An Easy Way To Die...

It seems that when the tree fell into the creek that it created a few "widow makers" of it's own on the opposite side of the creek!

2019 Mini-Vaca3(but really 1), Chicago, Pt 1 - Travel & Mus. of Sci & Ind

Our first mini-vaca of the year was our trip to Chicago.   We left March 16th in the wee hours of the morning so we could go straight to the Museum of Science and Industry for a good full day before we had supper and found our hotel.

This was on the interstate not too far East of the Mississppi in Illinois.  The picture, of course, hides most of the beauty of the sunrise but it's still cool!

I built that bad-boy!!

This place is so cool!!  Reminds me of the museum we went to in D.C. that had all of the airplanes and rockets and space capsules...  

This is a great big motorized rotating bed of sand with a handful of coins in it.  I have video of it but it won't upload...   the sand shifts as this rotates around and the coins float on the surface of it making tracks.  Mesmerizing!!!  I could have watched it for hours!

Ocean buoy.  Hard to believe they're that big but I suppose when you have a force as commanding as the oceans, you should probably have something of pretty good size to not get pulverized!

The big water trays up above that you could make different waves with little levers and hammers to upset the water.  The tornado machine is in the background here too.

This room was super-cool!  You had red, green & blue sliders to turn colors off or on full-blast and then see which words disappeared on the circles in front of you.

Ahhhh,  me pretties!

Caleb in the wind chamber.

Mama.

Dear ol' Dad

And Robert!

Pretty close to life-sized creation of the moon landing.

Same but different angle.

The Tesla coil!  This thing was awesome!!

Robby in the hamster wheel.

After we were all museum-ed out,  we walked from the museum to Giordano's in Hyde Park.  Doesn't look far on the map but it seemed to take us a while to get there and even longer to get back once we were all loaded up on pizza. 

After this, we went back to pick up our car at the museum and headed out to find our hotel up by Midway Airport.  Much to the kids chagrin, the hotel had no swimming pool and Caleb was HOT about that!

Oh well, dad found a cool beer store not too far away and got some good sudsy wetness!

Tracking the Track Leavers...

The turkeys are leaving some definite evidence around our house.  This pic is a shot of their big mitts and the paths they leave behind.  Of course. this is after a day so the footprimts appear bigger than they really are.  

And about 3 ft away was fresh deer tracks....

R.R.R. - Rob's Riverside Recharge!

Robby and a few of his buddies being dropped off at Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp.

(Uncontrolled) Fire in the Creek!

I had a ton of garbage to burn and while there was a lot of dry leaves,  there wasn't hardly any wind, so I figured I was good.  About 2 minutes after lighting the fire,  a strong gust of wind blew and then it kept blowing...  and blowing.  Next thing I know is that the tree I hauled away for a buddy in West Des Moines had been ignited and was now raging!!  The smoke with the papers towards the right of the picture is my garbage pile.  Where the big fire is, is where I put his tree debris.

Better shot of the distance betwixt the two areas.  It's probably a full 20 feet.

Good shot to see the other tree that recently fell but had the good sense to fall into the creek so I didn't immediately have to deal with it!

6th Grade Rock n' Roll Show

6th Grade Band concert tonight. Caleb was grumbling about it in the days leading up to it but looked like he was enjoying himself during the show itself. He did good. THEY did good!

Can you find him???  He's about the 7th kid from the left side of the photo...  the one whose hair responded poorly to being under a stocking cap due to our frosty weather.  He played cymbals for the first song.

Here he is on xylophone on the far left for song number 2.  You can see the crazy hair a bit better here.

The only close-up because I know that they turn out like this...  Dig the hair!!

Now he's over to the right of the very tall kid in the back.  That was a high-schooler helping out since one of the 6th grade kids has been dealing with pneumonia and couldn't make the concert.   Caleb's on the bass drum here.

This song he move one spot to his right to play snare drum.

American 6th Grade Warriors!

Our friend Jill Cunningham picked up Caleb last Saturday morning and took him along with her son Max to a new('ish) place in Ankeny called Urban Air.  It's a fun climby, jumpy, fall-y place with lots of safety harnesses and tons of fun stuff for kids to do.

That's Caleb doing the "leap of faith"!

His buddy T doing the same but you get a better perspective of how high some of these things are!

Caleb and Max (in the black shirt) getting the safety harness attached.

Max on the giant lego-y type thingys.

Max again.

Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head

Tried all summer long to get this thing to hold water so we could scoop the water can in and water the garden plants.  Now that the gardens are all out for the year,   taaaaa-daaaaaaa!!!!  It holds water!  

A Boy & His Dad's Candy

Caleb's Snickers haul for his dad this Halloween!  He was a proud boy and thankfully, he's helping me eat them!