Each other

 

The only things going on around Swigert land these days is Robin and Rue entertaining themselves while Mom takes it easy.  I am so glad they have each other.  Yesterday, the weather forecast said  tornadoes were going to rip through the living room and break our house all apart.

 

So Jace built himself and Gracie tornado shelters.

Gracie sure loved hers and stayed in there for a very long time.

 

Which made her mother

very, very glad.

Volcanoes and the dark abyss

It is volcano making time!

 Despite the fact that I have entered the dark abyss of morning sickness, I am still trying to hold it together enough to do home-school with Jace.  In case you haven't heard our news, (most of you have who read this blog), we are expecting baby number 3 in April. It is the other birthday present I received from the Dr!

Jace adding sand to his salt dough

Jace has no clue why his Mom is slow going these days, and it hasn't stopped his enthusiasm about school.We learned about volcanoes last week and I promised him we would make one this week, and he didn't forget.

So this morning, we mixed together some salt dough and he excitedly went outside to his sand box and brought in a bowl of dirt to add to the dough and them we smashed and shaped it on the outside of a water bottle.

It was a delightful sticky mess!

 But it turned out pretty good!

He put all the extra sand around the volcano.

He added the baking soda and vinegar and

Wah-la a lovely lava flowing mess erupted with a big sha-bang!

Then they re-loaded it and 

made blue lava the second time.

And green the third time and then purple the fourth time. Luckily we ran out of colors.

But when Dad got home we did it all again for him.

And that was our morning.  Now will someone please put me in a coma until November.  Thanks!

Pitter-patter

Christopher Robin has been having some correspondence through the mail with his Grammy.

It all started last week when he sent her a letter and she promptly responded.

For those of you who do not know, Christopher Robin has a little obsession with tornadoes.  I think it might have something to do with the fact that he resides in tornado alley.  In fact, tornadoes are constantly ripping though our house. They leave Christopher Robin's fleet of trucks in carnage and ruin. If you were at our dinner table often, you would hear him offer little prayers asking that no tornadoes rip the roof off of our house and suck up his trucks. So far we have been OK.

Well, Grammy sent Jace a little black disaster pouch! 

It was a little tricky to get the contents out, so Dad helped, and look what was inside...

little pictures of trucks left in ruin from disasters that Grammy had carefully printed, cut out, and glued to orange construction paper.

There were pictures of cars on fire, tanker trucks tipped over and jack-knifed, semi's over turned and in flames etc.

Oh, his little heart went pitter-patter when he saw those images.  He held those little picutres and dreamed of disaters for hours Grammy, and he even re-inacted them with his fleet of trucks -minus the flames!

So thank you for making a little boy's day here in Iowa! 

Sorry and a quiz

So I want to say sorry for not being consistent at blogging.  I really plan to post at least 3 times per week, but I have been failing at that goal.

I have been distracted lately.  First with swimming pools and now with home school preparations.

This morning we are off to Kalona, Iowa, also known as Amish country.   We are going to attend the Mid-prairie home school welcome social at the Washington Township School.  We are also going to pick up some materials from their incredible home school library.  Amish country is pretty neat.  We almost always see Amish folks in their black carriages.

After that we will meet Ryan for lunch at the hospital.

Then this afternoon Jace and I will lament that our pool is freezing cold and not swim-able.

Tonight with the Dr we have no plans.

Tomorrow he has to go to work from 7:00Am until 2:30PM and I feel jipped of another Saturday with him.

And that is our weekend.


And now for the  Quiz question.
How do you know if you have a pretty great brother??

Well, little Rue will tell you that if say please about 100 times, and maybe throw in a few tears for effect, you know you have a really good one if... 

they finally consent to lay down and let you put diapers on them.

And then they crawl around for you making baby sounds

with the Mama following close behind!!

It came and went

Last Thursday my birthday came and went and it was a really happy day.  I enjoyed it very much.  The day began with a little surprise on the kitchen counter left from the Dr.  It was a cute chocolate cupcake with a pink candle, a card and a movie.

The morning was filled with a few phone calls from loved ones. (My Mom and Dad Swigert and a few of my many sisters.) It was so fun to talk to everyone! Thanks for calling me!

My sweeties singing me a very heartfelt "Happy Birthday"

The rest of the morning and into the early afternoon was filled with my darling Christopher Robin inventing games for me to play.  He built me towers to knock down and roads to drive vehicles on and drew me picture after picture.  I was really touched that he cared so much.  He really worked himself to death trying to make my birthday fun, and I really worked myself to death having fun!

The evening was filled with the Dr coming home and us enjoying dinner followed by cake and presents.

Jace and Grace were really excited about the present I received from the Dr.  They had no idea that I had actually ordered it and picked it up myself, so I just acted as surprised as could be when the box contained a much coveted pool light that I had been wanting to add to our pool outside. 

My birthday cupcake from the Dr.

And now I am trying to patiently wait for the Midwest to warm up again.  We have had freezing weather since August 4th so there has been no birthday swimming here.

One of the birthday towers Christopher Robin made for me to knock down

and the road he built for us to drive cars on!

And it is making us all a little crazy at our house!  70 degrees is NOT cutting it!  I have a new pool light to try out. 

Just ramblings

Some sailboat sinking

Not much is going on around here tonight.  Ryan is on call and is in the ER right now until who knows how late.

The kids are finally asleep, so I got online.  I wasn't going to blog tonight but I changed my mind.

These past 2 weeks have been filled with me immersing myself in home school preparation and reading.  I have been recommended a pile of great books to read like "The Well Trained Mind," and "A Thomas Jefferson Education" and several others.  In fact I read aloud to Ryan on our way to Chicago.  Getting prepared to start home school in a few weeks is becoming such a wonderful journey of discovery.  I almost feel like I have found new religion!  I kind-of want to shout it from the rooftops about how wonderful home school can be and how there are so many amazing resources available.

I also have narrowed down Jace's curriculum choices for next year and  I am so excited about it. We are going to use Right Start Math, The Writing Road to Reading, and The Story of the World.  I also have some fun science and art stuff in the works too.  Any suggestions from you home schooler pros out there would be great as well!

Yesterday, when I read the mail, there was a letter from the public school letting me know where Jace's bus stop was and that pick up time was 7:48Am  and drop off time was 3:19 PM.  I happily threw it in the garbage and felt really happy that I would get all that time with my son.

On a different note, there is a cold front passing through Iowa this week.  Which is good and bad.  It is great because it has brought much needed rain, and bad because Robin and myself are missing our 4:00PM swim date with each other. 

Everyday after Gracie is asleep for her nap I take the cover off the pool, and Jace and I take a good long swim together.  We play games he has invented.  His two favorites are called Sharks and Crashes.  They involve a lot of wrestling and physical contact.  It is so funny in comparison to Gracie, because when she wakes up and joins us in the pool she wants to hold hands and sing Ring Around the Rosie's with all of us.  The difference between boys and girls is amazing!

And now the Dr is home so I am going to be done now with my evening ramblings and put myself right to sleep before he comes into the bedroom and discovers I am still awake, because if he does, he will get that look in his eye--if ya' know what I mean!

When we play sharks Jace is ALWAYS the shark and I am ALWAYS the human--incase you were wondering.

 

 Little Rue cleans out all the leaves that blow into the water!

Good night!

We took on Chicago

For months Ryan has been scheduled to attend an OMS Trauma conference in Chicago on August 4th and 5th.  The question has always been will Robin and Rue and myself accompany him on this weekend venture. 

As the trip has gotten closer and I learned that Ryan's schedule in Chicago was going to be intense with classes all day on Saturday from 8:00AM to 6:00PM and then again on Sunday from 8:00AM to 1:30PM, my vote has been to stay home alone with the kids and spend the weekend swimming with them.  But the Dr really wanted his family to come with him.

So I got online and looked into things the 3 of us could do on Saturday while Ryan was in meetings.  We decided to attend the Shedd Aquarium on Saturday, and then go to the Lincoln Park Zoo with Ryan on Sunday for a few hours before we headed home.

So we bit the bullet and cut off a few arms and legs in order to buy tickets to get through Shedd's doors and then I spent the day Friday packing and getting us ready to drive off into the sunset Chicago bound!

Chicago is about 225 miles away.  Ryan got held up at work with an infection that came in late so we ended up leaving Iowa much later than we had hoped on Friday night. We got to Chicago well after midnight.  It was a long drive.

Nonetheless, on Saturday, Robin and Rue were both up by 9:00 AM and were biting at the bit to go see some sharks.

So that is what we did!!

 

The Jelly Fish display was pretty impressive.

Jace loved this submarine and could have spent the whole day just playing in it.  I will remember that for our next visit!

I personally thought the 4-D movie experience was fun.  We watched Ice Age-Dawn of the Dinosaurs.  I am not sure what I liked most about the movie, -if it was the fact that I could sit down for 15 minutes and stop fighting the crowds with a tired, crying 2 year old and a stroller,  -or if the movie was really good, but all in all, Jace and I really liked it!

This is Gracie's look after the movie.  She hated it.  It was too loud and a little scary for her!  But I held her on my lap and she did fine-for the most part.

Row, row, row your boat.

 Waiting for the Aquatic Show to begin. 

The large windows in the Aquatic Show room overlook Lake Michigan. The lake was full of sailboats and it was beautiful. 

The outside of the Shedd Aquarium building.

 The Shedd aquarium was defiantly a wonderful experience for Robin and Rue.  I think I would have enjoyed it more if Ryan would have been along to tend Rue for me all day!  But Jace will always remember the king crab, the Amazon Bullet Ants that were at least 1 inch long and very venomous, and of course the sharks. 

Sunday brought the Zoo!

Every zoo should have a carousel and a train!

Fortunately this one did!! 

A BIG -and stinky- rhino!

The giraffes!

The zoo was fun and a good way to end our trip before we began our 4 hour journey home.  Grace loved the train and the carousel, I think the giraffes were my favorite, Jace liked the gorillas and the tiger, and Ryan loved that the free zoo charged $30.00 for parking!!

And now we are home safe and sound and I am happy to be here in our little Iowa town, with the city life left behind!