School Field Trip

This week we got to go on Ryan's school field trip. It was fun. We went to a Desert Museum. It was 2 hours away. The kids got to ride on nice tour-style buses. They watched movies on the trip. Doug & I drove down by ourselves. We dropped him off at school and went out to breakfast at Liberty Market. That was fun & very yummy. We got to the Museum just shortly after they arrived and found his group right away.


The Museum was tons of fun. We saw a lot of native plants, and plenty of butterflies and hummingbirds. There were displays of native minerals, native animals and an area the kids could break fossils free from dirt clods and sift through rocks to find some minerals and gemstones.

Ryan on the bus:

Upon entering the museum, this was the view:
Display of rocks:
Ryan's group during the museum:
Sifting through rocks to find "treasures":
Trying to break a fossil free:
Doug's self-portrait:
Me doing my thing - photographing something. Be sure to check out my photo blog over the next few weeks. There were over 200 pictures taken at the museum.
An example of one of the photos taken that day:

Chicken Update

Our little chickens are all grown up & laying eggs! I can't believe how big they have gotten so quickly. We just brought them home as little yellow fuzz balls in October and now they are bigger than Luna and giving us yummy eggs.

Look at how big they are!

Luna wouldn't come near me for a picture. This was the best I could get of all three birds:
The younger chicks are laying brown eggs. They are already bigger than Luna's eggs.

These oranges on our tree remind me of pears or teardrops. I thought they were pretty neat looking.

Spring Carnival

It's that time of year. We look forward to the Spring Carnival at Ryan's school every year. It's one way to help out the school with much needed funds. This year, one of Ryan's friends came with us to the carnival. They have all kinds of fun activities for the kids. There are carnival booths to win prizes at, those inflatable slides and such, a train for the kids to ride. We get to eat some yummy food from a local BBQ restaurant and listen to the DJ playing fun music all night. Three hours of fun. The only pictures I took were when we were eating. It's nice now that Ryan is a little older, he enjoys the activites on his own with his friends - and since it's at his school, it's very safe. Doug, Scott and I enjoyed visiting at the picnic tables while the boys played.

Ryan with two of his school friends:

Ryan and his friend getting ready to enjoy their burgers and hot dogs:

Fun Day at the Renaissance Festival

This weekend, we went to the local Renaissance Festival. I haven't been for a long time - something like 16 years. Boy it sure has grown. We had a great time. There are a ton of fun activities for the kids, lots of yummy food to enjoy, shows to see and of course, plenty of fun booths to spend your money on. Ryan participated in many of the fun activities.

Ryan enjoyed all of the amazing "knight apparel". He really enjoyed the weapons. Here he is with a sword made for kids.

This is the sword smith booth. We visited it at least 3 times. We all enjoyed the beauty of these weapons. They are sharp. There were signs all over the place stating only to be bought & handled by persons over 18 years old.
Ryan got to shoot a bow & arrow at a target. Here he is getting his arrows.
Getting ready to shoot an arrow. It was fun to watch him aim and shoot. Afterward, he said it kinda hurt his hand to shoot.

This is the crossbow area:

Catapulting frogs into buckets. He got one out of five to land in the bucket.

From the moment we left, he said he wanted to do the bungee jump. Here he is getting fastened in. It's kind of a reverse bungee jump. The bounce on trampolines, using the bungee cords to fly really high into the sky.

Way high in the air:

We ended the day by watching the last jousting tournament of the day. These are the two knights we were supposed to cheer for. They lost. It was fun to watch them pick up rings with the lances and joust each other. At the end, there was a bit of sword fighting as well.