Ranch Day

Last Saturday we went to Ranch Day at the Ranching Heritage Center. It had a lot of ranch and pioneer type activities for kids including horseback rides, rope making, stick horse making, stick horse rodeo, and more. Our kids did not participate in many activities, but they enjoyed watching. Joel and I made stick horses for him and Hannah and Noah. (Hannah and Noah seem to think of them more as brooms.) There was also some live entertainment including Jason's brother, Andy, performing cowboy songs. We enjoyed the day out there.

Joel showing Hannah the stick horse he just made:

Hannah and Noah using their stick horses as brooms:

Andy performing:

Joel riding his horse:

There is a train out at the Ranching Heritage Center that Joel really enjoyed:

An Evening at the Park

One night last week we met Jason's brother and his wife at the park and ate pizza and played. I think Alissa took several of these pictures for us with our camera. Thanks Alissa! Here are some pics:

Noah and Hannah love slides:

Our latest family pic:

We thought this one was funny (notice Joel under the bench):

A Day Out With Thomas

On Saturday we took Joel to "A Day Out with Thomas." It was the first thing that both Jason and I took just Joel to since Noah came home. Jason's sister stayed home with Hannah and Noah while they took a nap. We rode on the train for about 25 minutes and there were a lot of other activities to do also. Here are some pictures:

Joel had a lot of fun in a maze made out of hay bales:

Here we all are on the train:

Here is a tattoo that he got:

This is the car that we rode in. Our seats were way up at the top where the windows are:

One of Joel's favorite things were using ink stamps of all the Thomas characters. He did 5 sheets of them:

After we left we drove and saw Thomas on his next run:

Easter Pictures

Since Joel was sick last weekend and we did not go to church on Easter, this Sunday we dressed them in the clothes they were going to wear last week. We also took some pictures. Here are our cute kids:

3 Days

Happy Easter! You may think this post has something to do with Easter, but it doesn't. Three days is the length of time that our family was well, before getting sick again. Thursday was the first day everyone was well after over 2 weeks of a serious cold. Last night in the middle of the night we woke up to Joel throwing up in our bed. He then told us that he had thrown up in his bed also. We had big plans for today. All our Easter clothes were ironed and everything was out and ready for us to be gone all day, but everything was canceled and we all stayed home. It seems like since Hannah came home we are sick for about 3 weeks then all well 1-2 weeks before it all starts over again. This time it was three days. As I have said before we are sick of being sick!

Easter Activites

Although some of our Easter activities were canceled due to sickness, we were still able to have some fun.

Friday we went to an Easter egg drop. They dropped Easter eggs from a helicopter. There was supposed to be 50,000 eggs. We thought the kids would enjoy the helicopter and and the eggs. When we got there they said no parents were allowed on the field. Joel did not want to go out on the field without us and we did not want him to, so we ended up just observing the event. In the end the parents flooded the field too.

Yesterday we dyed Easter eggs with the help of Jason's sister and parents. Joel really liked it. He spent a lot of time on each egg dipping it in colors again and again.

Here are the kids with their Easter baskets. Hannah and Noah got their first coloring books and crayons that they really seemed to like. They all also got some brownies from Grammy and Pop that they were quite excited about.

We had lots of Easter egg hunts in our living room today. Hannah and Noah were better at it than expected. Joel loved it and want to "hunt" for them again and again. He also liked to hide them for the rest of us.