess Sparkley while I showered with the assignment that when I got out he had to have something on his bum (ie: diaper, pull-up, underpants). He was still naked when I got out a few minutes later. He ran past me to the play room. Then a minute or two later he came and told me he thought maybe poo poos needed to come out and he needed to sit on the potty. Which is basically code for, "I already pooped." So I look in the play room and there's a tiny little pile of poop on the floor. Lovely. He went and sat on the potty and after about five minutes he squeezed out one more tiny pellet of poop. So if that counts, he has now successfully pooped on the potty.

Funeral Homes

On the corner of our street is a funeral home. I'm sure at some point I've had to explain this to Princess Sparkley. Yesterday we were on our way to Boy's swim lessons, with a 9 year old girl from the ward I hired to sit with Princess Sparkley while Boy and I swim when we drive past the funeral home and Boy says, "That's where they kill people." Princess Sparkley responded, "That's not where they kill people." Which is when I heard the conversation. And the 9 year old girl from our ward giggled. Our son thinks we live down the street from somewhere that they kill people and he doesn't have a problem with that.

Later that afternoon a giant bug that I like to call a Mosquito Eater was on our screen door. Both of my kids were freaking out. I explained to them that I thought it was the type of bug that ate mosquitos and so it was okay. Plus it was on the outside of the screen anyway. Boy then went on to explain to Princess Sparkley that Mosquito Eaters eat people. I tried to explain to him that if there was a bug outside our screen that ate people, didn't he think I'd shut the sliding glass door and make sure we were all safe. He didn't get it.

Lift Fork

A few weeks ago we were at Home Depot and Boy kept saying he saw something. I couldn't figure out what he was trying to tell me. And for the most part, I understand almost everything he says now. Finally I figured out he was trying to tell me he saw a forklift. But he kept calling it a lift fork. How cute is that? He still does it, weeks later. I correct him each time, but I sort of hope he continues to call it a lift fork. Just how we wished he'd always call Princess Sparkley by his nickname for her instead of finally calling her by her real name (which sadly, he does now).

Baker Bob at Great Harvest Bread

Our Music Class field trip this week was to Great Harvest Bread Co. We did this tour last year and it was great. The owner does a fabulous job showing how it starts with wheat growing in a Kansas field, talks about The Little Red Hen, and it's very hands on for the kids.

Wheat growing.

Grinding the wheat.

Kids all got a handful of everything to dump into the giant bowl.


Everyone with a hand on the giant paddle/spoon to stir.


Princess Sparkley and Boy waiting for flour to dump in.

Boy brushing flour off his hands.

Boy with four all over his face.

Rolling dough out on the floor (don't worry... we don't eat this dough).



Then we all go to the front of the shop and get a free, hot piece of bread and a coupon for a free loaf on a different visit. This day, we got Cinnamon Chip Bread. YUM!

Iowa Clouds

Cloud out the car window in Iowa. The camera doesn't do it justice.

Des Moines, Iowa

Me and the kids in front of the mini Statue of Liberty at the Des Moines State Capitol.

I read about these in this great book (well, great if you're in Kansas) called Kansas Curiousities by Pam Grout so I was excited to actually see one.

(from Wikipedia.org : Between 1949 and 1951, approximately 200 100-inch (2.5 m) replicas of the statue, made of stamped copper, were purchased by Boy Scout troops and donated to various towns in the United States. The mass-produced statues are not great art nor meticulously accurate (a conservator notes that "her face isn’t as mature as the real Liberty. It’s rounder and more like a little girl’s"), but they are cherished, particularly since 9/11. Many have been lost or destroyed, but preservationists have been able to account for about a hundred of them, and BSA Troop 101 of Cheyenne, Wyoming has collected photographs of over 50 of them.)


The two most recent state capitols we've visited have been Lincoln, Nebraska, and now Des Moines, Iowa. They have both been fairly fancy as far as state capitols go, and surprising to me since they are sort of just Midwest farm states. The capitol in Des Moines is by far the most impressive that I've seen. Although it looks as though it's about to undergo a huge renovation (peeling wall paper, new landscaping, etc.). Plus we walked away with a bunch of free stuff (ie: Capitol pencils, a coloring pages packet, a temporary tattoo, a magnet, etc.)


The Capitol.

The ceiling of the dome inside.

Princess Sparkley and Boy in front of the Capitol.

Downtown Des Moines, from the Capitol.

Adam-ondi-Ahman

On our way for a quick weekend trip to Des Moines, Iowa (because we'd never been, B needed counties, and school was out) we stopped at Adam-ondi-Ahman in Missouri. Here are pictures of Boy and Princess Sparkley. Mostly Boy just climbed on rocks so that he could jump off of them. It was about two weeks ago, towards the end of Sacrament Meeting at church that B claims Boy turned into a little Boy. He just started wrecking stuff of Princess Sparkley's for no reason. Since then he's been pretty boisterous, wild, and a bit reckless... jumping off of rocks, etc.

Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead

These pictures are from the Deanna Rose Children's Farmstead that is part of the Park and Rec Dept. in Overland Park, KS. I've been twice with family before we moved to Kansas. And this was my second music class fieldtrip... although we took B with us since we were on our way to Des Moines, Iowa, and no one else from our music class was there due to the possibly stormy weather.

Boy pets a baby cow. So brave.

Princess Sparkley pretends to be the horse while Boy sits on the saddle behind her.
Princess Sparkley on a pink tractor ride on toy.

Boy on his dream tricycle.



Plus, we saw a set of Elders there doing service in the cow barn, feed baby cows from a bottle and giving them baths. That's the service I would pick if I was a missionary. Seems like a lot more fun then some stuff you could end up doing.

Quotes

While traveling home last weekend from Des Moines, Iowa we promised our kids we'd stop and get ice cream somewhere. Where we stopped was Worth City, MO: Home of the Eight-Man Football State Championship team. B figured that it was the county seat and would have a decent place where we could get ice cream. What we ended up at was a tiny Hy-Vee grocery store. Reminiscent of Kents Market on 9th in Provo by Heritage Halls (where the Creamery on Ninth is now). We got out of the car and Princess Sparkley said, "This is NOT a Hy-Vee." So funny.

Tonight on a car ride home from Target we were practicing whistling and B whistled sort of high pitched as a dog walked in front of our car. He said, "I thought that dog was going to look at me like 'where's that noise coming from.'" Boy responded with, "Dog's don't talk, they go like "woof woof." Hilarious that he used the word "like."

Asparagus Picking

During the summer our Friday music class at church had fieldtrips each Friday instead since all of the older brothers and sisters are out of school. The last Friday in May we went asparagus picking just east of town at Pendleton's.

The kids on the John Deere tractor trailer... Princess Sparkley is third from the left in the hot pink rain coat. Boy is 3rd from the right with the yellow rain coat and Red Sox hat.

Kids and moms.

Boy picking asparagus.


I love asparagus. But mostly I was curious to see how it grows. It's just one little asparagus sticking out of the ground. This was the end of asparagus season, so most of the ones in the picture have gone to seed.

Kind of an odd picture of Boy, but it's the only one you can sort of see the asparagus growing. The two green sticks to the right of him that you can see are two overgrown/gone to seed asparaguses. There's a good one he's about to pick next to him, but it didn't show up in the picture.

St. Louis

On the same St. Louis trip Grandma went with us to the zoo. We were going to go to the Butterfly House, but it was closed on Monday. So we went to the zoo, which happens to have a tiny sort of butterfly house. The kids were a bit freaked out by the butterflies flying around, possibly landing on them. So I'm thinking the free zoo admission was a much better choice than $8/person for the butterfly house.

Here are Grandma and Princess Sparkley in the zoo's "butterfly house."


Grandma's neighborhood "we give you all our money" group had a double decker bus ride through their neighborhood, and an ice cream truck (free of charge) the Monday night we were there. We of course took full advantage. I may have to change my thinking on paying neighborhood dues. Again, I love how kids look licking ice cream.

Princess Sparkley was a drippy mess.

Mr. and Mrs. : Six years

Boy was born on our three year wedding anniversary. So this year we did his birthday on his birthday/our anniversary, and we celebrated our anniversary a month later when school was out. We dropped the kids off at the Grandparents in St. Louis, and we just enjoyed a day on our own. We shopped, we rented a row boat and rowed around Forest Park (well... B rowed, I sat). We stayed at the Fancy Marriott Renaissance Grand in downtown St. Louis and we ate out at two of our favorite restaurants that we don't have in our part of Kansas- TGIFridays and California Pizza Kitchen.


The St. Louis art museum in Forest Park. We usually end up parking by it and hiking to the zoo when we go.

Me, before B "accidently" drenched me by steering us into a fountain. We wanted a little spray to hit us, but just as we went past a huge gust of wind blew the entire fountain on to me. Argh.

B, rowing