Visit to the Fire Station

Thomas kissing Joseph's hand right before we went out to see the Trucks. Thomas Telling Joseph about the Trucks.

Thomas sitting in the Fire Truck

Joseph wanted to go in the truck too.

The wind can't stop us...

Today we went with our friends to the Overland Park Arboretum. It was a nice day, but very, very windy. The Arboretum was a great place to be because of all the tree's. The wind was not near as bad there. The kids ran, and ran and ran. It was good for all of us.

He's Alive

Addy took this picture with her new camera. Pretty good pic I think. This is usually about all that we see of the hermit crabs. The only time I ever see them come out is at night. They hide often, barely eat and rarely ever move. I spritz them often with water, but they could care less.

The most excitement that we have had from these little guys happened back in early January. Allen and I had a date night and I was getting ready to go out, I was cleaning out the aquarium, and decided that maybe one of these guys wasn't doing so well. In fact I was sure he was dead, he hadn't moved for a couple days. So what did I do? I threw it away. I didn't want a dead hermit crab in the freshly cleaned aquarium. Well, later that night, I get a text from my sister that says "He's Alive!" Apparently, he came back from the dead hours later and was scratching around in the trashcan. He continues to play dead often, but I haven't thrown him away again.

I can't complain about how easy these little guys are, but they certainly are not very exciting. The girls are happy though... they now have their own pets. I think that we will have to think about fish soon though, there just isn't too much excitement from these guys.

Eight years old already.

Addy admiring her new camera.

Addy getting ready to blow out her candles.









Getting ready to play Cat and Mouse with the parachute.










Playing tag.










Posing for a group pic in the hot tub.






Addy showing off her new pierced ears.

Discovering the world around him

Joseph is suddenly crawling everywhere and in to everything. He loves splashing in toilets...

dragging toilet paper as far as he can

climbing stairs.

He also loves dumping the dogs water bowl... eating dogfood...eating paper...
He is cute little booger, but he is keeping us very, very busy.

Pinewood Derby

Saturday the girls raced their cars in the Pinewood Derby for Girl Scouts.
Daddy worked very hard over the past couple weeks helping them build their cars. Addy chose to do a cheese car, and we found two little mice to ride along in it.

Savannah wanted a cat car, loved the Cheshire cat idea, but it was hard to figure out how to carve a cat out of a block of wood, so she settled for this car with the Cheshire cat picture on it.

Because I signed the girls up through Savannah's troop instead of paying separately Addy ended up being clumped with the first graders. The second graders raced the hour before. She seemed okay with it because she still saw her friends prior to the race, but as you continue to read on you will find out why having two sisters race eachother is not the best idea.

They get to do 4 races, there are about 30 cars competing. After the four races they average all the times together and come up with the best time overall. Four cars race at a time. In the first race the girls ended up being together, We quickly split them up when Savannah got first place and Addy second place.

Addy's car ended up being first place in 4 of her races.

Savannah's car ended up being first place in all 4 of her races.

In the end Addy's car placed third!

Here are all the girls that competed. Click on the picture above and take a close look at Savannah's face. It wasn't until this picture was taken that Savannah realized Addy had gotten a trophy because She took third place. They only gave out trophys to the first,second and third place, but everyone received a ribbon.

Poor Savannah... her car was so fast. In the third race her car flipped over she had to do a do over. It was at that time that the guys turned her car around and raced it backwards for race 3 and 4. This slowed down her overall time, otherwise I think she may have taken second place. Any time any car had any problems going down the track they flipped it around to race backwards something about not enough weight being in front.

Addy was so excited about her trophy. She was so good to Savannah and quickly pointed out to Savannah that Savannah already had two trophys at home and Addy only had one so now they both had two trophys. She really smoothed things over for Savannah. It could have been so much worse.

We are friends with the Dad that kept score, and so he wrote this out for Allen. Savannah ended up being in 4th place. Can you believe it. I think Allen was very happy the cars did so well.

Overall it was a very fun experience.

getting rid of cabin fever

Finally a couple of days outdoors. We sure needed it. There are no pics of Joseph because he just wasn't happy in any of the pics. These were taken a few days ago and Joseph was in the UCC that day being treated for Croup. He is much better today. Hooray!