Gorgeous October Weekend!

For October, the weekends have been gorgeous. And luckily we were able to take advantage of that, this past weekend. Wes and Sophie doing what they enjoyed most, getting dirty. And the rest of us enjoying the outdoors, and doing a few things that are relatively new! (For me the shotgun was a first, but won't be a last. I quite liked it.) Angie practiced to join the "Merry Men" in Sherwood Forest. (Looking at these pictures, I'm thinking it's a good thing they used arrows, and not shotguns. At least for now, give her a little more practice, and she'll be shooting as good as Dad/Grandpa, I'm sure of it.)

Mom's done this before, can you tell from her perfect stance and anchoring.

Riley also got to shoot the shotgun for the first time. (Hopefully not his last either. But he didn't seem to like it quite as much as I did. Of course he always has had a rather hard time with loud noises. I'm sure he'll get over it, though.)

(The cups were to muffle the noise - like Grandpa's earmuffs.)

These are definitely a couple of boys that love the outdoors. Good thing they both have gotten over the whole "My hands are dirty" stage, that made them want to wash there hands constantly. (Of course I do wish they could have kept a little of that, becuase I had to force and threaten them both to wash even when we got home.

Fire . . .

Good Food . . .

What more could you want.

But, I think one of the absolute highlights of the day for the boys, was riding in the back of Grandpa's truck. Something they have either never done, or have only done once before. And they both were thrilled by it!

Bad Hair Day!

Even though I don't have any daughters, I can still do a mean ponytail! (Or to be more exact 21 pony tails!)

New & Interesting

This weekend we did a couple of things that we have never done before! Both fun, and both things that we will be doing again! First, I decided to start a new hobby, and my fantastic hubby is supporting me in this, and so for our anniversary he bought me all of things that I needed for my new pastime, Archery. Riley then decided he thought it was great, and so we borrowed a bow and arrows and let him try it as well. He loved it so much, we went and bought him a small bow and arrow set that he can practice with. We even got Phil to try it, and even if he won't admit it all of the time, he quite liked it himself. Wes tried a couple of times, but he is just to darn small. (He really wants to be 5, he says.)

Anyway, Riley came home a week or so ago, and immediately stated that he wanted to enter the Reflections contest, and he wanted to drawing and do Photography. So every so often since then, I've let him try out my camera, and my different lenses, and then Saturday we took off to the Dinosaur museum. I've never been, and it was awesome. But Riley had complete control of the camera throughout the museum. And although he took around 200 pictures, most of which were quite blurry, he actually got some really good shots. We'll see what the reflections judges think of them.

(Okay, so I stole the camera at the very end, just to get a picture of Riley pretending to be an archeologist. The rest of the photos were all by him.)

Zoo!! Rain!? Crazy??

Two weeks ago we promised our two sons that we were going to go to the zoo! We quickly picked a date, Saturday October 4th, and placed it on the calendar for us all to see! Wes then asked daily if today was the day we were going to the zoo! The past week he asked more then ever, and Phil and I watched the weather daily, crossing our fingers hoping that it was going to be beautiful on Saturday! Finally Friday came and we ended up at the doctors office. Wes had “Strep” for the third time in the past two month, and also had the beginnings of a sinus infection. We got the antibiotics, and other medications all the while wondering if we should cancel the zoo day. But we decided, Wes had had such a bad week, sick and unhappy and just waiting for the zoo! So Phil and I decided that no matter what, we were headed to the zoo on Saturday morning! Wes wouldn’t be contagious, and we had other medications to keep him feeling well, and well - he just deserved to go!
So Saturday we got up, with the rain pouring down, and we grabbed Grandma - this was a very important thing to both of the boys - and we headed up to the Zoo. We kept hoping that the weather would be better the more north we got, or that the weatherman on channel 2 had been correct, and that the storm would be on again off again. We made sure to take umbrellas, and we went, thinking all the time, just how crazy we really were to go to the zoo while it was raining! And it definitely did rain, all day, non-stop!

But that didn’t stop us - and we are all thrilled that it didn’t! We had more fun at the zoo, then I think I’ve ever had before.
There was hardly anyone there, and we seemed to have the place all to ourselves. We very rarely shared any of the “houses” with anyone else, and if we did, it wasn’t for long. It was wet, but not too cold and not too hot. And the best thing of all was, all of the animals were out and about.
We saw the bears playing, the cougars cuddling, zebras and wolves were posing beautifully.

The Rhinos were out scratching and playing with the large logs inside of their habitat. One of the elephants was busy covering himself with hay and straw. The Giraffes must have been surprised at their unusually empty house, and sniffed at Phil’s hands and tried to lick my camera. The cheetah ran and tried to catch the magpies that courageously wanted to share his house.

The tiger prowled just two feet away from us, pacing back and forth. The gorillas were housed inside and we watched them feeding. - did you know that one of their favorite things to eat is elbow macaroni.

The penguins were playing, diving and swimming, instead of all crowded into the only shaded area they could find. Even the animals that are always housed inside, seemed to be more playful. The monkeys came over to the windows and watched us. The lemurs were jumping and doing tricks, the porcupine jumped up on the window and seemed to wave at Wes.

The turtles were swimming and moving and eating. Many of the snakes seemed to be checking things out, and moving around, and the frogs were all leaping and hopping.

And last but not least the boys got to do things like:
- Posing with all of the statues that are usually surrounded by crowds of people.

- Jump and dance in the large puddles, and play under the water that was falling from the roofs.

- Carry and play with umbrellas the whole day!

- Ride on the Carousel without waiting in line, and also got their pick of the animals.

Play in the gift shop, without getting in the way of anyone else, or fear of getting lost.

Yes, we were all soaked by the time we left, and we didn’t get to ride the train (I don’t know if that is such a bad thing) But over all it was a wonderful day, and I’m so glad that we took the time, even though we thought at first how crazy we were, but we had so much fun, and were able to spend a fabulous day just having fun with our family! I don’t think rain will ever stop us from doing something again!