Trip To Grandma's

Sunday night we traveled east to visit my parents. Malachi was excited to see calves and cows. Brienna was staying the week there too so we were excited to see her as well.
 Georgia was happy to see us. She was cuddly as ever. Suzie on the other hand was in the dog house. . . she never quite house-broke for my parents so she had a nice place outside which is where she always tried to be at our house anyway.   Brienna was fun to play with. She was cute as can be and tried many time to use her charm to get you to take her outside.   Malachi shared his new book about cows. Brienna likes cows and trains too!  Zachary learned how to tie his shoes. I finally broke-down and made him have tie shoes. I know you don't have to tie shoes in life to be successful but it is important.  As always, the kids like to bug Rylan. They are grandma's "baby's" now.    The trip is much longer to Grandma's house now but it is still not too bad.

Tonight the boys watched the cow milking contest at the Ellis county fair. 

Visit to the Museum

Well. . . . we have arrived in Hays. As we play the maze game around all the boxes and have "unpack a box" as a punishment (not many are getting unpacked), I'm struggling to find ways to beat the heat. My friend from high school lives about an hour from here and she came to visit on Monday. I was so happy to have company and other kids for my kids to play with. We all needed a break from each other. We went to visit the Sternburg museum here. It is well esteemed and so I thought it was worth a venture out. I have to say that it is pretty neat and it is such an answer to prayers. I have been praying for there to be some place for me to take the boys that I can hang out as well that is not out in the awful weather. Well, a membership to the museum was cheaper than a 1/2 week of groceries! SUPER GREAT! :) The boys loved it also. We went back on Tuesday to show Shawn the sights.
 They actually have a stone called the Malachite: (its in the middle right of the picture, kinda greenish)   The boys LOVED all the dinosaurs and fossils!  Part of the museum had realistic looking dinos!   The T-Rex moves and can be scary. Zach loved it. The little kids didn't like it as much! :)    Malachi held the 'jewels' and watch out to run! However, there were sounds coming from all over the "forest" so he was scared silly!   They have a large sandbox for the kids to practice digging for fossils. It had a nice little bench that I could just sit back and watch. Malachi has missed his sandbox from Riley. :(   In the Discovery center part of the museum, the kids could do SOOOOO much stuff. There were some live animals that they could look at. They could also pick up most all the rubber/plastic animals to play and study those as well. They had little study areas and activities for the kids to do. Logan found some stamping with fossil stamps.  Zach liked the weighing station . . . until he found the computer with science games.     The magnifiying glass and all the things to see where pretty cool also.   The boys kept saying, "take my picture mom!" The spider is by a little toddler area with lots of todder science books and toys.   After the museum trip, Melanie ran some errands while I watched her little ones. It was so fun for the boys to finally have company and someone to play with. I hope we start to meet more friends out here so we can get in a routine each day.