Saturday, May 24, 2014

Oh My!


No we didn't have another child.
We borrowed a blond one!
Just kidding, we had the joy of watching this little guy for the day.
We had so much fun with him!



By now most people know I'm having a couple of surgeries in a few weeks.
If not, you know now.
In anticipation of my recovery period afterwards, I'm prepping Nolan's quilt.
I'm hoping to have the quilt ready so I'll have something to do while I'm recovering.



Nolan chose the stars.
I think they will look quite nice once it's finished.



These are the real reason for this post.
We have officially picked these as our new favorite muffin.
They are chocolate chip raspberry.
I can't begin to tell you how yummy these are!



I asked Connor if they were good enough to try again someday.
He said they were good enough to make again right now!
~ I'm glad I made a double batch! ~

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

St. Louis


We were in St. Louis last week.
We had to go for medical reasons.
(Those of you who knew & prayed for us, thank you.)
We thought, "Hey, let's go camping and have a mini-vacation while we're there."
Great idea in theory.
We knew there was rain in the forecast.
It would literally change from one hour to the next.
So we got out the tent and prepped it for rain...
i.e. applying seam sealant and letting it dry in our living room.
Did you know we have a large cabin tent?
At 10' x 14' it takes up half of our living room.


When we finally got to St. Louis it had been raining for quite a while
and the forecast changed (again).
It was going to be cold and rainy for the entire week.
We stayed at the KOA on Route 66 who graciously let us upgrade to a cabin.
Praise God for an available cabin!
This Route 66 picture was taken when we were leaving...
and that's when the sun finally came out.



We were so thankful to be in this cabin.
It was very clean.
It had a full-size bed & a bunk bed for the boys.
We also had electricity and cable!
The weather was so crummy we only lit one fire.
It literally rained almost the entire time we were there.
On the morning that we left the low was 39 degrees!


We did manage a very cold trip to the zoo.


We pet stingrays.


They were a lot softer than I had thought they would be.




This is funny because Connor is not fond of bugs.



I thought this was an interesting item in the bug building.
Gee, I'm glad Connor's allergic to soy!
We keep telling everyone that soy is added to everything... even slugs!


We spent a lot of the time at the zoo finding indoor exhibits to see.
The butterfly place was one of the warmer ones.
Did I mention it was cold and drizzly?


This was the hippo exhibit.
I didn't get a good picture because it was so popular with
the 20 buses of kids from area schools.


This was the best hippo shot I got.
Which amazes me because of how many kids were crammed at this spot!


We wanted to see the elephants.
We walked for what seemed like forever in the cold drizzly weather.
We finally get to the right place and this is what we saw.
A mallard.


We finally found the elephants.
I'm wondering if they weren't so fond of the weather either.


But this one cooperated for a picture.


They weren't getting sprinkled on inside the cave.


This was another place we could go to get out of the rain.


For some reason this guy just swam down and laid his head on this rock.


He stayed there long enough to get two pictures.
Must have been tired, I guess.




We would like to go back to the zoo when the weather is nicer.



There were some cliff like rocks near the campground.
Again, this was taken on our way home.
The blue skies didn't show up until then!


We decided to stop at the arch on our way out of town.


You don't realize how large the arch is until you try to take a picture.
It's taller than the Seattle Space Needle.


It was sunny but very chilly and windy!



We opted to not ride to the top of the arch...
and we were OK with that!


We visited the Museum of Westward Expansion at the arch.




Monday, May 12, 2014

Going, Going, Gone


No, we're not getting rid of Casey.
We were thinking of tossing out her blanket until
we realized how much she loved her 'blankie'.
It's now back in the doghouse.


A friend of ours caught this good-sized (for our area) snake in our barn lot.
Dwayne managed to walk right past it and not even see it!


This is our new tree-less view of the field.


Last night's tornado confirmed storm took down the rest of our dead tree.
Thankfully it just missed the fence!
I will definitely miss the birds that used to nest in it.
Especially the beautiful little blue birds.


The cows came over to see what was going on.
I didn't get a picture until they had lost interest.
By this time they were waiting to be let into the barn lot.
You know, the grass is greener over there.
In the last 12 months we have lost 3 out of 4 of our biggest trees.