Pumpkins, hammers and cookie cutters

Tonight was our annual pumpkin carving night. The kids are always so excited for this night. Since it was Monday night this was also our Family Home Evening.

We realized during dinner that we hadn't brought the pumpkins in to warm up. The kids ran out and grabbed them to put in front of heater vents in the hope of warming them up. No such luck for the boys and their bigger pumpkins!

We tried out an new idea this year to help carve out pumpkins-COOKIE CUTTERS. The metals ones worked awesome!! We'll be looking for some new fun metal cookie cutters for next year.

Rebecca right away saw the pig cookie cutter and wanted that on her pumpkin. Since we live in Iowa a pig was the perfect thing to put on a pumpkin. She did a great job hammering the pumpkin cutter in for the nose and mouth. It was fun to watch her drive in and clean her pumpkin out without any hesitation this year.

Ammon got working on his first, but his had the most innards in it and took the looongest getting it cleaned out. He wanted a scary mouth, so he choose a spikey leaf cookie cutter. He made lots of leaf shapes joined together. Dad the dentist came to the rescue with a chisel to knock the "teeth" out of his pumpkin.

Simeon had the biggest pumpkin with very thick flesh. That made it harder to use the cookie cutters. We found out the hard-breaking-the-pumpkin-kind-of-way that plastic cookie cutters do NOT work on the pumpkins very well. We ended up braking the areas between the letters on his name.
He so wanted his head to fit inside his pumpkin-but the whole was just a bit too small.

Corrine was a super scraper and got her pumpkin cleaned out the fastest. She wanted an IOWA mouth for her pumpkin. She was also our super patient kiddo waiting for the hammer and letters. After seeing that Simeon's pumpkin was breaking from all the hammering on the plastic letters, she decided that her patience paid off and we used the letters as an outline and free handed her IOWA letters.

After we took their finished masterpieces outside and lit them, the kids ran through the giant leaf piles on the curb waiting to be vacuumed up this week. Thankfully the lights we got for the pumpkins have a 100 hour battery life because we left them on ALL NIGHT!! I hope anyone driving by in the night, enjoyed our jack-o-lanterns!

Pumpkin carving night is always so much fun and so messy-but absolutely SO worth it! 

Now we get to enjoy all those yummy roasted pumpkin seeds!

Blank Park Zoo

 When the Niabi Zoo opened for the season we got Zoo passes, which got us into Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines for free. Sweet!!

Ammon LOVED feeding the Giraffe and the giraffe LOVED Ammon! This was a 1st for all of us. Rebecca wasn't so sure about feed it and really wanted to get away when it started licking at her skirt!

It was a hot day so we were kind of slow going and stopped and played on everything we could. The kids decided to hatch from an Emu egg, rest in a kangaroos pouch, take a ride on the train and take a break on the dino's vertebrae. I think for Rebecca feeding the Kio fish may been the highlight of the day. She feed them one piece of food at a time and watched them fight over and eat it. She had dad wrapped around her the entire time she fed them. There was a boy about 12 years old that was feeding the fish, then reaching down and picking them up. It was really nest to watch. We stuck to feeding and touching the backs of them.

Just as we were done seeing all the animals some very dark rain clouds rolled in. It started to rain so we decided that was our cue to be done. We took off for the van and within minutes of getting in the cloud burst open and down poured. Since we are so low on rain it was such a Heaven sent blessing to see. Some of the roads on the way to our friends the Aamodts house in Gilbert were flooded it was raining so hard!! We were so hoping that the rain would make the 2 hour trek to our house and water our yard!

We love going to Zoo's and checking out each one's fun attractions and animals. The Blank Park Zoo is about a 2 hour zoo with some fun playthings for the kids. It's a 2 hour drive away so it's not one we'd go to for a day trip, but it's fun to hit it once during the summer.

Adventureland 2012

We spent a fun filled day at Adventureland thanks to Dance Marathon. Each summer we take them up on the offer to take our family there and feed us lunch. We get to see some of our cancer family friends, but really with how spread out the park is, we end up on our own most of the time.
Some highlights from this years trip.
Corrine, Simeon & dad went on the Space shot for their 1st ride, so Ammon and Rebecca went on the Frogger.
Verdict: Corrine LOVED Space shot and went on it again with dad later on. Simeon decided once was enough. Ammon liked the Frogger, but he's getting too big for it, and Rebecca was scared to death on it!! She had a death grip on the ride and she wanted NOTHING to do with going on it again!!

Puff the Magic Dragon, the airplanes and The Semi's were more her kind of ride. The big kids were all so willing to be her big rider on these rides which meant we got to take pictures and mom & dad got to avoid some much undesired dizziness!

Dad was a awesome dad and said he'd go on a ride that flew you in circles for a few minutes and he paid for it the rest of the day! Poor guy, but great dad!

This year all the big kids were tall enough to go on the Himalaya. They got on and settled with smiles on their faces and then the ride began. Simeon got smooched, Corrine was laughing, Ammon had terror on his face a few times, but they all had fun. They just weren't expecting the ride to slow down like it was ending and then to start back up for another full ride. Simeon was alittle dizzy afterwards. Corrine doesn't know what dizziness is. She went on the Silly Silo 3 times today after all these other dizziness invoking rides and was perfectly fine. She didn't get that from either of her parents!!

Since we had a few of us feeling dizzy we thought some water time would be a good idea. We played in waterpark for a few hours. Rebecca had a great time on the pirate boat kids area, the big kids loved the wavepool and the lazy river was so nice a warm. They added the wavepool and pirate play area this year so the waterpark area is really big. It's a whole waterpark within Adventureland.
The only bummer about today was that the park closed at 8pm, not 10 pm like we're used to. Much to dad's sadness and mom's excitement we didn't get to ride the Ferris wheel. Oh bummer!!

A Summer treat

This summer we had lots of new changes with bikes: Ammon mastered his bike, Mom got a new bike and Simeon moved up to a bigger gear bike. The bike Simeon is riding is the same one Johann rode as a youth!
Since Ammon has mastered his bike and I had a bike that could better handle the trailer, we have been able to go on family bike rides.
A few years back the city made paths connecting the different parks to eachother. The paths are wide and fairly flat which make them safe and fun to ride on. We like to go down Court Street, turn right onto Scott Blvd, then catch the beginning of the path there. We go through the "forest area" and go on a few streets to where the path starts back up in Court Hill park. We then take the path behind all the houses to 1st Avenue which is where the Snow Shack is.


Tonight we had a family home evening on following the rules, which led into our activity about learning how to safely ride your bike in the street, and hand signals. We talked about how you ride your bike in the street, how you show others when your turning then we practiced on our street. On our ride we headed out on the bigger roads with the kids getting some in the street practice. Depending on the kids some got to ride on the bigger roads, where others got to ride on the less used streets.
As part of our FHE we stopped to get a treat at the Snow Shack. We don't go there very often so this was a big thing for the kids. Rebecca feel asleep on the ride, so she missed out on the treat.


Tonight we met up with Grandma Smith and she rode to the snow shack with us. Grandpa was going to drive, but he never showed up. Grandma tried calling, but he wouldn't answer the phone. Finally she figured it out, he was locked out of the house without keys or a phone, so he also missed out on the treat!

Omaha Children's Museum

Last time we went to the museum, Rebecca was just a few weeks old and the 3 older kids LOVED the ball room. This time we spent 5 minutes in there before the said it was too crowed and they couldn't find anything to play with.
Corrine and Ammon and I found a giant peg screen (for lack of the real name of this toy). It was so much fun. You pushed the red pegs in on one side and they came out the other side. We made face impressions, hand impressions, then whole body impressions.



We went to find Rebecca and the kids had more fun the in younger area, then the older kid areas. The old time firetruck is a favorite to climb on.


Rebecca got her hands wet then saw a little boy using a dryer to dry his hands. Rebecca went and tried it out, and was instantly hooked!! She would go get her hands wet, then walk over to the drier to dry them. The air blew out so hard that it would blow her skin all funny.

Waterpark & Omaha Zoo

We needed this trip. Each of us needed to get away from life for a few days and play, and play we did!!
We stayed at a Holiday in with an attached waterpark. Coco Keys resort. We LOVED this waterpark!! We've stayed at a lot of waterpark hotels over the years, but I think this has been our favorite so far. It had so many different areas with something in each that someone loved. Ammon and Rebecca spent alot of time in the kiddie pool. It was zero depth entry and only went to 1 1/2 feet, which was perfect for Rebecca to walk and crawl in and for Ammon to swim with his goggles. The play area was big enough for Simeon to enjoy, but small enough that Rebecca could also play in it without feeling overwhelmed. They had 3 good sized slides that Corrine & Ammon went down dozens of times that were big enough to be big slides, but not too big to scare them. Then there were the big slides. It took some convincing to get Corrine to go down them. The 2nd night we were there she went down with dad. She ended up going down both the tube slides 4 times each! They also had a 4 foot pool with 4 basketball hoops and climbing net (monkey bar style) over the water. Simeon spent a lot of time there. Ammon liked that areas of that pool were only 3 feet deep so he could swim and if he got nervous he could stand right up. And the lazy river was long and didn't shoot water at you-just how we like them!
I didn't take a single picture here. I decided I wanted to enjoy the waterpark with the kids, not just be stuck behind the camera and then worry about the camera getting wet or stolen. So no pictures-but know it was a blast!!

We hit up the Omaha zoo on Thursday. It's one of our favorite zoos. We like that it has both outdoor and indoor exhibits. It is a hilly zoo though, so we got lots of exercise today!



We headed to the bears to see the enrichment time. The water got turned on and the bears got much livelier. It was fun to see the bears walk right up the glass and look at you.


Ammon got a very close look at a gorilla!


The main gorilla exhibit was empty today because they were replacing a piece of glass. You could see where a gorilla hand had hit the glass-HARD-and cracked it.

One of our favorite parts of the zoo is the Lied Jungle. It's HUGE. You walk around the top of it through different area to see monkeys, birds, bats. There are vines the kids can hang on and sit on and a rope bridge to cross. Then you look down to see hippos and other animals. Then you can go down to the "floor" of the jungle and explore down there. The main trees that hold up the dome are massive and you really get the feel of walking through a jungle. The kids always love to go through the viney roots of a certain tree that's made just for kids. They also like to go through the hidden staircase to go up to the waterfall.





We also like to go through the desert dome and the kingdom of the night. While we were in the swamp part Rebecca came up to me and said "Scary-up please" She didn't like walking by the alligators and other animals in the dark.



The walk through shark tank tunnel was another favorite of the older 3 kids, but NOT by dad who escaped to avoid getting sick! There were a half dozen or so sharks in the tank, but the one with all the crazy sharp teeth everywhere was the most favorite to watch. The kids were counting how many sharks swam over them.

I love how into the shark tank the kids are in this picture and you can see it on their faces and how not a single one is looking at me.

The shark with all the teeth.