Rolling Down the Hill in Kirksville

Perhaps aptly named, on Friday night in Kirksville we had a picnic at 1,000 Hills State Park. Here is Aunt Heidi and various children rolling down just one of those hills:

Love you Aunt Heidi. I couldn't resist posting the video showing you and the kids having so much fun!

Planning Menus

I am obsessed with starting to plan our menus again. Our freezer is getting very low, and this "5:50 p.m., hungry kids, what's for dinner" thing is getting very old.

OK, one short photo insert before I start on planning menus:

H and the Roses climbed on the monkey bars at the park tonight. We had a great time at the Turtle Park. Roses #1 and 2 and I ran an obstacle course. (I won with the best time.) Then the Roses made friends with some preteen girls that were playing at the park and they ran around, playing tag, going down the slide, etc. A gorgeous evening, etc.

Back to menu planning. Here is my plan for this week:

Saturday - Chicken enchiladas (we are going to visit Jill and bring her dinner), broccoli, spanish rice

Sunday - Turkey lasagna, french bread, salad

Monday - MND (thank you Guppy!)

Tuesday - Chicken wild rice casserole, frozen veggies, dinner rolls (I am going to make an extra casserole for Jill for the freezer and one for us)

Wednesday - Turkey burgers, home fries, crudites

Thursday - Spaghetti night

Friday - Make your own pizza night

Bedtime woes

I wish I knew how to fix our bedtime woes. Rose #1 and Rose #3 generally fall asleep pretty quickly, but Rose #2 haaaaaaaaaaaangs on, fussing, pouting, refusing to lay down, etc., etc., etc. Right now I am in the kitchen listening to H deal with her - it's his night to manage bedtime. We switch off every other night. It is not going well. She is 4 years old! Wouldn't you think most of our bedtime struggles would be behind us?

Tattoo Parlor

When all else fails, you can pretend to have a tattoo parlor:

The first picture is my favorite since you can see the marker on the bottom of Rose #3's feet. And, in case you are wondering, the marker that I THOUGHT was washable, was, in fact, not exactly all that washable. Alas.

On an unrelated note, I heard about a book called The Lace Reader on MPR. The MPR interview was about how the book broke through the stigma of self-publication and the author sold the work to a major publishing house. I thought the story of how the book became published was fascinating. I would really like to read that book.

Here we are in Kirksville, MO

We are on our annual trek to Kirksville, MO, to visit Grandpa Pete. He is a professor at Truman State University, which is in Kirksville. The kids LOVE our annual trip. Here are some reasons why:
1. Uninterrupted time with mom and dad. Mom and dad like this too.
2. Movies in the car. Our minivan has a DVD player which we do not use except on longer trips. I remember when Ellie pointed to the DVD player in the van and said, Mom, that is used for playing movies! We had not told her what it was; I still do not know to this day how she knew!!
3. Treats. I generally say no, as a rule, automatically, when the kids ask for a treat at the grocery or Target. But on vacation, I usually say "yes." So far we have had: Hubba Bubba, chocolate skittles (yuck), Milk Duds, and Hershey's Kissables.

One required part of the trip to Kirksville is the annual "run around the classroom" excursion. Grandpa Pete teaches on the science faculty, and so we always go to Science Hall. This year we got to go into the venomous reptile lab (no kidding). All children had their strict instructions to keep their hands at their sides and not to touch ANYTHING.

Then we went into an empty classroom. Uncle Jay and I wrote on the blackboard a little bit:

After our trip to campus we went to the Northeast Missouri Conservation department. We took a little walk around the grounds and then went to the interpretive center. This is Grandpa Pete with 6 of his 7 grandchildren (Gus was in the stroller so he couldn't go down by the pond):
The best part of the interpretive center was the bee hive. The bees come into the building through a little tube. It was very cool.

If I wasn't so wiped I would write more. Besides these outings we went to the Kirksville Aquatic Center for swimming, and for a picnic. Tomorrow we are going to Hannibal, MO to see Mark Twain stuff!

Ducks

I mentioned in my last post that Guppy and Poppy just returned from Seattle, where they rode the ducks. I did not even know they HAD ducks in Seattle. But yes, they do have ducks in Seattle, and what's more, they have extremely annoying DUCK HONKER TOYS. Guppy and Poppy lined the grandchildren up in a row, tallest to shortest, had them close their eyes, and hung duck honker toys around their necks. 18,000,000 honks later, the duck honker toys were confiscated before bedtime.

Some ideas for retribution:

1. Call up Poppy right before a meditation session and have a grandchild honk the honker toy into the phone. Repeatedly.
2. Call up Guppy right before bed and have a grandchild honk the honker toy...oh, you get the idea.

OK, I only have two ideas, and to be fair, they were really Uncle Andy's.

A Good Weekend

We had a good weekend. On Saturday Ahma and Ahgong took the Roses on an outing, and H and I had time to ourselves. We took advantage of the time and went rollerblading on the Big Rivers trail. Boy is it fun to just leave the house when you want to, without having a big to-do with the kids, grab your rollerblades, and actually EXERCISE for an hour. The way that we do the Big Rivers trail it ends up that the way is UP, and the way back is DOWN. It was beautiful weather and a beautiful rollerblade. After that we went out for lunch at an Italian deli and we sat on their divine back deck. No kids, just us grownups. Boy, was it nice.

On Saturday evening our very good friends stayed for dinner and for a sleepover! We had a great dinner - chicken and steak on the grill - and good conversation. The girls loved being together. Here they are on Sunday at snack time, eating chips. The box, which proves the aphorism that children will always rather play with the box than the thing that came in the box (although in this case it was a large sun umbrella, so it is better that they play with the box) was doubling as a boat. A boat which happened upon a can of Pringles, as it turns out:

Rose #4 was our guest. She is so sweet and polite, and she did not even cram the Pringles in her mouth (unlike the other Roses):

Rose #3, of course, had to cram about 6 Pringles in her mouth before she even could feel at all right about the situation:

Rose #2 really likes her modeling poses. It reminds me a lot of her Aunt Boo, who is also her birthday buddy:
And Rose #1 was hamming it up for the camera. I hope that one of these next few blog posts will be "Rose #1 lost a tooth," because one of the bottom ones is wiggly:

We are also glad that Guppy and Poppy are home from Seattle. They had a great time in Seattle especially at the Pike Place Market.