Field Trip.....

Today we went to see a play. It was based on the book "The Giver." I had not read the book but a friend told me it was good. It wasn't at all what I expected. It was a little intense. I kept an eye on the younger two and they were very focused on what was happening. At the end it seems like the baby dies but they didn't actually come out and say it in the play. Jacob asked me later though if the baby died. I told him I thought so but wasn't sure. I will defiantly have to read the book now. Michael wants to read it too but I think I will wait until I have read it first.

We have been trying to get back into a routine since our trip. Its been hard because no one seems to want to do school work now, and I am finding very hard and time consuming homeschooling all three. Hopefully its just a matter of adjusting to Time 4 Learning and we get back into a grove soon.

We are home!!!

We got home around 4:30 pm this afternoon. We had a great time buts its good to be home. We drove through 15 states counting Kentucky, it took us 18 days and 5,527 miles.

St. Louis

We got into St. Louis this afternoon around 3:30. We tried to go to the Arch but when we got there they had closed it. The sign said "due to inclimate weather." Well, the sun was shining and it wasn't raining! Funny because it rained on us the last two or three days and it looked nice here. But the news says they are expecting the river to crest at 41 feet, thats 11 feet above the flood level.

So we just took a few pictures while driving. Then we went back to the hotel and I took the boys to the pool. We decided to just make a weekend trip of St. Louis another time.

We go home tomorrow!!!! This has been an awesome trip but I miss my dog and Jacob can't wait to get back to co-op. I think I may just sleep Tuesday and Wednesday :)

Close to home now.....

We are still in Kansas today. We spent the day with our friend Jose', of Robo Jose' fame :) Not sure if everyone is following the little movies David and the boys are making from our trip. They are on You Tube and titled Robo Jose.

We spent the morning at Cabela's. We like their stuff but have always mail ordered because there isn't one close to us. It is HUGE. They make it fun for everyone. The boys loved the aquarium with the biggest cat fish I have ever seen! They have tons of animals on display, but I prefer looking at them alive.

We had a very late lunch at a place called T-Rex. Think Rainforest Cafe with dinosaurs. The boys all loved it but Jacob was bouncing he as so happy. Then we came back to the hotel and the boys went swimming.

Jose' and Val invited us to their house for dinner and the boys loved playing with their dogs. They show dogs and the boys learned a little about how to train them. I am sure they will try to train DJ when we get home. Not sure he will want to cooperate.

Welcome to Kansas......

This morning we went to visit Boys Town in Omaha. I remember watching the movie as a child and loving Father Flanagan. It was neat to see it but very different now. It rained the whole time we were there but not real hard. We rented the driving CD and drove around and got out at the museum and Father Flanagan's house. I loved the "he ain't heavy Father, He's m' brother" statue. They have the original one in the museum, it was made with sandstone. This is the information I found about the statues....

The title came from the motto for Boys Town, a community formed in 1917 by a Catholic priest named Father Edward Flanagan. Located in Omaha, Nebraska, it was a place where troubled or homeless boys could come for help. In 1941, Father Flanagan was looking at a magazine called The Messenger when he came across a drawing of a boy carrying a younger boy on his back, with the caption, "He ain't heavy Mr., he's my brother." Father Flanagan thought the image and phrase captured the spirit of Boys Town, so he got permission and commissioned a statue of the drawing with the inscription, "He ain't heavy Father, he's my brother." The statue and phrase became the logo for Boys Town. In 1979, girls were allowed and the name was eventually changed to Girls And Boys Town. The logo was updated with a drawing of a girl carrying a younger girl added.

The Two Brothers concept precedes the magazine illustration that Father Flanagan saw. In 1921, there was a resident at Boys Town who had difficulty walking. He wore leg braces and the other boys would often take turns giving him a ride on their backs. There is a famous photograph of this boy and one of the other youth giving him a ride. Now there are several statues of the Two Brothers on the Home Campus in Omaha; one is the sandstone of the two brothers from the illustration, another is a bronze version by an Italian artist that was commissioned in 1977. There is also a version done directly from the 1921 photograph in the Hall of History.

After we left boys town we drove down to Kansas City. We drove out of Omaha, down along the edge of Iowa, over into Missouri and then into Kansas. It should have only taken about three hours but it rained hard most of the way. And we had to stop for a while to make sure we didn't drive into a tornado! We have a friend "robo Jose" who lives in KC, he called us to ask were we were. We told him and he said to find a place to stop because where we were there was a tornado warning. We didn't see anything but threatening clouds thank goodness. We went to Jose and Val's house were Jacob and Michael had a great time giving their dogs treats and having them sit and lay down. Our dog doesn't do tricks or play, he is to old.

Omaha today....

We drove to Omaha this morning to meet a friend and go to the zoo. We got to the zoo around 11:30 and meet Brenda. Then we all went and had lunch at this restaurant in the zoo. There was a big glass wall and on the other side was the jungle. We got to watch monkeys while we ate!

This zoo is awesome!!! It was a rainy day but most of the exhibits are inside. A lot of the exhibits you just walk right through. It really feels like you are right in with the animals, sometimes you are! We got really close to a couple of little monkeys, there was nothing between us and them.

The boys enjoyed Brenda, she got right down with them to show them things. When she had to leave to pick up her boys from school Jacob said, "when you pick them up you can come back here." He didn't realize she lived almost 2 hours away. We didn't get to see all of the zoo before it closed, it is huge. And Jacob made me figure out how far it is away from our house. He says that now he knows he really wants to be a zoo keeper and we have to come back to this zoo. Most of the time Michael says he wants to be a zoo keeper too. He loves gorillas and he tried very hard to get the gorillas here to put their hands on the glass. It was raining and they were just trying to find a place to not get wet.

There were so many things I had never seen up close in real life before and some things I had never heard of. I loved the cat like things from Madagascar, I just can not remember their mane right now. we also saw a badger and quite a few beavers. The beavers were eating wood, the sound was very cool to hear.

All the days are running together....

I woke up this morning in Wall South Dakota and had no clue what day it was. I needed to make sure I let my friend Brenda know when we would be in Omaha.

We went back to the Wall Drug store to pick up a few things we saw yesterday but didn't get. Jacob made another of his movies "the Jackalope files," He and Michael love helping with the Robo Jose movies and Jacob wanted to make his own with the jackalope he bought in Texas. Michael bought himself a jackalope yesterday and I think we will have a lot of movie making when we get home!

We also visited our 6th National Park today, the South Dakota Badlands. The boys got there 5 junior ranger badge. We didn't get one from Carlsbad, I may try to get them by mail when we get home.

Jacob lost a tooth yesterday at Mt. Rushmore and Anthony lost one a few days earlier in Yellowstone. The tooth fairy comes even if you are far away from home, but she may be a little bit late.

Oh...I got the little video from yesterday to upload. I put it in yesterdays blog.

I 've been everywhere......

There is a video that goes with this title but the internet at this hotel is way to slow to upload it. Maybe it will be better at the hotel tomorrow and I can upload it then.

We got up this morning and went back to Mt. Rushmore. We went to the Gutzen Borglum museum there. He is the designer and sculptor of the monument. It was he who decided which presidents to put on the mountain. It is carved in granite and will take 10,000 years to erode one inch so it will be around for a while :) They had one of the men who actually worked on the monument at the gift store today and apparently Jacob talked to him while I was in line paying for souveners. They all finished the junior ranger books, Anthony's was MUCH harder but he learned a lot doing it. This was the 5th badge they earned.

We found a nice little German resturant for lunch. I got the potato salad, I love German potato salad! We go to a little place in Columbus that has the best I have ever had.

After lunch we drove 1.5 hours to Wall, they have a really cool drug store called Wall Drugs.

http://www.walldrug.com/

It is an awesome place! We had heard about it from others who had gone and the Jackalope was high on the boys list of things they wanted to see on this trip.

I had to do laundry again, this is the third time. I thought I packed enough to only have to do it once but I guess I didn't. But I have enough clean clothes now to last us until we get home.

South Dakota.....

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We left Cody, Wyoming this morning. We stopped at the visitors center and picked up some brochures. Then we went over to the Irma Hotel, it was built by Buffalo Bill Cody and named after his daughter.

Then we drove 400 miles to Keystone South Dakota. On the way we drove through Big Horn National Forest. It was basically up a mountain! We were over 9,000 feet above see level. At one point the clouds were lower than we were. We saw cows and sheep at the top.

We checked into our hotel and then drove up to Mt. Rushmore. It was so cool to come around a corner and see the monument. This was the stop that I really wanted to see. We watched the lighting ceremony. It was way cool but very cold outside. Tomorrow is suppose to be warmer and we are going back to explore and let the boys work on the ranger badges. They will have a nice collection of them by the time we get home.

We left our hotel in West Yellowstone, Montana this morning. We drove through the park to the north today and stopped and saw a few more geysers, springs and mud pots. We stopped at one spring called Dragon Mouth Spring. It looked really cool but it was REALLY stinky. They all pretty much smell like rotten eggs but this one was by far the worst.

The boys got their junior park ranger badges from Yellowstone today. They aren't as thrilled about doing the work to ge them now. Plus the requirements have gotten steadily harder. Silly boys, they think they are on vacation :)

We drove out of Yellowstone on the east entrance and kept going until we got to Cody, Wyoming. This town was founded by Buffalo Bill Cody. We are in a strange little motel but we have WIFI, go figure.

We went to an interesting place for dinner. It was called Cassie's dinner club. Back in the early 1900's it was run by a lady named Cassie Walker. It wasn't a resturant then, Cassie and a few other ladies just lived there.

We are going to try and get up early tomorrow to try to go see some of the Buffalo Bill stuff around. It rained on us in Cody this evening. But that was the first time this whole trip and tomorrow looks clear.

I will try to add pictures to this blog tomorrow.

Day 9, Yellowstone continued

We spent the day in Yellowstone again. While driving into the park we hit a little traffic jam. It turned out the be a buffalo walking down the road. It was so cool, he was on his side of the road going the correct way.

We spent most of our time at Old Faithful. The boys worked on their junior ranger booklet and listened to a ranger talk about geysers. They listened very well and asked very good questions. While at the ranger talk we met another homeschool family from Texas. They are doing close to the same trip we are, they were just going the other way. We went south first, they went north first. We waited for Old Faithful to erupt and it was pretty awesome. Then we had lunch and while we were leaving the resturant/lodge we got to see it erupt again from a big viewing window they had. It is way colder here than I expected it to be, It was 48 most of the day but by about 4 pm it finally got to 61.

Then we stopped by the Black Sand Basen on the way back out of the park. There are so many beautiful geyers and springs here! Over half of the worlds geothermic features are here in Yellowstone. An ineresting fact the ranger told us is that it takes 500 years for rain and snow to seep down to the magma rocks were it gets heated and then pushed back up again.

We got back to the hotel in time for the boys to swim and I did a couple more loads of laundry. Not an easy thing when there are only two washers and dryers. I guess its lucky that they had them at all.

Day 8....

We got up this morning in Idaho. We really didn't see any of it yesterday because it was dark when we drove into it. We stayed in Pocatello at a Holiday Inn which turned out to be a Holidome. Linda was telling me about those while we were at the canyon. Since it turned out that we only need to drive 3 hours today and not 6 like I thought, the boys and I went swimming before we checked out of the hotel. Idaho is beautiful too, but quite a bit different from Utah. There are mountains and we could even see the Grand Tetons while we were driving through it.


David hid a birthday present for me in the car while we were packing up and I didn't notice it the whole trip. It was a walking stick with a compass in the top. The top also screws off and I can screw my camera onto it to make a monopod.

Then we got in the car and drove to West yellowstone. He took us to an ice cream shop where it turns out he talked the owner into making the pie that he usually makes me for my birthday. They even used his recipe!! They added whipped cream to the top of it so I didn't know what it was right away. Anthony said, "this just proves that you never know what Daddy will do!"

We drove into Yellowstone park and saw buffalo and elk. We also walked along one of the geyser basens. It was a great birthday!!