Camping, Catapults, and Trebuchets, Oh My!

So, we went camping over the weekend at a local campground. We have two lakes near-by and they have campgrounds. The boys got to go fishing, swimming, and play in the dirt! What could be more fun for three boys? We had a really good time sitting around the fire and making smores too. The boys loved the tent! Other than Ryan burning his fingers on one of the roasting sticks, and the whole sleeping on the ground thing for Mommy, it was a lot of fun! However, I can't believe that I forgot my camera!
Sunday afternoon I spent doing lots and lots of laundry, while the boys and my husband spent a good deal of time in the garage making a trebuchet. Last summer they made a catapult and so now they made the trebuchet, a castle and a bunch of little 'guys' and things to launch. It's pretty cool when they can get an idea like that and then make it happen.

Fun with chalk and pipe cleaners

Earlier this summer I bought some pipe cleaners, intending to use them for art projects with the kids. However, they have had no interest in making projects this summer so I've just been following their lead. They wanted to use the pipe cleaners to make their own creations so I said sure! They each made themselves a 'hands-free cell phone' for their ears, and then they just started making a bunch of things... a headband, an alien 'costume', a DNA strand, and a tail. I love it when they are creative. We also were able to spend some time outside using sidewalk chalk. Ryan recently learned to write his name, so he wrote that a few times and then was drawing all over. I "made" Lucas practice some math and then he made a racetrack. Andrew loved scribbling on his big brothers drawings.

Smiley Faces

I made a previous post about our new family rules, and since then we've been trying to come up with a plan for what to do if the rules get broken. So last week after some very bad behavior, I came up with a plan... happy faces. I made each of the older two children a chart with their names on it, and then on the side I listed some rewards that they can EARN. Right now the rewards are going camping, going to the pool, and going go-karting/mini-golfing. If they earn 10 smiley faces each then they get the reward, if they don't earn ten, then they don't go. They can earn the faces by following the rules, and/or by helping another family member. It seems to be working okay so far.
Ideally, I've never been one who was big on rewards, punishments, etc. but to be honest the kids behavior was getting out of control! We had even resorted to spanking on occasion and that's something I try to avoid. So for now we are going to use the charts, and hopefully if things improve we can phase them out later.

Vacation Photos

Well, in better late than never fashion here are a few photos of our family vacation to Mt. Rushmore KOA/Palmer Gulch Lodge. You can see our cabin, the bandlands, Mt. Rushmore, a black bear that was next to our van at Bear Country, and lastly the big boys w/ their fingers up the nose of one of the President's on Mt. Rushmore in Wall Drug.

My toddler just dumped out an entire box of cereal...

onto the floor. Oh yes, he did! And, its not even the first time he's done that this week!

Magnetic Letter Activities

Once a month for the summer, the school sends my 5yr. old a "Kindergarten Packet" with some little activities in them. They aren't required, but they are a good way to introduce kids to what they will be doing in K. My oldest loved them when he was this age, and so far Ryan thinks they are okay. The most recent one had a bag of magnetic letters in it, along with some games and worksheets that can be used with the letters. One of the ideas is to put them on a cookie sheet and find the letters in their name and other family members names, make small words like cat, find all the red letters, etc. A few years ago I hung up a new cookie sheet w/ a piece of ribbon on the wall of the playroom. (You should be able to see it there in the picture next to the chalk board that my DH painted and then framed.) Then I just keep the letters in a bag and the kids can use them whenever they want. They also sent along a letter strip to hang up and letter cards to play a game with. Ryan knows all of his letters, and many of their sounds so he beat me when we played the game! LOL. Of course my little one couldn't be left out of any of the activities!

Family Rules

Over the weekend we made up a poster of Family Rules and hung them up, in hopes of helping everyone in our family get along better. They are as follows:

1. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Be kind to each other, respect each other.
2. Clean up after yourselves, help others clean too.
3. Spend more time together. Family nights are once a week. Spend less time watching/playing electronics alone.
4. Communication is important. Listen to each other. Answer if someone is talking to you. Don't walk away if someone is speaking to you.
5. Use your indoor voice in the house. No screaming inside!
6. Do as you are asked to do.

Today was Lucas' last day of Archery for this summer, and he also had a dentist appointment this afternoon. No cavities as usual! :) Ryan also had his weekly play therapy this afternoon and I think it went well. It's rainy out and I'm tired. My project for this week is to come up with some good consequences if the rules are not followed. I'm also trying to come up with a good cleaning schedule that I can make work so that our house is not such a mess all the time.

An evening in the ER

Or, why my baby is crazy part 2... I forgot to mention in my last post that Andrew likes to jump, a lot. He started shortly after he was a year old jumping from one piece of furniture to the next, and off of things like the cough, etc. So last night the boys were playing upstairs and apparently jumping on the bed. I heard crying so went to see what happened and my oldest was bringing Andrew down telling me he fell off the bed and got a cut. So I grabbed him and brought him to the bathroom to have a look. He's crying and he's got a small but deepish cut near his eye. So I called my husband to come look and he says yup to the hospital. We all throw some shoes on and jump in the van and take off for the ER. They admited him and cleaned him up and used some Dermabond to seal it up and sent us on our way. He was running around and acting like his usual crazy self, and he's going to be just fine. He didn't like being held down but other than that he had stopped crying by the time we got there. Luckily they got us in and out of there pretty quickly too. Such is life with 3 crazy boys!

My 1yr. old is CRAZY!

Why oh why does he do the things that he does? He's not even 2 yet but he thinks he is as big as his older brothers! He wants to do everything that they do, and he is extremely high energy and too smart for his own damn good, and has been like this since he was just over a year old. When he was about 15mos. he learned how to climb over the gate that I had on the stairs, so I just took it down and taught him to use the steps. Shortly after that he figured out how to open one of our doors to go outside, so we have to keep it locked at all times. One of his favorite activities is putting cat and/or dog food into the pet's water dish... then it becomes all gross and the pets can't drink their water. Oh, and he also pushes chairs up to the counter grabs the chocolate milk mix (its a powder) and proceeds to dump it all over the floor and play in it until he's a chocolate baby. He manages to do these things within minutes while I am just in the other room.

Lately he's been into putting things up his nose! By far the most annoying thing that he has been doing constantly is pouring things out all over the floor. If we give him a cup w/ a cover, he can sometimes take the cover off. Other times we've given him cups without covers because he wants a drink. He'll take a few sips, walk in the other room, and dump it out all over the floor. So I keep finding wet spots all over the house... on the kitchen floor, on the carpet, on the couch, and his newest favorite - in our shoes! It's driving me crazy!!!

Fourth of July Weekend

We had a rather uneventful weekend, it almost didn't seem like the 4th. It rained off and on, so we didn't get to spend much time outside. The kids decided they didn't want to go to the parade in our town like we usually do, so we just stayed home and hung out. We did go and watch the fireworks on Saturday night though. We drive out to my husbands work and watch from a truck in a field. We get a good view of our town's fireworks and also the fireworks that people set off at the lake that way.
My husband got a new computer game so he and my oldest spent most of the weekend playing that, while trying to convince me to play it as well. I tried it a little, but a friend of mine got me hooked on play My Zoo on facebook so I spent a bunch of time playing that this weekend! That is pretty much all we did, nothing too exciting!

Vacation to the Black Hills, Part 2

Day 1: So we headed out, and the drive was not near as bad as I had feared. Other than having to stop several times for the kids to go potty, it went well. We arrived to our resort in late afternoon, and found our cabin. It had a screened in porch, a small kitchen and seating area, and two bedrooms, plus outside there was a picnic table and fire pit w/ grill topper. At our resort there were two pools, horse stables, two restaurants, two shops/stores, a jumping pillow, a mini golf area, a large game board, basket ball court, splash park, water slide, and a large playground. So after we got unpacked we headed down to the playground and jumping pillow area. Then we ate dinner at one of the restaurants, changed into our suits and went swimming. After that we went back to our cabin, changed into warmer clothes, and had a little camp fire, roasted marshmellows, and then went to bed!

Day 2: When we woke up the next morning it was freezing in our cabin so we made a fire in our fireplace to warm up a bit. Then we got ready for our first busy day of touring. After everyone was ready for the day we headed down to the Pancake Tent for a pancake breakfast. Then we loaded into the van and headed towards Rapid City. We visited the Air & Space Museum at Ellsworth Airforce Base. When we got there it was HOT, and Andrew's face was a bit red but I figured it was just from riding in the van. So I get him out and put him in the stroller and Ryan throws a fit because he wants to ride in the stroller. It happens every time. So we go to look at some of the planes and I notice Andrew rubbing his eyes a lot and he's getting more red. So I told Erick that we should go inside, hoping it was much cooler. We went inside and Erick was bringing Andrew to the bathroom to was his face off w/ cool water and see what was going on when his nose started gushing blood everywhere. We tried to get it to stop but it just make him more upset, which made him bleed more. Then a nice Airwomen offered to take us to another room and get us some ice, cake, fruit, and pop. That seemed to calm him down and the bleeding slowed and eventually stopped, but his eyes and face were still really red and puffy. So while Erick kept him calm I ran over to a gas station really quick and grabbed some Benadryl. We gave him some as best we could but it didn't really help much. I was starting to get worried that we would need to bring him to the hospital on vacation. We walked around a bit and kept an eye on him, then decided to give him a little more Benadryl and head out. So we cranked the A/C in the van and let it cool off before loading the kids up and driving around a bit to make sure Andrew was okay, and find my husband a new t-shirt, since his had blood on it. We gave Andrew a bunch to drink and then he fell asleep. As he was sleeping his face cleared right up and he seemed like his usual self again. So we decided to head to Story Book Island, which is a really neat free park w/ fun play structures for the kids and a little train ride. The kids loved it!

After that we were all tired so we went back to the cabin to rest for a bit, but of course the boys wanted to go swimming! So we changed into our suits and headed to the pool for a bit. We also go to go for a little wagon ride around the campground. Afterwards we grilled hot dogs, ate chips, and drank pop... nothing like a little junk food on vacation! We decided we had better get ready and head to Mt. Rushmore since we hadn't made it the night before. I wanted to get there before dark, but not too early because they have an evening movie and lighting ceremony. It was very beautiful, and much more amazing in person than it is in pictures. However, I didn't get to see much of the movie presentation due to Andrew acting like a little crazy boy. By the time we got back to the cabin that night it was pretty late and the kids were tired so we went right to sleep.

Day 3: Today was our day to visit Bear Country USA and Reptile Gardens, plus we were hoping to tour a cave later that evening. We got to Bear Country and followed the line of cars through the park... it was pretty neat to see many wild animals up close. Several bears were walking around the roads and one crossed right in front of our van. Then we went over to "Babyland" where you can walk around and see smaller animals, including baby bears! They were soo cute, playing with each other and climbing trees. Afterwards we were getting hungry but headed down the road to Reptile Gardens. When we got there we ordered lunch, ate, and then decided to walk around a bit before seeing what time the shows were. In the afternoon we watched a Snake Show, and it was really neat. The guy told us all kinds of interesting facts about snakes and told a few jokes. Shortly before the show started a nice couple w/ a little boy a few months older than Andrew sat down in front of us. I warned them that Andrew might kick, but they were very understanding and started talking w/ us and Andrew. Andrew was just watching their little boy, and was being super quiet. Later in the show Andrew did get wild again, but thankfully it was near the end. Afterwards we walked around some more, and saw some Giant Tortoise's that were 160yrs. old! Then we headed back to the resort. Andrew was asleep and I was exhausted so my husband took the older two boys down to the pool and water slide while I took a nap with Andrew. When they got back it was supper time so we went to one of the little restaurants and got something to eat, but it started to rain! They only had outdoor seating so we took our food back to our cabin. After the storm was over we decided to go check out the cave that we wanted to tour, only to realize that it was closing in 10mins. So we didn't make it that night, but told the kids we would go first thing in the morning. It was still early so we decided to go explore the town nearest our resort, before heading back to the cabin and making a fire. The big boys and Daddy did a few little firecrackers and I began packing and cleaning up the cabin.

Day 4: Today was our day to check out and go home, which no one wanted to do but we did. First we headed to Rushmore Cave for a tour. I had brought along the Ergo for my husband to wear Andrew on his back in the cave. He tried it out the night before and Andrew loved it. So we go into the cave, and Andrew starts fussing... the tour goes on for a bit and every time we stopped the fussing turned into crying. He wanted me to carry him but I just couldn't do it. So we had to ask to leave. They sent another tour guide to lead us out of the cave a different way and all was well. They had a money back guarantee so we weren't out anything, but we were all very disappointed that we didn't get to complete the tour as it was something we were really looking forward to. Afterwards we headed for home, and the trip was uneventful.

Vacation: Part 1 The trip that almost wasn't!

Back in Feburary I began planning our first family vacation in over 5 years. We decided that we should go and see Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills/Badlands area. I haven't been there since I was a child, and of course the boys have never been there. I didn't want to just camp in a tent, and we don't own a camper, so I booked a 2bdrm cabin w/ a kitchenette. We set out early on Sunday morning and got back last night. I would have loved to stay longer but we were trying to keep the costs down. The trip almost didn't happen due to the fact that I threw my wallet away! Yes, you read that right... I threw my wallet in the garbage. I guess that's what pregnancy brain will do to you. We got all ready to go and woke the kids up at 5am only to realize that my wallet - which contained the credit card we would be using to pay for the trip - was missing. We searched the entire house, van, backpacks, laundry, couch cushions, etc. No wallet. Finally, it was getting close to 6am and I was panicking thinking we would not get to go. I figured I would check the trash bag that I had threw out last night because I had been trying to clean up a little before heading out of town. You see we had just ran to walmart to pick up some last minute supplies for our trip. So I ripped open the bag and dumped the trash all over our garage floor. Sure enough, in with some paper wrappers and such inside a walmart bag was my wallet! Whew! We could go...

Back from Vacation!

Well we made it back from our 7hr. trip to the Black Hills of South Dakota. Overall, it was a great time and we all enjoyed ourselves... just a few minor "bumps in the road". I'll blog more about the trip and hopefully get some pictures up in the next couple of days. We are super busy tomarrow w/ the kids activities and a Dr. appt for me.