Growing Everyday

Along with Grandma and Grandpa Westberg, we took a day trip to Squire Boone’s Caverns. Squire Boone is the brother of Daniel Boone. There is a whole little kitschy town set up with a place to mine rocks, a bakery, and even a candy shop. To get to the cave you have to walk down a spiral staircase consisting of 73 steps. Now, it is dark and damp going down these stairs. The kids were very brave and with a little coaxing from Mom and Dad made it down into the cave. The cave was amazing. There was an underground waterfall that we walked over, rim dams, soda straws, and so many other formations. It was really worth the drive to see the caves.

Beka and Jared have inherited a love of Fishing from their Grandpa Westberg. Grandpa and Grandma Westberg bought them their first rod and reel and will forever be their heroes because of it. Jared and Beka just love to go to the pond and fish. The pond in the neighborhood is wonderful for kids fishing. There are a lot of hungry little fish, so you never have a long wait between casting and pulling out a fish. Andrew gets run ragged putting worms on the hooks and taking fish off the hooks. I can put the worms on but I still haven’t figured out how to get the fish off. To give Andrew a bit of a break and to spend sometime together, Grandpa and Grandma came over to fish with us. I think a good time was had by all.

We caught a glimpse of a turtle while we were out there.

Beka and Jared were bugging me incessantly to buy some worms so we could go fishing (which will be a different post). So we bought some worms, but in my house you can’t just leave the worms alone. We got the worms out, put some non-toxic paint on paper, and then the worms crawled through the paint to make a painting. To make an extravagant painting you would have to have much more patience than Beka and Jared can achieve.

While I was cleaning up the paint, Beka and Jared decided to have worm races.

And, just to prove that Beka plays with the worms just as much as any boy would. And bribe material for when she is 16.

I posted on facebook one day that we were making elephant toothpaste. Steve Spangler has a great kid-friendly way to make it. We followed his directions and it worked out perfectly. Beka and Jared’s faces tell the whole story. We will definitely have to try this again sometime. It was a blast and actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.

Over the 4th of July weekend, the kids and went to Quincy to visit the grandparents. Beka and Jared had two requests for the visit. One, they wanted a pretzel from Auntie Anne’s pretzels. Two, we had to go play at Dewey School because they have the cool old school merry-go-rounds. We accomplished both of those. Plus, we made mud souffle a la worm. I, also, had the opportunity to visit with most of my extended family that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was a wonderful time.

In the picture below, Grandpa is pretending to go across the monkey bars, but he is really cheating because he is waaay too tall to actually have to work at the monkey bars.

We traveled back to Peoria to participate in Richwood’s picnic. It was a wonderful day. We were able to re-connect with so many people and had a lot of great conversations. We really miss our church family there and were so glad they didn’t mind us crashing their picnic.

Jared was a little leery of going at first. "Mom, it’s juuuust a picnic." But then we arrived and there was a bounce castle thing and all was well. I think he spent most of the afternoon in there. Beka was all about the face painting. I felt so sorry for the ladies in charge of the activity…Beka basically stalked them until they painted her face. There were so many other activities: pinwheel making, beaded bug making, and balloon animals. It was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday.

I do not really enjoy taking the kids swimming. They love it and we go and I am sure there will be pictures of that sometime this summer. But I just do not like packing up all the stuff to go, fighting the crowd in the pool and various other things. So for me, splash parks are great. Beka and Jared get wet and stay cool. Fun things abound to play with. In most cases, playgrounds are nearby for when they get tired of the water. And best of all, I don’t have to get in the water so I can sit and read. I know that is a selfish reason, but I have to keep my sanity somehow.

Every summer at least once, I let the kids wash the cars, bikes, and whatever else they drag out and then I blog about it. So here it is.

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Attached to the zoo is a Butterfly Garden. As I have mentioned, Beka is totally in love and enthralled with butterflies. So the Komodo dragon was for Jared and the butterflies were for Beka. I think she would have stayed there all day if we had let her. It is a beautiful and very peaceful place to visit. Plants are growing everywhere. Butterflies are fluttering by. You just feel dazzled by the natural beauty all around you.

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The Zoo here has Komodo dragons on display for a limited time. Jared loves Komodo dragons. I don’t know how many TV specials he has sat though about them. When he heard they were going to be at the zoo, he just had to go. So Andrew and I packed them up and took them to the zoo.

The baby elephant and bear were especially cute and had some funny antics. The kids really enjoy the rhino exhibit, but you will have to ask them about that. We were able to pet sharks and watch penguins dive into the water. There is one really huge walrus there. We had a great afternoon just hanging out as a family.