Today we once again went to Lowe's for their Build and Grow workshop, since they were scheduled to build school buses. Out of curiosity to see how she would handle herself, we decided to let Analeigh attend as well. As it turns out, she's still a little young to stay behaved through the entire process, so we'll try again another time. Regardless, David and Analeigh both got school buses out of the deal, so they were happy. So happy, in fact, they insisted on driving their buses throughout the store.
After the workshop, we went to the Salina Mall to watch a preview of The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!, a new show for kids on PBS. Following the preview, the kids got to meet The Cat in the Hat, which was much more exciting for them than the picture of them would make you think.
Today we drove to the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple in Omaha, Nebraska. As has become our habit, Ben once again took the kids across the street to the Mormon Trail Center, while Liz was in the temple. Once Liz was done, she and Ben would trade off.
After the visitor's center, we toured the temple grounds, and enjoyed the beautiful flowers. Analeigh took several opportunities to lay down. David, on the other hand, enjoyed digging in the dirt of the flower beds.
We harvested our first watermelon of the season this morning. Yesterday evening, while Liz was out weeding, an Asian family walked by. The grandmother-looking figure told her that the largest one was ready to be picked. Since we weren't really sure when to pick the melon, we decided to follow the elderly Asian woman's recommendation.
As it turns out, elderly Asian women's judgment should NOT be trusted in regards to the ripeness of watermelon. Nevertheless, it was a rather large watermelon:
David will be entering preschool the week of Labor Day. In the meantime, we had to register him today. As part of the build-up to the big day, we are doing everything we can to help David be excited. So he got to choose the material he wanted his back pack made out of. We considered buying one, but it seem that the bags made for little ones are never built to last and fall apart rather quickly. So anyway, Liz made the bag below for David, which he insisted on wearing to the enrollment. Once at the preschool, David fell in love with all the toys available. He thinks Mrs. Haase (the teacher) is amazing - probably because of the toys. He tells us that she wants him to come back today every day. We won't have any trouble getting him to go on the first day!
We decided to have some fun this evening to get the kids out of the house (since they haven't been able to do much outside with all the heat). So this evening's project involved making bubbles. Analeigh used the fan-powered bubble maker, David used a giant wand to make his bubbles. And everyone had a great time.
We've referred to the city pool in some of our recent entries, but we've never taken any pictures of it. Since the pool will be shutting down soon for the season, once school begins, we figured today would be a good opportunity to take some pictures to share.
There are two separate areas in which to swim. Generally we start out in the kiddie pool area. Since it has a section that only goes to 1'6" deep, the kids love it.
After a while, we're generally able to coax them into riding with us on the water slide. David loves going on it more than Analeigh, but they generally both smile throughout the process.
After a ride down the slide, we'll often go under the water umbrella contraption.
One of Ben's old co-workers, Tara, is married to a farmer, so they recently hooked us up with some wheat (since they know how cheap we are and how we like to make our own bread). She left it at the home of one of Ben's current co-workers, Todd, since he commutes from Great Bend each day. Alas, Todd consistently failed to bring it with him to Ellsworth.
Fortunately, Ben had to go to Great Bend today to testify in court for a case he used to have when he was working in that office of Saint Francis. Since Ben would be going down that way for court, he talked to Todd on Monday to make arrangements to stop by his house after court to pick up the wheat. Todd was remarking on how odd it was for him to have buckets full of wheat sitting in his garage when another co-worker overheard the conversation and thought Todd was saying he had buckets full of "weed" in his garage. Fortunately everything got clarified before the rumors started flying! And now we have wheat (not weed) to grind and make bread again. So, woo-hoo!
We were recently invited to attend a welcome to town potluck, scheduled this evening at a park. However, due to recent temperatures, the potluck was moved to the basement of the local Methodist church. We got to eat hot dogs and hamburgers and were treated like royalty since we were only one of two new families to show up to the event (this also resulte din us getting sent home with a lot of the leftovers).
We had been a little concerned that the potluck might not be Sabbath-appropriate, but we should have know that the band that was coming would consist of senior citizens playing old bluegrass medleys.
Overall we had a fun time and David got to be serenaded by the younger man on the far left, who made up songs based on whatever theme the audience threw at him. So, for David, he sung a song about driving excavators!
Because of David and Analeigh's propensity for tearing apart, eating, or otherwise mangling books, we have most all of the children's books hidden away in a closet. However, David has recently been mastering the safety covers on our door knobs, allowing him to bust in to the closet and read as much as he wanted to.
While watching a movie one evening a while back, we saw this trailer for the upcoming re-release of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. A memory came to Ben from years ago of his nephew, Matthew, loving to watch one of the movies (probably Fantasia 2000) so much, that the video tape was nearly worn out. His parents had just bought the DVD and noted how much better it looked than their old VHS copy.
So Ben got to thinking, if Matthew loved Fantasia as a young child, maybe David and Analeigh would enjoy it too. So Ben searched YouTube and found every segment from the films (some of lesser quality than others).
Among David and Analeigh's favorites are:
1) Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance - Marches 1, 2, 3 and 4 (also known, by Analeigh, as "Animals")
2) Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals, Finale (also known, by Analeigh, as "Flamingos")
3) Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice (also known, by Analeigh, as "Mickey" or "Mouse")
Realizing that the kids loved what they were seeing, we decided to check our local library to see if they had either video available. While they didn't have Fantasia 2000, they did have a VHS copy of the original Fantasia.
Impressively, they were able to sit through most of it - both loving to see Mickey Mouse on the television. Analeigh loved seeing the flowers dancing in the Nutcracker Suite so much that she danced along too. Analeigh was so entranced by the movie she didn't even notice her dad sneaking up behind her to take these pictures.
We're looking forward to purchasing the DVD's, whenever they're available. If you checked out the trailer mentioned at the beginning of this post, you would know that no release date was mentioned. Wikipedia says the Blu-Ray version should be out on December 7, 2010, though Amazon does not mention a release date for Blu-Ray, or the DVD. So if anyone gets some inside information about this, please let us know.
Today has been a scorcher of a day. The following notice of ridiculous temperatures is courtesy of KSN's WeatherLab Network:
However, it should be noted that today was not quite as hot as yesterday.
Both of the above images were taken from the website around 5:30 p.m. And so it is that we are extremely thankful to the City of Ellsworth for charging us $2/month on our utility bill in order to allow us "free" access to the pool (seriously, $24 for a family pass ain't too shabby).
We went yesterday and today. However, they kicked us out early today because of rain clouds that were approaching with thunder and lightning. That would have been fine, except for the fact that it never rained here - it all stayed north of us.
So we did the next best thing - we went to the store and bought ice cream!
Today we voted in the primary elections, which were held at our local American Legion building. David and Analeigh enjoyed coming along because they were able to use their cuteness to snag a coupl of "I Voted" stickers for themselves, even though they're too young to vote.
As an added bonus, there is an old tank parked outside the building, which the kids enjoyed climbing on.
After walking around the tank a little more, we finally noticed the sign that says to stay off the tank, so we promptly obeyed and headed home to get changed to go to the pool
Since our new camera is much larger than our old one, we could not use the same camera bag we've been using. So Liz looked online for some ideas to make a camera bag of her own. Here is the final product:
One things we missed out on for the few days we were without a camera was Analeigh's sudden obsession with her mother's shoes. Liz was gone one night helping with an activity at the church. When Ben was putting the kids to bed, Analeigh insisted on wearing her mommy's sandals during her awkward walk up the stairs. Then, when Ben tried to take them away as he closed the bedroom door behind him, Analeigh threw a fit until he returned the sandals to her. Oh well, at least she slept good.
Fortunately, she is still quite smitten with the sandals, so we were still able to get a picture with our new camera. Here is Analeigh with the sandals in question:
Two weeks ago we talked about David's fascination with grabbing a box of Jell-O out of Sister Smith's treat drawer. This week was no exception, as he snagged a box of sparkling Jell-O. Sadly, we did not have any sparkling cider to mix in to give it true sparkle. Fortunately, David didn't really care - he just wanted to be involved in the mixing part of the Jell-O making procedure (and he insisted that his mom take pictures of him during the process).
