Exploring caves.

We had a fun-filled Memorial Day weekend. Saturday we went on our first geocaching adventure, Sunday Paul, Holly, Katie, and Theoden came and we all went to the zoo in Omaha, and Monday we checked out a local state park called Indian Cave State Park. There is a sign for this state park just as your entering town, I've been curious about it so the other day I thought I'd take a driving adventure with the kids to go drive through it. It turned out that it was much farther from town that I thought, and after driving 30 minutes out with still more to go I finally just had to turn around and go back home. So Monday I was anxious to actually make time and go see what's there.

It was a very pretty drive through the park. Lots of trees, lot of camping, and a few small play areas. This was a lookout point.The cave itself was pretty unimpressive. I thought it would be something we could go in and walk through. But it was just something to walk up to. Oh well.

This trail was nearest the cave, so we decided to go on that one. It was fairly short up to a lookout point. It did have some pretty hard spots on the trail, especially with steep incline on smooth mud (aka slippery!). At those spots Kevin carried Eli but otherwise we let Eli walk on his own, while I carried Hannah on my back.

God's little reminder of who created the earth

Zoo trip!

Sunday morning Paul and Holly came for a short visit, bringing with them Holly's sister Katie and her husband Theoden. We thought they were delivering Katie and Theoden's washer and dryer for us to store for them, but they came empty-handed. We sure are glad they still came to visit us anyway, even though their purpose changed! We stayed at the house for just a little bit and then we all headed to Omaha to go to the zoo! The kids did sooo good! The last time we went to a zoo we had troubles getting Eli to move from one exhibit to the next, as he wanted to stay at the same one forever. But this time he did great! No troubles at all! And Hannah was very content in the stroller! It's a big zoo, so we only got through some of it before it was time for us to get back on the road for naptime. It was almost 3pm before we left and Hannah fell asleep a whole 30 seconds after we started driving! I have a lot of pictures from the day, but I'm really going to do my very best to keep it condensed for you!

so beautifully colorful!

kissies!

my wonderful husband who pushed the stroller all day so I could take pictures!

Hannah was sooo content to just sit in the stroller all day. She didn't make a peep! A nice result from being hot and tired.

my beautiful sister-in-law

I love these tiger pics

bird kissies

Katie and Theoden

It was definitely a fun-filled weekend! Stay tuned for Monday's activity!

He's got the whole world in His hands.

I've been posting updates about Hannah every month so I thought it was about time to do a lil' update about what Eli's into these days. He turns 3 YEARS OLD in just 2 months (!), so there will be a complete update then, but for now here are some tidbits:

Favorite songs:
"He's got the whole world in His hands"
"Proclaim the Glory of the Lord" If you listen to this at all, expect to put it on repeat. We listen to this in the van all the time! And as soon as the music stops Eli says, "Messiah!"
"Under bridges falling down"

Favorite books:
Horton Hatches the Egg
The Little Engine That Could

Favorite Bible story:
David and Goliath

Favorite show:
Thomas the Train. We don't get cable so this is a fun treat for at Grandma and Grandpa's house!

Favorite toy:
(inside) train track, (outside) spray bottle

Sweetest things he says:
"Mommy, you're beautiful."
"Mommy, your happy?"
(when I finish my water at meal time) "You need more water, mommy?"
(randomly) "I love you, Mommy/Daddy."
if I say ouch because he did something that hurt me, he quickly says, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that!"
if we got mad with him earlier, later he'll randomly say, "I forgive you"

Silly things:
* The other night I sang Eli "This little light of mine" for his bedtime song, and after I sang the second verse "won't let Satan poof it out" Eli busts out laughing and continues to say, "I like that one! Won't let Satan poop it out! Won't let Satan poop it out!"

* We're driving in the van and Eli excitedly starts to tell me something, "Mom! Ah! Mom! Ah! (trying to formulate his words) Bust my boiler!" haha! a phrase from Thomas the Train. When Eli's starting to get upset about something we can use this phrase and a quick smile returns to his face.

Happy Tuesday!

Our new family hobby!

Geocaching! It's basically a secret nationwide treasure hunt! People hide little "treasures" in random locations around their towns, post their clues and GPS coordinates at geocaching.com and then others go seek! When the find the treasure they take an item and leave another item and sign and date their screenname on a tiny scroll and return the treasure to its original hiding spot. Kevin and I had heard about it a few years ago, and I thought it sounded like a lot of fun, but we didn't start. But when my friend Alisha mentioned it just the other day, I realized how fun it would be to do as a family! So when Kevin and I were in Omaha on our date the other night we stopped by Outdoor World and found a very basic GPS we could use for our new hobby!

We went on our first adventure Saturday morning. Right in our very own town there are several hidden treasures, so we put three on our list for the day, and set out! The first one was at a cemetery and we arrived to it I realized that we probably shouldn't do that one over Memorial Day weekend, since even though it's a country cemetery in the middle of nowhere there were people visiting. So we just drove on by that one, and we'll do it another time. We went on to #2 on the list, looked around and just couldn't find it. We hadn't brought the actual clues, just the coordinates, so we thought we'd come back to it again maybe later that day once we had read the clues again. So... on to #3. At the city park. Again, couldn't find it. It's a park so there were kind of a lot of people around and it's hidden somewhere inside an old military tank, so felt weird scouring the area for too long. So we failed that one too. We got lunch, went home for naps, and then after naptime we headed back to our #2 spot, this time with the clue: bison container. We looked up what that is, and we were ready to try again. Even though I knew then what the clue was, I wrote it down on an idex card letting Eli be in charge of the Clue Card! He thought that was fun. And this time Kevin found the treasure!! Yay! Way to go, Kevin!

our first search spottry #2, we found it!
the second search spotHannah was more interested in climbing on a nearby picnic tablebut I convinced her to check out the actionno cache found here. maybe next time!