Growing Everyday

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.

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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.

Confession time. About six months after Jared was born, I decided I was going to be Supermom. The house was going to be clean all the time, I was going to lose all the baby weight, the kids were never going to have the TV babysitter, and we were all going to eat healthier. I will wait while all the moms finish laughing at my hormonal delusions. Anyway, during that time I bought this book. As you can imagine, I didn’t have the patience or concentration to do many of those Supermom things much less learn new recipes. So the book got shoved in a drawer and survived the packing of two moves.

Awhile ago, Natalie was talking about her family eat healthier and it got me thinking and I dug out the book. I must say things are going much more smoothly this time around. The kids are able to entertain themselves and I have a little more time to plan menus and such. The grocery budget isn’t thanking me, yet, but Andrew and Beka are loving the nights we have fish. Jared is actually trying a few new foods like the BBQ beef kabobs we had tonight. Only one night so far has been bad enough for mom to throw in the towel and take everyone to Burger King. Maybe if I can keep this going, I can do all those other Supermom things.

Tuesday night a storm with strong winds rolled through our town. The wind actually blew rain in to the house. It also knocked over several trees. A huge tree by our playground lost two limbs to the storm. But apparently, all the blown down branches make the best playground of all. The kids are climbing all over it, building at least two forts, and using their imaginations like never before. And it isn’t just my kids. All the neighborhood kids want to play at the tree and play, for the most part, nicely. I have had a great time just watching the kids climb and play.

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We took a quick visit to Quincy last weekend. Grandma and Grandpa Wiewel finally got to meet Kahla. Overall, the trip went really well. We were able to just hang out and relax without rushing around. We took the kids to South Park and stomped through the creek. We saw Uncle Joe’s house. We enjoy the good cheesy breadsticks. From some reason Indiana cannot make good cheesy breadsticks. Beka and Jared’s favorite part was visiting Dewey School. The playground there is awesome with all the climbing equipment and the old time merry-go-rounds. Hopefully, we will get to visit again this summer.

Oh, and no pictures because everytime we left the house, I forgot it.