Sensory Safari

This morning Max was reading the news paper and he saw that the Sensory Safari was here at the Portneuf Library until June 13.  We had wanted to go to it when it was in American Falls but we weren't able to go and plus we sort of forgot a bit.  And so we went to the Portneuf and were there when they opened today and we got to see all the animals and of course touch them as that is the whole point of the sensory part.  It was totally awesome!!!

 Lowell now claims his favorite animal is the Lion :) aren't they nice kitties?

 He was touching the Quail and behind is the Wolverine...it was just awesome to actually get to touch the fur!

 A picture with a REAL Red Fox and the Arctic Fox behind him...the Arctic Fox was SUPER soft!

 The Fallow Deer and behind him the Warthog. Lowell said the Warthog was really prickly and don't touch it. LOL

 The Cougar was watching his every move in this picture.  For usually looking like such angry animals their fur sure is soft!

 I guess he was checking to see if the deer was hungry...

 He wanted to hold the River Otter's paw and his fur was soft too :)

 The Badger and the Pine Martin....awesome!  Plus they had some skulls out that you could pick up and look at but the jaws were glued shut so you couldn't open and close them.

 This is a Eland....HUGE eh?  I love the antlers and how twisty they are.  It's amazing they grow out of the animal's head like that and everything huh?

A Cape Buffalo....I asked Lowell what it was and he said that it was a Buffalo and I said yep but what kind and he said black...I was laughing a bit at that but it was a VERY GOOD guess!

 Petting the Zebra.  What a nice Zebra.  Max was asking Lowell if the Zebra felt stripy and I was showing Lowell how the mane will never lie down.

The Brown Bear.  It was awesome but I didn't take the picture fast enough.  Lowell was over there giving it a hug and Max wanted him to put his hand in the bear's mouth...

I  know it seems like we do a lot but hey it is summer and so they have a lot of cool awesome things to do.  I am so glad that we were able to go.  They also had out a table of skins that you could go up to and pet and everything and it was just totally awesome to be able to walk up to the table and pet the skins and see how soft they were.  They had a Raccoon and Weasels and Beavers.  Sadly with the Beavers they didn't still have their tails but they were soft.

Funness at the Firehouse!

Today the Pocatello Fire Department was having an open house.  We went because we were right there in the neighbor hood and I am thinking that Max was wanting to go tomorrow but I asked him if he would mind because we were right there and sadly Max didn't go with us.  But I think Lowell had some fun!  The Boy Scouts were there selling hotdogs and drinks and stuff...it was fun!

We were walking by the fire truck and I was commenting how big the wheels are and he went over and stood next to it and I figured hey why not get some pics :)

 Then Lowell saw Sparky the Fire Dog and so he just had to run over and give him a hug...

 Then Lowell went into the fire house and got all dressed up in fire fighting gear and went into the fire safety house to find out how you properly exit a house full of smoke

 He quickly found out that you have to crawl out which is totally right and totally awesome!

 Maybe he'll be a future fire fighter?  Look at that awesomeness of an outfit :)

 Then he got to sit in the driver's seat of one of the HUGE fire trucks!!

Also while in the fire house Lowell got a plastic fire fighter hat and an awesome water tattoo...

I think that that was enough funness for a day :) but who knows maybe we'll go bowling and finish off the funess for the day :)

I almost forgot to mention that while we were there there was someone from the Idaho State Journal taking pictures while he was using the fire hose (sorry that was so fun I forgot to take pictures :) ) so I guess we are going to have to get a paper tomorrow just incase Lowell is in there right?

A Bit More about Goings On

Ok so when I posted this morning of course there was a whole ton of stuff that I totally forgot about.

One of the way awesome things that I forgot about is that Lowell is signed up for "Kids Bowl Free" which lets him bowl 2 free games every day all summer long and I signed us up for the family pass which means that Max and I also get 2 free games every day for the entire summer. Plus then I went over to Pine Bowl, they are the local bowling alley that signed up to participate in this, and asked them about the shoe rental pass and they said it was $10 per person and I thought, "man that is a steal!" so I got one each for Max and Lowell and now when we want to go bowling (which I try to go every day except Sunday) it is basically like going for free because everything is already bought. :) Plus for the cost of the games and everything that we would normally have to pay out of pocket because of this family pass it is already bowling for free because I have gone so many times already with Lowell that I have more than spent the cost of the family pass.

Another thing that is so awesomely going on that I have been doing is I finally got out my sewing machine again. I just love to sew I really do! I was working on some sewing projects and I have had a hand of friendship extended to me by Beverly Jones and I was at her house using her surger, which was like totally awesome of her, something I had never ever done before but was finding kind of fun; and she was piecing together parts of a re-usable shopping bag and I was asking her what she was doing and she said that her purse is one of the Miche purses, and of course at the time I had NEVER even heard of that, and that you can buy and have changeable outsides to your purse but she had figured why not just sew a slip cover for her purse and save herself at least $20 a cover. I looked at her purse and I was just thinking to myself that that was just too big so after I got home I got online and looked up Miche and found a mini.

I love my mini Miche purse it is so awesome and I decided that I would look online and see what kind of options there were for different covers for the purses and I found that there were only the magnetic ones that would cost me $13 and that practically no one else (other than the once in a great while) was selling the slip covers for the Mini Miche and so I thought hey there is a good option! So since then I have bought fabric (some to Max's dismay) and made slip covers until I have pretty much perfected how they look and they look pretty darn professional. I do once in a while have my little slip ups but I do at least try them on my purse for the fit after I make each one so I know it will at least fit. I have sold several and I am hoping that I will continue to sell more and that it will be awesome! I sell them on Etsy which is awesome and my mom sells them on e-bay. My Etsy name is: ceserous and my mom's e-bay name is: happykitty54 and we both sell the slip covers.

I have sold almost enough that I could buy the full sized Miche bag if I wanted to but I am thinking that I might save up and get some new bowling shoes or saving up for our SUPER AWESOME vacation that we have planned in August w/ my mom of going to Yellowstone. We are planning on eating out at least one meal and day and if we do that in the park it is a bit spendy even if you do know of and eat at the cheaper places.

Plus on a little side note I have started writing a book about my what-if story...I am not too far into it and I am not totally sure at this point if I even want to finish it but I have at least made a start on it...

Ok enough for this post...my gosh!

The Start of June 2011

My gosh I just can't believe that it is already June!!! So many many things have been going on. Talk about running around like a chicken w/ it's head cut off! Lowell went to Kindergarten this year and at Christmas timeish (I really should write these things down huh?) his teacher, Mrs. Holt, was bragging on him saying that she had given him a reading test and he was at a 3rd grade reading level!!

I knew he was smart but he is starting to blow me away! I also was thinking that with what he has learned academically he should probably be in grade 1 or 2 but I didn't really want to mention it because I think that it is great for him to have friends and be able to make friends with kids that are his own age. We are however going to work this summer on a 1st grade workbook and there are some things in there that are just review (like most of school right?) and then there are actually some new things.

I was laughing really hard when Max came up to me and told me that Lowell said that he knew multiplication and then Max decided to try him on a bit of algebra and Lowell looked at the problem and said "oh the answer is..." and gave Max the correct answer.

We have Lowell reading this summer and we are going to see if he can get some of the prizes for reading the most books this summer because I think that he could do it and really enjoy it. He so far likes the read the "Jigsaw Jones" books and I have gotten him started on reading "Knights of Right" which is a series I found at Deseret Book and it looked like it wouldn't be too hard but still he might like it with more adventure and a bit of mystery. He seems to really like mystery and I have never been one for it so it is a bit of a challenge to find books for him and then I feel like I have to read the books as well so that I can ask him what the book was about and when he answers me I will know if he really did read the book or if he is just quoting from the back of the book. I do trust him or at least I want to trust him to know that he read the whole book but it is good to make sure plus the books that he is reading aren't that overly hard they take me maybe a couple of hours each to read so it isn't that overly taxing.

Next week I will be going back to Idaho Falls to see the doctor and to see if there is anything else we can do because last Sunday my eyes were bulging so bad I was halfway worried that my right eye might literally pop out of the socket because it really was that far out. Since my thyroid has been killed my eyes have always bulged a little but never quite that bad...but at least it would explain the headaches that I have been having and why I have to keep going back to the chiropractor to see if he can fix me up.

Max is not a sanitation worker at Heinz any more and we are so happy about that. It might sound crazy but we really are happy about it because Max was so stressed that he was starting to get really sick and quite often! Heinz just doesn't give their sanitation workers enough time to clean the machines and so of course you can't get them all the way clean like they really should be plus I am really sure that if something were to happen like someone were to have an allergic reaction to something in the meal that shouldn't have been there because the line wasn't clean and so it stayed there that Heinz would figure out a way to pin it on Max and that Max would have a serious fight on his hands not to mention all the legal stuff...

Max is going back to school now and he is going into the computer networking. He is going to school at Steven's Henegar and they said that the would only be taking 1 class at a time but so far they have him signed up for 2 which is NOT what they said but I guess it is better than going to ISU and trying to take like 3 or 4...but I am not liking what the "professors" do there where they know that you don't have that overly much time to work on the homework because you are probably working full time and everything and yet they don't even do the broadcasts until Wednesday and yet they want all the homework which is sometimes up to three papers that are up to 500 words long are due by midnight on Friday night and so that is putting a bit of a crunch on Max trying to get them done and turned in.

So now Lowell is all graduated from Kindergarten and Max is still working at Heinz but he is going to school again and I am just trying to get by with my stupid dead thyroid...yea I know whine whine whine...I am just hoping that I can have better news next time I post...and I really am going to make sure that I post to this more often because I hate having to write a novel every time I want to update my blog!

A few updates

Alot has been happening to us lately...yes I know it has been almost a year since I posted...I have been keeping most people updated on Facebook.

so in Jan we started the year off with some fun...and things were going fairly well...then came Feb with two birthdays :) and Mar with another birthday (even though Max wants to forget). Then in the summer Max changed from being a production person to being on sanitation (a sucky job but a bit better pay). We spent 4th of July in Challis w/ my parents of course :) it was fun. Then at the end of July we went to Freedom again and it was really nice and fun until it started raining every night...that was sucky!!! So we came home early from our vacation and then I got a call from Joel Benson and he asked me if I wanted to be the teacher of the Valant 9's and I said yes and so now I am a teacher.

My parents went to Windover for a late birthday present for my dad and when they got back to Pocatello my dad went to see his doctor and his doctor put him in the hospital to help him get some of the water weight that he had gained gone from him. The next morning the doctor went to check on my dad and his breathing was MUCH worse so he was moved to ICU and stabilized. The next morning the doctor checked on him and his breathing was once again worse and so he decided to intubate him and that stabilized him again but now he couldn't talk or anything and basically at that point the machines were keeping him alive. He wanted to see me and so I took off from class to go see him and yet when I got there he was alseep. The next day the doctor talked to us and told us that the outlook was pretty grim and so we had to decide what to do. We were given 3 options: 1) was to go full court and try to figure out what was wrong and see if we could fix it (not very hopeful but it was doing something) he would have probably ended up in a nursing home for probably the rest of his life because there just wasn't any way he would really get better. 2) we do nothing at all and hope that he improves on his own... 3) we turn off the machines and just let him go. We decided to go with option number 3 because we just couldn't see him wanting to live in a nursing home or wanting to stay on the stupid machines for quite a while. So on Aug 7 he passed on and I got the monumental task of planning 2 funerals.

Then after the funerals I went and kind of lived in Challis for a couple of weeks with coming home on the weekends because I was still the teacher of the Valant 9's and I wanted to make sure that I taught my class.

Now it's Sep and Max and I just celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary (yea I know 6 years!)

This year we didn't go to the fair (which we usually do) and it would have been fun to go but well it was ok. We went and watched Avatar: The Last Airbender. I was a little dissapointed in the movie but oh well we still have the cartoons which was like totally awesome :)

We also found out that Vanessa is having baby #2 on Oct 20 so he will be just a little bit younger than Kaitlyn.

Christmas Around the Corner

I almost can't believe that the year is getting so much closer to the end. I have been going kind of crazy getting things ready! I finally counted and I have found out that I am making 9 things for the Christmas Eve party that is annually held up at my Grandma's house. I had to write it all down so I don't forget....ready?

Baked Beans
small Orange Jello Salad
BIG Sugar Cookies
Fruit Cakes
Blueberry Loaves (kind of like blueberry muffins only bigger)
Chex Mix
Banana Nut Bread
Holiday Cakes (not even close to fruit cakes)
small Sugar Cookies (these I give away as presents and they are done)

So far I only have done the Holiday Cakes, small Sugar Cookies, and the Banana Nut Bread (only cause I had some bananas about to bite the dust). All I can say is thank goodness the other stuff isn't really terribly hard to make up. Plus I just finished making Christmas Candy that I didn't count because it doesn't go up to my Grandma's house. Amazingly I really don't feel so overwhelmed cause 4 of the 6 things I still have to make to get ready to go up really aren't that hard to make up. You mix together and cook most of it like the baked beans, jello salad, blueberry loaves, and the Chex Mix. I haven't ever made fruit cakes before but I got the best recipe for them so they should turn out pretty good (at least I REALLY hope so!!!) The Sugar Cookies I am going to make them big so that I can frost them and Lowell is going to help me. I know that I will have to post pictures on here of some of them. I even got him a BIG container of sprinkles that he can put on the cookies when they are all frosted. I hope that everyone has a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS and a JOYOUS NEW YEAR!!!

Swivel Sweeper

ok so we got a swivel sweeper....and Lowell was suppose to clean his room in order to be allowed to use it...and well...he didn't clean his room at all and so he didn't get to use it...we put the battery in and Max and I used it for a while and then I was going to use it to go clean the front room and it stopped working...and now we can't get it to work...and so Lowell is beyond upset because he can't use it at all now...we are trying to figure out what is wrong w/ the battery without much luck....:(