Just A Little Goofiness...

Caleb hamming it up with swim googles on  in the house.

Dad and Robby on a rare Wednesday night, home alone, and getting ready to resume our roles as Chef Chef and Chef Jeff.

Iowa City for the 197th Time.

Caleb had his annual cleft clinic check-up in Iowa City a week ago.  He does SOOOOOO much better with these appointments now than he did 4 - 5 years ago, but he still gets crazy nervous about them.

This time was no different.  Crazy nervous boy!

This was in the waiting room after getting checked in.  That is his get-yer-freakin-phone-out-of-my-nervous-face look and semi-smile.

No relaxing to be seen here!  We're waiting for the doctor who did a few of his surgeries to come in and talk with us.

Milk Chocolate Swim Hole

The boys are at a sleepover with some friends. 

When this happens, they typically end up in the creek.  LOL.  Last night was no different.

The hound wants in on this action!

How High's the Water, Mama? Part II

Back on June 28th, I published a post titled, How High's the Water, Mama, obviously a take on the old Johnny Cash song.  We had had some wicked rains at that point with some flooding, but it had been somewhat dry before that, so nothing too bad.

Later in that same week, we had some more heavy rains but this time, we got more rain than the first go-around and it happened over a slightly longer period of time.  However, the ground was already saturated from previous rains, so the flooding was much worse.

This is our creek that goes thru the front yard.   It's hard to tell in the photo, but the grasses and weeds are laid nearly flat from the impact of the water.

That clump of "crap" in the lower left of the picture is where the water level was at, so it clearly was high enough to go over the driveway!  That has only happened once before in the 13 years we've lived here.

A slightly better shot of the weeds and grass being laid over.

And worst of all, this is a road that I used to take to work!  It's back open now, but it smells crazy bad driving thru there!  And, there's still water that's standing and can't soak in.  So if we were to get another round of heavier rain, it would be flooded again.

Mad Max Beyond Birthdaydome!

Another birthday party has come and gone! 

This time it was the Max of the Max and Jack fame!

The kiddos and someone else...  I think...

Robby, Birthday Boy Max and Caleb!

Summer Games 2018

So the older lad went off to another camp this week. It was called Summer Games and held on the Grinnell College campus. He returned yesterday and we were happy to have him home.

Just like after Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp, it's exciting to see them come home, telling their crazy stories from the week away and best of all, ON FIRE FOR JESUS CHRIST!!

To celebrate, we played the longest game of P.I.G. (basketball) ever and he had a song he wanted to help him learn on guitar.  

I smile!

Robby and his huddle 15 mates!  It took me a minute to find the lad.  He's in the upper-left quadrant with a big smile on his face as it appears that him and young man in the blue shirt may have been jacking around.

Road Trip, Part 4: Rockford Fossil and Prairie Park Reserve

I have posted about this place before as we seem to like to visit it about every other year.  It is just West of Rockford Iowa which is about a 2 hour trek from Des Moines.

We figured with all of the recent heavy rains that Iowa has experienced, it would wash away some of the "fill" and reveal some excellent fossils.

I don't know that it revealed more than it ever had in the past, but we found quite a few on a visit that was a bit more hasty than some others when we were there.

And truly, it didn't matter as we all had fun, got stoopid sweaty and did some good hiking/crawling/climbing.

This is the parking lot, looking South.  That's our fancy 2005 mini-van at the right with Rob, Caleb and the ghastly beast, Juno just to the right of the center of the picture.  I made the comment that the boys don't understand time and they're going to be hungry and wanting to stop on the way home to have supper, but that AIN'T going to happen.  Everything happened including stopping at a rest stop that had Arby's and Godfathers so I was more right that I wanted to be...

This is at the top of the old quarry where we are  now preparing to hike down any one of the ravines.

I chose this ravine after taking a few pictures.  It was tranquil, peaceful, rocky,  and mostly un-ankle-breaking.

Mama, Robby, Caleb and Juno chose this ravine.  I won!

Once everybody is at the bottom and has most of the skin they started out with,  you can really take your time and focus in on specific areas.  That's not what we're doing here... 

That's Caleb in the yellow shirt 3/4 the way up that slope.

A cool picture of a dragonfly that almost looks like a fossil because of the transparency of the wings.

A couple of wide shots of the main basin.

 

Mom getting ready to climb up to where the boys are.  I think she's displaying some serious confidence!

Everybody is back at the top and headed for the trail to the old brick kilns.

Finally, the old kilns.  They've cleaned this up a bit since the last time we were here and they're tying the park in with a bike path and a new parking area at the bottom where you can start here and hike you way backwards from where we just came.

Caleb has been washing/rinsing the fossils. 

A shot of a few of the "things" we caught.

If you have younger kiddos, I would recommend spending a day driving and exploring this!  It's been something the kids have enjoyed every time we've gone there and I'm pretty sure that we'll get at least one more enthusiastic visit before they get "too old".