Molly Bushman Memorial Friendship Bench

The Hillis Elementary principal asked what we thought about them purchasing a "friendship bench" in honor of Molly Bushman, their teacher and our family member who passed away on May 18th this year. 

She told us it was a bench where if a kid didn't have anyone to play with they could go there and others would be more likely to include them.  We looked them up and found the one below which everyone thought was splendid!

Molly was a beloved teacher which we saw evidence of when kids, both current and many, many years past,  came through the receiving line at her visitation.  They were the hardest people to meet as you could tell their little hearts were broken in the same, yet slightly different,  way that ours were.

It hurt then to see them suffering and I'm crying like a hungry baby right now typing that thinking back to a couple of those kids that we had/have deep concern for their well-being.  Their pain was palpable and it did not go unnoticed by our family!

So the friendship bench has been delivered and it currently sits in the office so that more parents whose kids had Molly, or that knew Molly directly will get to see it.

Hopefully it gets its rightful place in it's rightful time, on the playground so that a kid who has no friends to play with, can sit on the bench and other kids will see them and invite them into their games.  That's the idea and I pray that it works, because Molly would be proud.

I am proud of Molly as she has, and will continue to have, a lasting legacy with kids in the Des Moines Public School District... as it should be!

Its All In Your Technique

I am way behind, as usual. But more behind than the aforementioned usual. I'm not sure I can catch up at this point, but something tells me to keep on trying.

So while I have about 35 posts that require me to think and try to exude cleverness, this one requires none of that, and that, is exactly what I'm in the mood for after the mental beating I've taken at work lately.

So you'll just have to deal with it.

Our first Boston Terrier, Daisy, used to spread out on the tile floor in our apartment in what we called the 'H' position.  Imagine the letter H with her four paws being the upper and uh, "downer" tendrils of the 'H".  That's how she cooled off after playing.  Juno the Terrible, prefers the "side on the floor" method.  She's happy and keeps us happy as a family since she's not terrorizing us...

And speaking of terror, she just emptied the entire stuffed guts of her Duck toy.  Then, she jumped up onto the couch against my leg and snuggled with the carcass for a quick nap.

Above and beyond all techniques is the "reverse-couch" technique executed to perfection by the powerful and attractive, Calebber McCheese as he plays a game on the PS4.

Summer 2016, Post 5

After 4 initial "summer" posts in a row, it took a while to get to the fifth. This probably should have proceeded or followed the bak tu skoul post, but I'm "out of sorts" on nearly everything right now.  So, you gets whats you gets...

The lads with their buddies across the road.  Left to right it seems; Tobin, Caleb, Robby and Titus.  Smoothies after a great night of swimming and jumping from the trampoline into the pool.  4 years ago if you had told me that a very nervous Caleb would EVER try this, I would have declared you crazy... and I still might.

Vacation 2015, #19 - Sea Lion Caves, Florence Oregon

You would think with all of the 2015 posts lately that we haven't done a dang thing yet in 2016 with it nearly 2/3 over, but that would be an incorrect thought!

So, I figured I should probably get last years vacation finished up before this year is over.

That brings us to Sea Lion Caves, which has an address of Florence Oregon, but it's a bit North of there and almost straight West of Eugene.  It seems that somebody had an ambitious idea for tourists to build a building on the edge of the bluff, I suppose you would call it, and then from the basement of that building, construct an elevator shaft down thru the earth that will deposit it's passengers into the sea lions' cave.

And that's exactly what that ambitious person did!

So this is the where you find yourself once the elevator reaches the bottom.  It's dark, humid and mostly beautiful with lots of sea lions laying around on the rocks.

These two up against the cage so crazies can't crawl out onto the rocks with the sea lions.

Some of the varmints up close and at least one swimming.

Once we got back up top, we hiked down a fairly long trail to a "look-out" where you could look down at the ocean and there was a curve in the "bluff" where you could see piles upon piles of sea lions resting on the rocks.  This is some of them.

There were a few on this out-cropping too, but more birds than sea lions.

This is a goofy pic but I liked it since you can barely see the curvature of the earth in the upper right corner.

This pic was from Molly's camera.

This one as well, documenting the hike I spoke of several photos back.  That little reddish roof about center is the look-out point to see the sea lions on the rocks down by the water.  Hiking down wasn't so bad.  Hiking up?  A bit of a different story...

And so it was.  Another day in the books.  I think we camped later on this evening but I cannot be sure as I did not journal things as I should have...

St. Louis, December 2015... I Forgot, Part III

So, I think we've finally made it to the final post about St. Louis and more directly, the final post about the City Museum. Oddly enough, since the first two post on this fantastic place, I've heard other adults talking about taking their own families there and how hard it is to describe it to people who haven't seen it themselves.

I agree.
 
And I agree even thought the rooftop stuff wasn't open to us when we were there in December.  Apparently, there's a ferris wheel and a few other various and sundry items that should be explored when the weather allows.

My concern about ever returning?  There are no St. Louis Rams to be found in that city now and I'm not sure that there are other reasons to return, other than breweries, of which, there are now quite a few.  We did not hit up Schlafly, even though they were not far off of our walk to the City Museum.  I did buy beers from several others with mixed results.  That, in and of itself, seems like a possible reason to return. 

Oh, and there's Cohokia Mounds not too far East over the Mississppi River from downtown.  Some cool history that should be explored.

And, if you're feeling like a drive, there is Elephant Rocks State Park about 1.5 hours South (and a touch West) of the Gateway Arch.  Cool place with mostly easy hiking.

And so on we go, thru the last of the city museum.

A disclaimer on their website states: "*Unaccompanied minors may be filled with sugar and returned*".
 

We finally found the room with the big slides.  You see, they purposefully do NOT give out maps of the place as they want you and your family to go exploring.  We did.  And, it took us many explorations to find the "slide room".

From the floor of the slide room looking up roughly 10/12 stories...

After climbing a pile of stairs, this is from somewhere around 5 - 7 stories up, looking down at another one of the donated pipe organs.  Much more cooler in person!!

I believe this was my peeps at the top of the 10 story slide, preparing themselves for, what I presume, imminent death, and smiling about it.

Robby at the bottom of such silliness...

What is this, you ask?  I have no idea, other than the bottom of some really high slides and a photo that absolutely refused to be rotated counter-clockwise.

The 5-story slides...

Really high up, looking down over slides onto a pipe organ that appears at the middle-top of the otherwise confusing picture.

Oh, and we haven't been outside until now.  Robby and dear ol' dad are several stories up when I took this pic. We're on our way to the airplane on a stick.

...and about 5 stories up here when I took this pic of the parking lot below the horse-poop in which I seemed to be willingly climbing in!!!

So Caleb and Momma kept their sensible feet closer to the ground.  Robby and dear ol' dad decided to keep going up thru tubes and tunnels until we reached an old, dilapidated airplane, mounted on a 5- 6 story "stick" with metal tunnels attatched to it.   I made it exactly that far when my sense of mortality kicked in and I had enough.  Robby, 35 years my younger, went on.  As demonstrated by this pic of him crawling out the window of the airplane and onto it's wing.

So, after I completely panicked....  this is a pic of Robby climbing from the airplane wing over to the side of the building where there's a big slide for those who don't... uh, panic...

This is well after the scary airplane nonsense that I subjected myself too!  That tower looking thing in the right side of the pic was where I found myself trying to get back to the ground.  I had to crawl down thru tiny openings, and I'm not tiny, until you get to this humongous metal "bowl".  From there?  I can't recall, but I eventually made it.

Again, as I crawl myself out of the extremely well-elevated problem i find myself in, it seems not the bad. Really, it's not that bad!  Especially since I'm sitting in the relative safety of home typing this.  Here's Momma watching Calebber in the giant ball-pit.

And once we were all back on terra-firma, we decided to take a quick break before walking back to our hotel, and more importantly, the restaurant that we wanted to visit, in betwixt.  While momma and I were sitting on a bench, waiting for our explorers to return, they eventually did.  And then, they discovered this little nugget...  they disappeared not ten feet from us, thru a hole in our bench.  We wondered when we would see them again...

And a few minutes later, they pass over the top of us...  What a delightfully weird place!

We all escaped alive.The lads several moments later for lunch at the Mango, Peruvian Cuisine. 

Great food and an even more wonderful time!!