It is finally warming up and that means the animals get let out of their inside cages at the zoo. My parents generously gave our family another zoo membership this year, and the kids and I go all the time, well once the weather warms up a bit. It just isn’t fun to go when it’s windy and freezing, not that we haven’t done it before, but I’d rather not :)  So, since it was suppose to get near 70 today, the kids and I, and a few of their friends spent a good few hours at the zoo this morning.

There was a new baby donkey at the zoo too. She was 8 months old, but this was the first time we had seen her.

We spent a lot of time at the giraffe’s exhibit.  Jayden and Willow both really like them, and to be honest, they are one of my favorites too.

We got in on the giraffe feeding today too!

This was 1 of the 2 kid giraffes and he’s not tall enough yet to reach over the feeding platform’s railing. He is actually the same age as Willow!

Look at that tongue!

The lions were out and 1 of the 2 boy lions who are less than 2 years old got all fired up when Jayden and his friend Noah brought over their stuffed tigers. He was pacing around and kept batting at the window trying to get at them (the kids or the stuffed animals, I’m not sure…). It was pretty fun to watch, but made me a bit nervous…I mean, how strong is that glass really???

Jayden and I started planting some seeds for the garden tonight.  Last year, our garden didn’t fare too well.  Well, parts of it didn’t anyway.   We had basil and some other herbs growing out our ears, but our peas, beans, carrots, tomatos, and pepper plants all got eaten away by what I thought were bunnies, but turns out were probably field mice.  We got some advice from a neighbor, who just happens to be a dirt expert that seed companies seek out to try their stuff, to plant cloves of garlic around the edges of the garden and that will keep the mice out.  I also plan on letting Scooter loose in the yard every night, since she’s probably going to kill something anyways. :)  I’ve been thinking about doing a weekly post this summer, with pictures of course, of all the killings Scooter leaves for us.  Sometimes bodies, sometimes guts, sometimes there’s just a blood spot left, but the head, the head is always missing.  I guess that’s Scooter’s favorite part.  Mmmm, brain!  Let me know what you think!

So, anyways…tonight, Jayden and I planted seeds for parsley, chives, basil, oregano, and cilantro.  And I forgot to save room for our lavender seeds, so I’m gonna have to get another little start pod for them.  Oops!

We have finally had a nice break from the horrible cold that is the winter here in Kansas.  We actually got up in the 50’s.  It was so nice, and it actually felt like spring was coming.  Although spring here, while it is a bit warmer comes with some pretty scary storms, and I did watch the movie Twister last night while ironing Royal’s work clothes, and I’ve pretty much freaked myself out about tornados again.  I’ve been here for a little over a year and a half, and I’m still not sure I’ve found a Kansas season that I like the best.  :)

Here’s some pictures of the kids swinging in the backyard, taking advantage of the warmish evening. I can’t wait ’till we can play outside after dinner again!

And on a side note, Willow has learned that she does indeed love cherry dum-dums.

The kids and I went to a fundraiser for the YWCA today at MyGym.  If you brought package of pull-ups or diapers, your kids could play for only $1.  Sadly, I didn’t even have a dollar on me, and not really wanting to charge $1 on the credit card, I raided Jayden’s piggy bank for it.  He caught me too, and then said, “It’s alright Mom, you can borrow it”  Thank goodness, or we would of just been stuck at home today!  And that just wasn’t going to work because Willow had a race to compete in!

Jayden and Noah burying themselves in the ball pit.

Willow tackling some stairs.

I was starting to think that Willow wasn’t having much fun.  I couldn’t get her to smile for me and in all the pictures she was looking so concerned.  And then I stuck her on the trampoline.

Spring Loaded…

BOING!!!

And from another angle…

Good thing I got her on the trampoline because we had to get her legs all warmed up for her race.  She was going to have to be scooching her fastest today because she was going to be competing against a walker, because, well, most kids are walking by the time they are 15 months old.  Not my kid though!  And you’re not gonna believe it, but Willow won!

Her competition got a little distracted and went off course for a bit.  See the little girl in the brown pants and blue shirt?  That’s Joyce, Noah’s little sister, and Willow’s competition.  The race started at the red taped line and Willow sure enough came scooching across the floor to get a ball, while Joyce turned around and started going the other way.

WINNER!  Willow made it to the red mat first.  There’s Joyce behind her, she started coming the right direction, but just a little too late.  Slow and steady wins the race, right???

Me and the kids went to a friend’s 2nd birthday party today at Pure Entertainment.  The kids both had so much fun.  Jayden went buck wild around the place and kept running by me saying, “Mom, I’m so sweaty!”  He was all red in the face and out of breath, but that wasn’t going to slow him down.  Thank goodness they were serving chicken fingers for lunch, a personal fav of Jayden’s (he asks for them for breakfast), or I don’t think I would of got him to take a break and cool off.

We went to the Museum of World Treasures this afternoon because we had heard they had some dinosaur bones and we wanted to go check them out with Jayden.  Come to find out, the dinosaur display here is the #1 dinosaur display in the world, because it is the only one with an almost complete (60-70%) skeleton of a T-Rex and a Daspletosaurus.  Ivan, the T-Rex, is the 3rd most complete skeleton of a T-Rex in the world, and the first one to be on display with all it’s vertebrae being actual fossils.  Who knew?  Another reason to come visit me in Wichita!  So I can show you Ivan!  :)

There was lots of other things in the museum as well, like 2 mummies, lots of world war stuff, lots of American History stuff, 42 presidental signatures, but as most museums go, you can hardly take pictures anywhere, and really the only thing we (we being Jayden and his bossy self) were interested in were the dinosaurs, so somehow we kept coming back to that display.

Here is the Daspletosaurus killing another dinosaur

Here is Ivan and the Daspletosaurus - the buddy dinos who make Wichita more than just a dot on the map!  (Can I get a woot woot?!?)

Here is the skull of a Triceratops

Jayden managed to find the video screen playing a BBC show about dinosaurs.

It was a tad graphic, and Jayden was bothered for the rest of the day about watching an Ornitholestes eat a baby Diplodocus right after it had hatched out of it’s egg.  I mean, who wouldn’t be??? At least we stuck around long enough so Jayden could see all the dead Diplodocus’s brothers and sisters hatch out and run for cover in the bushes, so the “bad little meat eater” couldn’t get them.
Are you wondering how I know the name of all these dinosaurs?  I read dinosaur books daily people, over, and over, and over.

Here is a concerned Jayden.

Good thing I steered him clear of the Civil War video that was playing, because as we walked by and I hurried Jayden on, I watched some confederate soldiers shoot some farmer and then hold his family hostage as he burned their house down.  Glad I didn’t have to explain that one!

Here is a Xiphectinus Fish

And finally, a view of Ivan the Terrible T-Rex from the 2nd floor!

While I was getting lunch ready, Jayden told me he had “thought about it” and that it was going to be okay for him to play in the snow and ice outside, “right now”.   So, out he went.  And then I glanced out the window to see what he was doing and I found this:

Yesterday, we headed up to Kansas City to hang out with our friends who live up there and stay at the Great Wolf Lodge.  We had so much fun!  I was a little worried about the kids in a hotel room, but I figured even if they had trouble sleeping, we were only going to be there one night, so it felt like I could handle it, knowing we were just going to go home and that it’s easier to deal with the crankiness when they can yell and act-out without us trying to control them in public.  Little did I know that Royal was going to be the problem at night, not the kids….  Willow didn’t take much of a nap in the car on the drive up to KC, so when we were still all playing in the water park around 7, I figured I’d take Willow up to our room and get her bed set up and maybe get her to sleep without too much trouble before Royal came up with Jayden.  Willow went to bed with little fussing, and then Jayden came up and got ready for bed.  He was so worn out from swimming and so excited that he got to “stay the night at the Great Wolf Lodge?!?!?!”  and “in the same room as mom and dad?!?!?!”  that he pretty much crawled into bed, read a couple of books to himself, and then tucked himself in.  We shut out the lights a little before 8, and really I was pretty glad to have the excuse to go to bed so early, I was tired.

We had this heater in our room, a typical hotel heater that was super loud, but pretty much blocks out all the other noises going on in the hotel.  It doesn’t really bother me, I can just shut it out as white noise and go to sleep.  Royal on the other hand, is VERY sensitive to noise and lights and whatnot and even while we are at home he sleeps with earplugs in because he can’t stand to hear the refrigerator running, or an ice cube dropping, or a car driving by, or a bug hitting the window, or the wind, or anything else like that.

Around 8:30, Royal is like, “Are you asleep?”
Me: “Well, almost”
Royal goes, “How the heck can you sleep with that jet engine in our room?”
Me:  “It’s not that big of deal.  I just block it out.  And now I am going to go to sleep.  Don’t you have your earplugs in?”
Royal: “I forgot to bring some”   (uh-freakin’-oh)
Me: “Bummer”
I probably could of been more sympathetic, but it’s not my strong suit and I was tired and Royal was keeping me awake…Royal continues to toss and turn and toss and sigh and turn and sigh and toss…Finally he’s like, I’m going to go turn it off.  He creeps across the room in the dark, because the heater is by where Willow is sleeping, and I hear him hitting buttons and little beeping and stuff and then he’s back in bed and the heater is still on.

Me (jokingly): “Couldn’t figure it out?”
Royal (not jokingly): “It won’t shut off.  How the heck am I going to sleep with that jet engine in our room?  I’m going to be up all freakin’ night”
Me: “Why don’t you try putting some rolled-up toilet paper in your ears?”
Royal:  “It doesn’t work and it just annoys me”
Me: “I think I might have a couple cotton balls, you want to try those?”
Royal: “This is stupid!  You pay this much money to stay here, I DEMAND perfection.  I will NEVER be back!”

So now I started panicking a bit because when Royal says stuff like that he’s not kidding, and he doesn’t change his mind easily, and the kids were having so much fun, and I wanted to come back, but not by myself…  So, I convinced Royal to go down to the front desk, ask about the heater, and see if maybe they have some earplugs there or something.  Royal comes back to the room, even more flustered.  He said that they’d have to send maintenance to come check it out, but that he told them not to bother since the kids were sleeping.  He had in his hand, though, a little box of earplugs.  Not earplugs for noise though, earplugs for keeping water out.  And obviously they didn’t work too well, because 10 minutes later, he was waking me up again, complaining about the heater.  I told him if he was really this unhappy, to go downstairs and tell the front desk about it.  Ask if they had a room that he could have that didn’t have a broken heater, or maybe they could refund him some money.  I said hotels are all about customer service, they are going to try and keep you happy, especially hotels that are all about kids, they want you to come back.  So, Royal puts his pants back on again and heads downstairs.   After a few minutes he’s back and tells me that they said they had to send maintenance first before anything else, and that he also told them that they’d have to try and fix it without making any noise and they could use a flashlight because he wasn’t turning the lights on since the kids were sleeping.  So, a maintenance guy shows up, creeps across the room with Royal and in like 30 seconds has the heater turned off, and leaves.  Guess there was some switch (other than the on/off button on the top of the heater that Royal tried) that was hidden underneath the thing that shuts the whole thing off.  Thank goodness it wasn’t super cold outside and we weren’t trying to maintain a certain temperature in the room or anything, because we would of ended up freezing so Royal could sleep.  :)  Royal came back to bed in a MUCH better mood and I think feeling a little silly at how easy the problem was to fix, and also  wondering why the heck they couldn’t of told him about the switch in the very beginning.  He kept trying to joke around with me, but since it was 10 o’clock now, and I was now really tired, I told him to stop talking to me and go to sleep already (I get cranky when I’m tired).  So, I rolled over and started to fall asleep in our now quiet room.  Ahhhhhhh….sleep…..And then,
Royal: “How long do you think Jayden is going to snore like that?”
Me: “Ugh!”

Other than that, though, we had so much fun in the water park!

In the first time in what seems like forever, we have no visitors here, no visitors coming for at least another month, and no plans to go visit anybody.  We’re all alone.  It’s borrrrring.  Guess I’ll have to figure out how to take care of the kids by myself again.  It was so nice to go to the grocery store alone, be able to do some shopping during the week, have free babysitters to watch the kids so me and Royal could go do something, have someone else read the same book over and over again, someone to answer all of Jayden’s questions, someone else to help Willow eat so I could eat some food at the same time.  Oh well, I’m sure me and the kids will figure out how to play with each other again.  :)  And I guess it will leave me more time to post more pictures of the kids for you!
On our first day on our own again, we didn’t really do too much.  Jayden and I read books in bed until Willow got up.  The kids took a bath.  Jayden and I talked again about Papa and Nana leaving and that Jayden had no reason to be too worried that Papa wasn’t going to have anybody to play with, and that no, I wasn’t going to drive him to the motorhome so Papa wouldn’t be lonely.

Jayden did take care of his dino today.  Supposedly he came down with a “bug” and was sick.  He spent a good deal of the day in Jayden’s bed.

Willow has mastered a new trick too.  She finally figured out how to stand up in her crib.  It’s only a matter of time before she starts launching herself over the side and waking me up at the crack of dawn.  She still isn’t walking, but I’m not too concerned over it.  No need to make her mobile and fast too soon!

This has been some of the longest couple of weeks ever! We’ve had so much going on that I should of had tons of post about, but there has been sickness running rampant around my house and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and write anything.  So, here’s kind of a catchup with ALOT of pictures to satisfy all you suckers out there who have been muttering mean things under your breath each time you check my blog and see the same post up.  As you know my parents got back here from Pennsylvania at the beginning of December.  And then Jordan flew in on the 13th to spend Christmas with us.  It has been so fun to have him around, even if it feels like I still hardly see him.  He stays up way too late for me and then sleeps in a good part of the day, but when he finally gets up, its fun to have another McComb in the house.  I’m just not sure there is anybody else out there who gets the McComb sarcasm that gets thrown around when there is more than 1 sibling together. :)  We have gone around and looked at Christmas lights a bunch of times.  My mom and I went to a Christmas dinner cooking class.  And we have played inside alot because it has been soooo cold.

Willow has gotten very good at throwing and catching balls.

Jayden has continued with his obsession of all things dinosaur and we are now building them out of blocks.  This is flying Little Foot.  And I don’t have a picture of a later version of him that Jayden and Papa built, but he had guns on his wings.  It was pretty awesome.

Christmas Eve came fast around here since we’ve all had the flu at different times this week.  But we were wishing for a white Christmas and in the form of extremely high winds (like 50 mph) and snow that came down sideways, we got one.

Jayden all decked out in his Christmas T-Rex outfit went outside to check it out. And then later, we put a few more layers on the dinosaur, so he and Papa went outside to “swim” into the wind.

Here is the Christmas Eve dinner my mom and I cooked together from the recipes we got from our cooking class.  We made a roasted pear salad with candied pecans, beef wellington that looked like presents, and duchess mashed potatoes that were pipped out to look like Christmas trees.  (My potato trees could still use some work, they actually looked better than in the picture.  In the picture they just look like a blob) But it makes a pretty little plate!

After dinner we went to the Christmas Eve service at our church.  The kids did pretty darn good during the service, even if Jayden did keep the rows in front of us entertained.  Jayden sung pretty loudly during the worship part, which is great, it was just funny because he didn’t know the words so he was just singing loudly. (best way to spread Christmas cheer, right??).  He then let out a very audible gasp when our paster said something out Jesus dying on the cross. And then at the end of the service he had his candle lit and Papa was kneeling next to him to keep him from lighting the church on fire and Jayden yells out, “Papa, hold your candle up higher!”  “Papa, STAND UP!”  It was pretty darn funny.

After church we came home and the kids got to open their Christmas pajamas, which I made this year.  And I also made a matching pair for Royal. :)

Christmas morning didn’t start as early as I thought it would.  Jayden slept in until almost 8 and Willow slept in until 9!  Christmas miracle?  I think so!  Since my dad had come down with the flu last night, Jordan, Jayden, and I went and picked my mom up at the motorhome this morning so she could come and open presents with us.

Jayden had to try out his new sand chomper in some snow that blew up on the deck!

Jayden then proceeded to help everybody else open their presents by pulling all the presents out of the stockings and handing them to you.  Once our stockings were finished, and it was time to open the other presents, Jayden would grab a present from under the tree, run over to me, ask who it was for, then run to the person it was for, open it right in front of them, and then hand them their present.  He was quite the helper.

Jayden helping Uncle Jordan.

Jayden helping dad…

Jayden helping Nana…

Jayden helping Willow…

There’s not much cooking that happens in the kitchen on Christmas day.  I did the cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole on Christmas Eve, so all I had to do was pop them in the over in the morning.  But on Christmas day, we try and focus on the fact that it is Jesus’ birthday, so ever since we have had Jayden, I have made a birthday cake for Jesus and after dinner we sing Happy Birthday to Him and eat birthday cake.  Even Jesus got to use the Thomas the train candle this year!

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Jesus!!!