Riverfront Park on Saturday

Yesterday, we took the kids to Riverfront park.

It has a really cool slide there that is a giant Radio Flyer wagon.

Jacob LOVES the monkey bars and spent most of his time doing those. He's our only one that's light enough and strong enough to make it to the end. And he's proud of that!

Hannah took Hailey down the slide quite a few times. What a sweet sister.

I took Hailey off to watch the ducks in the river while everyone else headed off to play some football.

She enjoyed watching them. We left when a goose came along making lots of racket trying to scare all the other birds away. Bread hog.....

My handsome guy.....

Playing football with the boys.

Really, it's more of a game of "Daddy throws it, they all run for it, wrestle each other for it, and run back without getting tackled. Repeat." But they all have fun.

Laughing at Daddy and the silly boys from the sidelines.

Then, Hailey wanted to join in. Brothers were gentle with her.

Fumble!

Going for the touchdown. Slowly.

We broke from the football game to hunt down some facilities.

We headed to the carousel building.

Inside, we found an antique carousel from 1906.

And a Zoltar! Remember that movie Big in the 80's? I should've unplugged it and popped a quarter in and made wish to be "skinny". I might've woke up a really happy woman this morning! (maybe next time...)

After we left the carousel building, we headed down the street to the Olive Garden.

It's the only Olive Garden in town and we decided to use a giftcard that we were given to get some dessert to take home.

While Daddy was getting the dessert we took some photos across the street.

(basically, mom was practicing with her new camera....)

I think I got some decent shots.

(Thank you Hannah for modeling for me. Oh, and being my daughter.....I love you.)

Fun Saturday

Today we set out to do some geocaches. We haven't been geocaching since I was 5 months pregnant with Hailey, so about 2 years.

The first one was a quick snag at a bowling alley near our house. It was in a magnetic key holder on a lightpole in the parking lot.

Our second one was at a residence. It was hidden in one of their bushes near the sidewalk. We snagged a travel bug there as well. We intend on moving him a little West in a couple of weeks.

Third cache was at an old cemetary. We had to jump the fence because there was too much snow to go through the gate. We couldn't find it. Too much snow. ::snort::

Fourth cache was on a hiking trail. We pulled up to the trailhead and decided that there was too much snow to hike the 1/2 mile. But, Hannah spotted a moose! I stalked him for about 20 mins or so. He was up on a ridge so I wasn't too close. I did have a funny moment though where he started kindof running and so I started running back to the car. Turns out he was running with, not towards me. I was having images of being slapped around and knocked over by a moose though as I was running. (g) I'm sure I provided some entertainment for Michael and the kids:)

After we quit harassing the moose we were headed home and spotted some deer going down into a valley. We pulled over and I was able to get a couple of pictures. We could see where they were going into a residential area on the other side of the valley so we drove over there and stalked them some more....

Some of the people lay out corn for the deer. We got to see about 10 of them just strolling through the neighborhood eating dinner.

It was a fun day.

Yearly dental visit

Last week the kids visited the dentist. Our new dentist has an ocean theme to the whole office.

A pirate ship for the kids to play on in the waiting room.

Saltwater aquariums in the hallway.

The boys patiently waiting for the dentist to come look at their teeth.

Hailey, cautiously taking it all in.

Enjoying her new toothbrush on the way home.

A Pond.

Must throw rocks into it.

It's the law of childhood.

Mom. Will you quit taking pictures already....

P.S. No, I will not.....

Sharp-shootin'

In October, I asked my Dad if he would pretty please teach the boys about gun safety. I have at least one boy who is pretty much fearless and wanted them to acquire a healthy fear of guns. And my Dad's the bestest sharp-shootin' deputy around. (really!) Couldn't ask for a better teacher!

Dad owns 5 acres, and Saturday seemed like the perfect day to do some shootin'. After some safety lessons on how to hold it and such they harassed the neighbors for half and hour.

Even Hannah got in on it.

They were shooting a black powder rifle. Bang but no bullet.

Then Dad pulled out his big boy. He first shot the tree trunk to demonstrate how much damage the "little" bullet can make. It worked. They have a very healthy fear now:) After that he shot into the dirt so they could try and find the slug. See them running up the hill to find it.

No such luck. It's gone forever.

Thanks Grampa. We had fun!!!