More Badlands (June 14th)

This trail was the fossil trail.  Along the boardwalk they have cases with examples of fossilized animal skulls they had found in the area.  It was very cool.

Near the parking lot Alex and Maya made friends with two really nice boys close to their age.....from Dearborn (near Detroit).  They all climbed to the top of this hill, sat down and compared vacation notes.

We caught most of the ranger's fossil presentation on the way back to the car.  The fossils she had were amazing and she did a very good job of explaining how the land here has changed dramatically over time from a sea to a swamp to a forest, etc.

Alex was very intrigued by these "beware of rattlesnakes" signs.  He wanted very badly to see a rattlesnake and take a picture of it.  Every little rustle or chirp we heard he was sure was the rattle of a rattlesnake tail!

Thursday June 14th: Sioux Falls, SD to Custer, SD via the Badlands Nat'l Park

This rest area gives the first glimpse of the Badlands as they drop off from the prairie.  Alex had been pretty amazed at the vastness of the prairie.  It's so different from home ( and the other places we've traveled in the midwest) to be able to see so far off into the distance.

Alex was amazed that the hills were hard, rocks.  They look so loose and sandy from a distance.  They both wanted to hike every trail and try out everything.

I had to laugh at the above picture, quite the little geologist Alex insisted I take a photo of him standing next to that formation for scale.

This little guy was darting up and down one of the steep hills going in and out of bird house holes.  Stealing food maybe?

Wednesday June 13th: Marquette, MI to Sioux Falls, SD

In the morning Alex asked if we could "do whatever the GPS says today?"  So we did.  We plugged in our destination and did whatever it told us.  I usually don't do that, I prefer to map out my route ahead of time and just use the GPS  as a back up or to find restaurants, etc along the route.  But we did it and it was fun!  We took a different route down out of the UP than I had planned and ended up on some highways I hadn't driven in years, some very pretty ones.  Saw a ton of deer and we are pretty sure we caught a glimpse of a bear crossing the road far ahead of us on Hwy 70 in Wisconsin in the National Forest area east of Eagle River.

We stopped for our picnic lunch at a park we found on the GPS near Chippewa Falls.  There was a mama blue bird with a nest full of babies chirping away just above our picnic table!  Alex and Maya got out some energy on the playground and we hopped back in the car.

We had started looking right away the day before for different license plates and once we got on the interstate we really started collecting a lot of states which Alex got really excited about.  Between license plates and trying to get semi's to honk their horn it kept them both busy for hours in Minnesota!

Which was a good thing because once you get south and a little west of the twin cities Minnesota is not very interesting.  Alex had been keeping track of all the animals we were seeing.  About a half hour west of Wausau, WI we started seeing predominantly cows.  Lots of cows.  By the time we were half way across Minnesota Alex's animal list ended with: cows

                                                             more cows

                                                              more cows

                                                            more cows

                                                             more cows

                                                             more cows

                                                              more cows

you get the idea!

We stopped for dinner in Blue Earth, MN at a country kitchen because there was a need for a bathroom right then too.  The average customer age in the place was about 75.  Ours was one of two tables that did not include someone wearing overalls.  The other table lacking overalls was also clearly from out of town.

We made it to our motel just on the east side of Sioux Falls around 7:30pm.  The motel had a small water park (a really nice salt water one, no chlorine!) so the kids got in about an hour and a half of swimming/playing, we rinsed everyone off and went to bed!

Road trip!! Tuesday June 12th: Traverse City to Marquette

Well, back up a little...to Monday June 11th.  I was trying to get a bunch of breakfast cookies and snack muffins baked, the kitchen cleaned up and laundry finished for our departure the next day.  Alex and Maya were in the back yard with a neighbor boy supposedly running in the sprinkler.  Without my knowledge or consent they had actually tried to rig the sprinkler up on the play structure/slide to make a make shift water slide.  Maya was, of course, the guinea pig on top of the slide which of course at this point was very, very slippery.  She slipped and fell down the slide partially upright partially on her side and landed hard on her left shoulder.  I put topical Arnica on it, gave her some oral Arnica to help her calm down and we waited a bit then had her try and move it all different ways.  She could move it and complained a little but not much so we waited over night.

Fast forward now to Tuesday.  The car is packed, we just need to go to Alex's guitar lesson and we are off after lunch!  But...I notice Maya getting ready to go and refusing to put pressure or hold weight on her left arm.  Ugh...I can't really leave the state for 12 days without knowing if her shoulder is all right so after guitar we make a detour to Urgent Care.  3 hours later (!) we get the all clear, go home and have lunch, pack up the dog and are finally on our way to Marquette!
We got Charlie settled in and spent the night with Matt and Amy there.

Go MudHens!

Alex is playing Little League this year, coach pitch baseball.  His team is the Mudhens.  He has been loving it and doing a really good job.  Maya has found things to do during the games, sometimes there are other younger kids to play with, sometimes she brings something to do and sometimes she just dances around and picks flowers.

Teacher gifts for the end of the year

For the teachers this year we made fabric bowls and put cards, pictures and chocolate in them.  The kids each wrote their teachers a card, Maya made all sorts of pictures and I wrote cards for each.  Both kids move into different classrooms and have new teachers next year.

Almost the end of June and I'm just updating about the beginning of June!

The evening if June 5th the Transit of Venus was visible from our area.  I took the kids downtown to the open space where the local astronomy club had a handful of telescopes set up with special filters to be able to observe the transit.  It was very cool.  We didn't wait in the long line for the biggest telescope because there were 5 medium size ones you could walk right up to and get pretty much the same view.  We looked through 3 of the 5, Alex wanted to wait and look in all of them he thought it was so cool!

Our first beach day of the year

We've had other days of beach weather already this year but Memorial Day was the first day we went to the beach.  The water is still pretty cold but not quite numbing.  It was a hot day, the kids had a great time playing in the sand.  I think I need to dump out and repack our beach bag because they don't play with a lot of the babyish stuff in there anymore and it looks like we need some new shovels this year.
Alex and Maya made friends with some kids that were close to us on the beach.  The poor little boy had a Joe Dirt haircut.  For real.  Just like Joe Dirt minus the side burns.

Alex's spring concert

These are both of Alex's songs from his spring concert. He was suppose to be "lettuce". That was a busy week and I wasn't up to making a whole lettuce costume, plus all the ideas we came up with he was afraid would look too much like ruffles (too girly) so we went with a simple green shirt - my green shirt actually!

Mother's Day, Concerts and recitals ...Oh my!

May was busy.  Alex started playing baseball.  Maya finished up dance and had a recital.  Alex's class had their annual Mother's Day breakfast.  Alex and Maya both had spring concerts at their schools (on the same night of course, we had to split up)
Maya's dance class did a tap routine to "Just Can't Wait to be Kind" and a ballet routine to "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" both from Lion King.  The teacher's mom made all the girls matching animal print skirts for their costumes.
For Mother's Day Alex's class made these awesome photo canvas projects.  We are going to try to make a duplicate one of Maya.  I think one of the shots above might look nice in sepia tones, we'll see.
I got a couple other really cute ones of Maya singing at her concert.  However one of the little girls behind her has her skirt up around her neck and is wearing bright blue panties and no shorts underneath.  Sooo......even though I have no idea who she is I won't post someone else's kid in their underpants on the internet and can't share that bit of Maya cuteness with you.
And a lesson to be learned here for all mom's of preschool girls....they are going to pull up their skirts.  They just are.  If not this time then next time.  So for goodness sakes, invest in some biker shorts.
The last picture of Maya's concert is right before the "show" started.  I was in the front row so I could just barely hear the 3 girls chatting but it was hilarious.  They were complimenting each other on their dresses!

Catching up unloading my camera memory card

I found these from the beginning of the month.  As the weather got nicer on a regular basis we took more and more activities outside...including practicing guitar!  We entered popsicle season.  The neighbors gave us a dog house for Charlie.  He loves being outside and with his black fur gets way too hot in the sun so we thought in the summer he might like a house to lounge in.  We're still trying to convince him it's for him to go in.  And keep the kids out of it.