Today it got up to 98 degrees. And because I have so much McComb genes running through my veins, well actually Einarsson - from my mom’s side - it seemed like a good idea to go and do something outside. Something that didn’t involve large pools of water or shade or anything like that, ya know, things that would be really good for a hot day. Instead, we met up with Tonya and her husband, Justin, and daughter, Skylyn, and went to Tanganyika Wildlife Park. It’s a park that takes care of and breeds rare and endangered types of animals and tries to create for them habitats that are as close to their natural habitats as you can get here in Kansas. The animals that don’t need to be caged in, don’t have big fences around them, so you can get really close to giraffes and hold birds and pet lemurs. It’s pretty sweet. But thankfully, the rhinos and tigers and stuff were off limits to touching.

See how close the giraffes are back there??

Anybody see those 2 teeth that Willow has? She popped those babies through last weekend!

Indian Rhino

We walked around inside the Lorikeet exhibit and I got a couple birds to sit on my finger. Sadly, I was the one holding the camera, so there’s no photo. But one little birdie got annoyed at me and bit into me real good and made my finger bleed. It was traumatizing for Jayden a bit, even though I didn’t scream or anything, and we had to leave that exhibit right away. Jayden has always had this fear of birds dive-bombing him and pecking his head and stuff.

Cute little kookaburras

Clouded Leopards

Here’s the kangaroos. You got to walk around inside their exhibit too and if they came up to you, we were told we could pet them on their back. Sadly, it was too freaking hot for the kangaroos to get up out of the shade and come over to us. They just laid in the shade and stared at us like we were crazing walking around in the sun and stuff. I tried to call to them, but I guess I don’t know kangaroo very well, because they didn’t do what I asked.
This kangaroo has a little joey in it’s pouch! I’ve never seen one of those upclose!

Here’s Tonya and Skylyn petting the donkeys and miniature horses and goats.

Hello Goat!

Royal has been so excited to buy Willow her own camp chair. Jayden and I sit in ours, out on the deck, all the time during the day, and sometimes in the evenings Royal and I will sit out on the deck and watch the sunset while swatting away all the bugs. The bugs here are brutal. There are mosquitos out during the day! What is up with that???? Anyway, Royal insisted Willow’s chair be pink. He’s totally embracing her girlyness, as long as she’s tough and knows how to fight and fish and stuff.

“Hey, will you guys look at me, so I can take a picture of you in your camp chairs?”

“Come on, Jayden, just one picture. Just put the chips down for a sec”

Willow: “What? He has chips?”

The weather here has been so great. It’s in the 80’s and sunny and now that Royal and I went out and got a portable canopy to provide some shade in our backyard, we’ve been hanging out in our camp chairs in the yard. Guess it’s time to buy some outdoor furniture or something. :) Right now, as I’m writing this, we’re chillin’ outside, in our portable shade, watching Jayden get all wet. I finally found all of Jayden’s outdoor water stuff in the garage yesterday. It didn’t get brought out last year because our grass had just been put in and we were trying to give it a chance to grow. I think Jayden forgot he had all these things to play with because it has been like Christmas around here.

Jayden gets wet then runs over to me and lays himself on my legs and says, ‘See mom, I feel just like an ice cube.”

There is a lot of yelling while we’re outside. Got to get it out of our system before we go inside and have to use inside voices again.

Little Willow-weed(as Jayden started calling her today) is 6 months old today! So far, she’s been just about as easy as the day she got here (let’s hope that continues because I have my hands full with Jayden). She hardly ever complains, she laughs when Jayden body slams her, she has yet to really start to like Royal, she sleeps good, eats good, and as long as I let her get at least 1 good nap in, she’s as happy as a clam. She’s sitting up on her own, showing no interest in moving or scooching anywhere - fine with me…stay immobile for as long as possible! And so far she loves rice cereal, oatmeal, avocados, and peaches!

Here’s some naked pictures for ya’ll. (yes, her arms are a little sunburned. the sun is fierce here in kansas and i’ve been slapping on sunscreen and creating as much shade as possible, but sometimes it’s just not enough. plus, my arbonne baby sunscreen has been backordered for a couple weeks now and that’s the best sunscreen i’ve ever used. i’m sure when it gets here, i’ll be able to keep the kids skin nice and white!)

(this should help make up for the lack of Jayden and Willow photos in the last few posts…why the heck isn’t anybody complaining about not getting to see me??? i’m cute too you know) :)

It is MUGGY here in Wichita thanks to all the rain, but yesterday turned out to be quite the hot sunny day. My favorite thing about online weather stuff is it tells you the real temperature and then it tells you what it feels like. Yesterday it said it was 85 degrees out, but it felt like it was 89. Hot enough to break out the present Jayden got from Jojee for his birthday, the wiggling water snake. I’m gonna have to hook it up to a different water faucet next time, because my garden faucet just didn’t have enough water pressure to make the snake wiggle around. Jayden had fun anyway, even if he was asking me every 15 seconds or so, ‘why won’t it wiggle mom? hey mom, is it gonna wiggle? oh! i think it’s starting to wiggle…nope, why isn’t it wiggling?’

One of Jayden’s new things that he loves to do is push Willow around in her “chair”. He pushes her all over the kitchen taking her to birthday parties. Birthday party for his coffee maker, birthday party for his trains, brithday party for his dinosaurs…obviously we’ve been doing a lot of birthdays over here. He then usually ends up over at the window benches where he plays with lots of his toys and pushes her real close so she can watch him and he can show her stuff. It’s pretty darn cute and Willow LOVES it. It’s so nice to have someone else entertain Willow for awhile.

Jayden and I spotted this cute big bunny in our yard during lunch today.

At first, I felt sorry for it because I figured Scooter had gotten a hold of it and it was probably dead or maimed or something. And to tell you the truth, I was going to be mad at Scooter. Fine, go off and kill things, it saves me money having to buy you food all the time, but why oh why must you leave all the carnage around where I (by I, I really mean Royal) have to clean it up??? Why else would the bunny just be sitting in our yard, if it wasn’t dead or hurt. It wasn’t moving around at all. All the other bunnies we’ve had in our yard all hop around from place to place, and as soon as we go outside on the porch they scamper under the fence and back out to the field. But today, we managed to get outside on the porch to get a better look and the thing didn’t even blink an eye. I was getting prepared to have to explain to Jayden again that Scooter had killed something and the poor bunny was dead, but then I saw it’s ears go back, so I figured it was probably just hurt or something. So, I thought I’d try and scare it. I threw one of Jayden’s plastic baseballs that were up on the deck at it. It didn’t even budge. Oh great, I thought, it’s bleeding out into my grass. Awesome. So, because I was preparing to write a post about all the animals Scooter has been off slaughtering lately - she’s really come into her prime here! - me and the kids snuck down the stairs so I could try and get a better picture, maybe one with some guts or something in it to really keep you guys entertained, and the bunny still didn’t move. I was within probably 3 feet of the thing and it didn’t move. So, I raise my camera and the thing bolts, before I could even get a picture, darn it! And being that I was having to try and take a picture with just one hand, since I was carrying Willow, I couldn’t get catch the fast sucker as it bolted under our fence into our neighbor’s yard. Guess the bunny was fine.

We go back inside and finish our lunch and Jayden checks the window every few minutes to see if its come back, I think nothing of it. Then, I look out my bedroom window where I have a great view of my garden and I think, ‘hmmm, things don’t look as full or big from up here.’ Then I get mad. That bunny has been in here eating my vegetables before they’ve even hardly had a chance to grow! My sugar snap peas have been going to town and there were lots of them growing because gardening with Jayden means dumping all the seeds real close together. They were going to have to be thinned at some point. Not anymore. Now, they are a sad looking bunch. Most of them chewed down to the nubs. Bad bunny!

Leaves all chewed on with bite marks taken out of them.

Cucumber vines missing all their leaves.

Time to go to the nursery and find something to protect my plants from the bunnies. And time to put my hunter out in the yard. Go get ‘em Scooter! Just please leave the headless bodies somewhere else - the heads seem to be Scooter’s favorite because the trophies she leaves up on the deck for me to find never have heads on them. It’s pretty awesome.

There is always such a let down after visitor’s leave. You have to get back into your “normal” routine, which seams so boring after you’ve had people here visiting, keeping you entertained for awhile. So, my blogging has been suffering because, well, life seems boring and like there isn’t really anything too exciting to post about. Don’t worry all 2 of you avid readers who are checking my blog everyday hoping for a new post, I’ll get it turned around again!

While Royal’s family was here though, they decided to do Jayden’s, Royal’s, and my birthday all at the same time. So even though my birthday was 2 months away I got presents! (see why life seemed so much more exciting???) I got these 5 great hanging baskets to make my backyard more colorful.

And Royal’s mom bought me a sewing machine! I’m super excited and wish I had a pocket full of money to buy material and at least 10 more free hours in the day so I can figure out how to use the darn thing! It took me a good 30 minutes to figure out how to wind a bobbin and then how to thread the needle. :) Royal’s mom did bring me some material from her stash and a pattern for something to make, so that’s the first thing I did. She swore it was something for a beginner, but I was so confused half the time I must be like a beginner-beginner or something. In the end though, I got it figured out (hopefully) and this is what I ended up with, who knows if it will actually hold something, it might be for display only. And not even that nice of a display, don’t look too closely, none of the seams on the blocks really match up. :)

And then last night, I got a crazy idea and was just itching to sew something, so after doing a bunch of research on the internet, I made Willow a skirt! I don’t think it turned out half bad and it only took me like an hour. ha ha ha :)

There’s lots of birthdays for us this time of year! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROYAL!!!

Happy birthday to my sweet ole dad! We miss you out here in K-land!

It has been mighty stormy here in Wichita. My backyard has turned into a lake with at least 6 inches of standing water in one corner a couple of time. Lots of thunder and lightning. Lots of wind and rain and flash flooding. The weather here is freakin’ scary! Last weekend, we had the scariest storm yet since we moved here. I thought for sure we were going down! Well turns out we survived just fine, but our neighbors across the street had a little incident.

You see, they have a big wooden play structure in their backyard, not unlike the one Kaylee’s kids have. A big slide, some swings, a climbing wall, a big fort up on top. It’s awesome. Well, let me clarify, it used to be awesome. The big storm this past weekend ripped it apart. The top was ripped right off it’s base and this is what it looks like now.

And if that wasn’t sad enough. The wind took the top of that play structure and flung it 2 houses down, right through a bay window. Oops!

Since it’s been so stormy, we’ve been stuck inside. Stuck inside staring at our sweet sandbox out the window that we really wish we could go play in. Oh well, I’m sure the sun will come back soon enough and when it does it’ll probably be way too hot and I’ll just have something else to complain about. :)

Jayden’s found something new to do. He’s been loving getting himself wedged between the end of our mattress and our footboard. He’s not to happy I chose to take his picture instead of pulling him out.

We’ve been spending lots of time downstairs and Willow has been working on her sitting up by herself skills.

We haven’t been able to work out much the past couple of weeks. Royal’s family was here for a week, and then this week, Jayden and I managed to come down with swine flu, I mean, a really bad cold that has kept us laid up for awhile. And one of my biggest pet peeves is parents who take their sick, snot dripping kids to places where they don’t really have to go and then let them chew on toys and play with other kids and pass their germs on. So, since there is no way I can keep Jayden away from this friends at StrollerFit, I’ve just been keeping him here until his green nose stops drippin’ so much. That however hasn’t stopped Jayden from getting his workouts in. Here he is doing his squats

I, however, can’t really keep Jayden away from passing his germs onto Willow. It seems though, that Willow has Royal’s immune system - she just doesn’t get sick like Jayden does - or at least she hasn’t seemed to come down with Jayden’s colds in the whole 5 months of her life so far.

This morning, Jayden wanted a snack, so I gave him a little bowl of pretzels. Obviously, they weren’t cooked good enough because I found him in the pantry like this, cookin’ ‘em up on the the grill.