Sunday at the zoo

We took a little trip to the zoo today.  Some of the animals weren't in their enclosures, I'm sure it's still a little too chilly for them.  All the main ones were out though....the tigers, bears, and cougars.  No elephants or giraffes at this zoo, unfortunately.  My favorite little spider monkeys weren't there either, darn it.  Ben LOVED the goats!  He decided he wants to raise goats when he grows up :).  The kids fed them some corn, but the goats just liked licking Benny's hand...kind of like Lucy!

hello, Mr. Bear!

mmmm, goat slobber!

the miniature horses were so cute!

Nice weekend!

With fairly decent weather this weekend, we decided to do a little around town sightseeing!  Saturday we drove up the river road and stopped at a couple of parks, then found the Double Ditch Indian Village sight.  It's a bunch of mounds by the river with signs labeling the different parts of the village.  The Mandan tribe lived there from 1490- the late 1600's when the whole village was wiped out by smallpox.  Very pretty views!  Ben was out of sorts and decided to stay in the van, and Matt was sleeping after a long sleepover night at his friend's. 

a stone shelter built by the Civilian Conservation Corp. (CCC) in the 30's

I took this picture for Matt...this guy looked exactly like Napoleon Dynamite :)

Great visit from Grandma and Don!

Grandma and Don were at our house from Sunday to Wednesday.  We loved having them, but wish they could have stayed longer (and didn't have to drive so far!!)!  We went out to eat Sunday night at Buffalo Wild Wings, and probably won't be going there again for awhile.  It's expensive, skimpy, and our service was awful.  Monday Rich and I drove over to Grandpa Jim's house to check on things, since he's been in Arizona.  All was well there, except the ridiculous amount of snow still left in the front yard.  At least we could get in the driveway, that's progress!!  We spent the night there and came home the next day.  Grandma and Don got some bike riding in, but for the most part the weather kind of stunk.  I don't think they were impressed by the howling North Dakota winds :).  I'll post more pics from my mom's camera, but here is the snow over at Jim's!
Rich holding his hat on his head so it wouldn't blow over to Montana:

this is some sort of wave pattern in the clouds...Rich had the 'official' meteorological name for it.

you can see the waves better in this pic:

this is a house in South Heart we drive by on the way to Jim's.  Grace and I are in love with this lavender toilet that's been sitting by their basketball hoop for a couple of years now.  It's so pretty, I've never seen a purple potty before :).

And the soccer season begins!

Grace had her first soccer game this morning, in the chilly 43 degree Bismarck air.  The sun was shining bright, which helped a lot, but the wind was blowing which made it much worse.  Oh well, once you get these first few April games done with it gets better...right?  We really haven't ever encouraged our kids to do soccer...we never discouraged it and if they wanted to do it they could have.  Luckily noone ever wanted to ;).  Until Grace.  Her best friend Carli plays soccer and all of Carli's siblings play soccer, so Grace thinks she needs to also.  She doesn't really 'get' it yet...I don't think they get real deep into the rules in 1st grade.  She looked cute though :)!

Look, look!

It's some growing stuff!!  YESSS!  Things really will be coming up soon!  These poor things (tulips?) probably froze their little buns off when it snowed the other day, but they still look good!  There are still a few little snow piles here and there in the yard, but it's supposed to warm up this week so hopefully we will NOT see any more snow until November or so.  Please?

Happy Easter!

We were up and at 'em early this morning.  We went to the Sunrise service at church because Matt was doing a reading and was in a little skit.  Somehow I got Matt to church at 5:30 to practice, then came home & finished getting everyone else ready, then got to church for the 6:30 service.  Matt did very well!  He was so nervous that he was shaking, poor guy.  He did great though, he didn't stop on his words and he read nice and loud.  We stayed and ate breakfast there afterwards and Rich had just enough time to get to work.  Then mom came home and took a nap :).

Today stunk

5 inches of heavy, wet, craptastic snow.  Howling winds up to 50 mph.  Power lines down.  Internet sporadic.  Radio stations off the air.  Huge lake sized puddles in the street.  Sloppy sludgy thick junk in the streets.  Roads closed.  Boo.

Grace went over to her friend Carli's today for the afternoon & evening.  They are both the youngest of 4 kids, so they know how to play the game :).  Grace bought her first ever issue of Tiger Beat at the store yesterday, and she had to call Carli last night to talk about it.  They were having a deep conversation about whether Justin Bieber or Taylor Lautner were cuter.  And about what they were going to do at Carli's the next day.  And they talked for 58 1/2 minutes.  These girlies are 7 years old.  I can see a cell phone in Grace's near future.  Remember when we used to have 'teen lines' when we were young?  Not me of course, because I was deprived (ha...or socially stunted, one of the two), but lots of my friends did.