A Giant Adventure…

Wow!  We have had a busy few weeks.  I was going to show what we did this weekend, but I still have to figure out how to get my pictures off of my new phone.  Not sure if I have the right cable to connect to the computer, so I might have to email myself the pics that I was going to share with you from our trip to town.  Technology…

So instead we are going to take a blast back to the very, very recent past…  Sunday, March 6, 2011…

The weather had been cold, damp, and dreary.  The weather forecast was promising for this day though.  Sunny and mid to upper 40’s says the weather man.  Braden has been wanting to go on a picnic and take a picnic basket.  Why not?  We haven’t been to Southern IL for a while.  Let’s get up and go in the morning.  4:30 pm, decision made. 

6:30 am, Morning comes, we look out the window.  Where is the sun?  Where is the inkling of warmth?  It is coming, it is coming.  Pack a picnic lunch, grab some coats, camera ready, head out the door.  Load up kiddos, load up dog, load up us.  Roll on down the drive.  The boys have no clue where we are going, just that we must be going to have a picnic.  Fun! 

Driving along, we look out the window.  Where is the sun?  Where is the inkling of warmth?  It is coming, it is coming.  We arrive at our destination.  Lunch now, or hike first?  It is still cold, lets hike first.  Everyone will be ready to eat by the time we get done.  Everyone is rearing to go at this point.  It is still cold, bundle up boys!  Coats, gloves, hats… A hiking we will go!

TanMan and I headed up the rear of the pack.  The bigger guys and Nova darted on ahead.  There were rocks to climb, clues to find, adventure awaiting.

 

There is always time to take a moment and share a cool find with your brothers, or take the more adventurous route to see what lies ahead of us.

And when you reach the top, take another moment to hang out with your buddies.

As we trudge on, I look around.  Still cloudy, still cold.  Where is the sun?  Where is the inkling of warmth?  It is coming, it is coming.  I certainly hope…

Whoa!  Look at this!  Can we move it.  Riley recruits his strapping little brothers to help him out, and they didn’t budge it one little bit!  But, they sure gave it a go.  I think it might take a bit more to get that log further off the trail.  Maybe that is why it is still there.  ;)

   

Someone was getting tired, and cold, and had worn out little legs.  Daddy saved the day and carried him the rest of the way.  A catch twenty two though…  This led to getting colder than everyone else.  Those muscles weren’t getting used, made for a cold little man by the end of our little one mile hike.  We trudged on.

Giant City State Park near Carbondale, IL is such an awesome area!  We love to come hiking and camping here.  So lucky to have this spot so close to home.  We can be here within an hour.  So many areas to explore close to home…  We have vowed to do these kinds of trips more this year.  It is awesome to watch the expressions from the boys while they explore.  Even when it is cold. 

I looked away from my camera…  Where is the sun?  Where is the inkling of warmth?  It is coming, it is coming.

   

 

 

After stopping at the “alligator rock” near the end of the trail, we continued on down the last stretch of trail and finished up our hike. 

Everyone was cold.  And hungry.  And cold.  And thirsty.  And cold.  (oh, did I already mention that?!?!?!)  Time for our picnic on this sunny, bit warmer day.  Darn it, the weather man lied!  You shouldn’t lie ya know?  Anyway…  We now had tears, maybe wails, from TanMan (he was cold, and he does not like to be cold, and he lets his unhappiness be known very loudly!) We had other cold, hungry boys.  But a picnic we shall still have!  TanMan and I gathered our rations from the picnic basket and hopped in the van with the heat cranked as we sent the others on their way.  They headed to the pavilion to have a picnic, at the picnic tables, with the picnic basket.  Hardcore folks. Hardcore.  Little bit of cold is not stopping this crew!  They shivered and scarfed their food down and then came back to pile into the nice, cozy, warm van to finish their picnic.  We stopped in the little visitor center at the park, grabbed a geocache, and finished thawing out a bit before we headed home.

But that is not all, folks.  Oh, no…

I was still looking around…  Where is the sun?  Where is the inkling of warmth?  It is coming, it is coming.

It was at home!!!!!!  Who knew!!!  That sun and little bit of warmth was waiting for us in our own backyard!  So we took advantage and got a teeny bit of yard work done.

Goodbye little dogwood tree.  I will miss you so.  You just could not endure the drought from last summer.  Goodbye little pine tree.  You also did not fare well…

Of course this job meant getting the old Case out, and getting the old Case out means rides for boys, and that makes everyone forget being cold.  We will have another picnic and hike on another warmer day soon.  Ross always says that good things come to those who wait, so we will just have to wait a little longer.

You know what I love about my guys?  That no matter what the conditions might be, they trudge on and are such troopers.  Despite my repeated reminder of how cold it was, everyone had a blast!!!!!!!!!  These guys are the greatest in the world!  I am glad that the four of them are mine!

Looking forward to spring days and  more adventures for 2011!

The Lost Month

Yeah, so I guess I didn’t do so good about posting often again!  Oops!  We have had plenty going on, and I have gotten plenty of computer time.  I have no excuse, just procrastination.  I cannot believe that it is already March!!!!!!  Where in the world does time go?  Anyway, here is a bit of a recap from my lost month of blogging.

1.  Braden’s surgery—Tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy

  Braden had huge tonsils for a while!  We got him in to see and ENT, and the Dr. basically took one look and said “How soon do you want them out?”  We ended up at the surgical center 6 days later.  Nice to have something move along so quickly in the medical field.  He recovered pretty quickly.  After a couple of days of being pretty wiped out, he was soon back to his active self. 

We have noticed an improvement in his speech, he eats so much better, and is sleeping better since he can breathe so much easier now.  Yea!

2.  Guess who is two?

All of these guys are growing up so fast!  I can’t believe that TanMan is already two years old!!!!!  He is constantly working to keep up with everyone else, and trust me, he does not fall too far behind.  Since the 11th was actually a snow day, we ended up spending part of the day visiting the nature center where I used to work.  The boys love going there and looking through the exhibits.  Then we celebrated with a daddy made cake over the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Pogue.

3.  Snow Days—One week Riley had three and a half snow days!  Made for a short school week.  We got out and played in the snow quite a bit.  Of course this was right after Braden’s surgery, so we still had to take it a little bit easy.  The first day was great snow for building snowmen.  We had an awesome time, except for Tanner….

   

He was having no part of it that day.  Went and sat on the steps in the screen room, cried, sat in his car outside, cried, stood in the snow, really wailed, watched Riley and Braden building snowmen, said “uh-uh!”, cried hard shaking his head no, then finally got sat on the couch in the screen room to impatiently wait for his brothers to get their carrots on the snowmen.  Then we called it quits.

 

The next time we ventured out for snow play time, Braden was in about the same mood that Tanner had been in before.  We trudged on much to his dismay and played anyway.  Can’t please ‘em all all of the time!

4.  A Trip to the Grandmas’ house—Went to Clinton to help paint Ross’ mom’s upstairs hall and stairway.  Ross was tucked away making progress most of the weekend.  The boys did get to help with some of the prep work, and then made regular assisted appearances for inspection throughout the weekend.  The end result is a fresh clean paint job to brighten up the stairway.  Happy Birthday Grandma Glenn!

 

 

The boys found lots of time to entertain their grandmas.  They were such troopers for the weekend.  We did get to take them to the really cool playground in town one afternoon.  It was so nice to just get outside and run off some energy for a while.

5.  Visitors from NC—Adrienne and her new little guy, Bailey came for a quick visit while they were in the area visiting her grandma.  They returned the cradle.  Bailey was the 9th little one to get to use the cradle that Ross and my dad built just before Riley was born.  Such a cool thing to share with our friends and their little ones.  We then loaded them up with some other goodies for Bailey to use when he gets just a bit bigger.  Enjoy Adrienne, Brad, and Bailey!

 

Life is always busy with “normal” things too.  Scouts, school, work, laundry, dishes, sleep…  I just don’t know what I used to do before this “job” came along! Time flies and the next thing I know, another month is gone.  I have some other posts planned.  Even have them written down on my to do list.  Be on the lookout for some blasts from the recent past.

‘Til then,