Indian scraper

Joel and the boys found a few pieces of flint and little things, but Matt found this cool scraper thing.  Joel, I hope these pics are ok, my lens doesn't like getting really close to stuff. 

Weekend with the nephews

We got to spend the weekend with our Eli and Noah!  Joel came over, picked up Tyler and Matt for a weekend of arrowhead hunting, and dropped off Eli and Noah to hang out with us for a couple of days!  Saturday we went to Grace's soccer game.  It was a beautiful day, but the fields were really soggy, so we all ended up with wet socks and shoes.  Ben and Noah sat in a chair eating and drinking the whole game, and Eli sat in a chair with a sweatshirt over his head playing his DS :).  After the game, we came home for a quick lunch then headed back out to the zoo.  Grace's Girl Scout troop was planting flowers in their flower garden at the zoo, so we watched them for a little bit then walked around and looked at the animals.  The boys got popcorn and a ginormous cotton candy.  As usual, the prairie dogs were the hit....there is a viewing tunnel you can go in to look at them up close.  We rode the train, then went to the gift shop for a little toy.  Next was dinner at McDonald's and home for watching The Tooth Fairy.  Lots of playing outside too, what great weather!  In the 70's all week here in ND.  Lots of pics ahead!

Eli freaked me out by saying "Look Jennifer, I can stick my head through the fence!"...I almost panicked, but thankfully his head came right back out!  Otherwise the mountain goats would have loved to lick a little face!

A few random tidbits

Dress up day this day was Physical Fitness Day.  Matt came up with another zinger...he took off his headband. 

Lucy found a Binky in the couch cushions and was sucking it like a baby.  So funny!

Tyler made lunch for the two little kids on Mother's Day for me.  This is the material he has to work with:

Ben's project

This was Ben's reaction to me asking him to please re-edit his paper and write in paragraphs like he was supposed to,

Ben had to do a North Dakota project for school, and he decided to make a keelboat scene.  A keelboat is the type of boat that Lewis and Clark rode up the Missouri to North Dakota.  Rich and Ben worked really hard on the diorama!  He also had to write a one page paper on his project, which of course he didn't want to work on -at-all- after his project was done.  So mom comes to the rescue and searches the internet, finding lots of info about keelboats and putting them all in bullet points for him to expand into paragraphs.  He reluctantly went down to the computer to type up his 3 paragraph paper, and came back up with a one page typed paper of bullet points, written word for word like I had done it.  So after some editing I sent him back down to redo it.  It came back up changed about 1%.  I was frustrated, Rich was frustrated, and Ben was frustrated and completely done with the whole thing, so Mom did something she shouldn't have done.  Mom went down and wrote the paper for Ben. 
Ben was actually very proud of his diorama, and was really excited to take it to school.  They each did a little presentation telling about their projects.  Ben brought his score sheet home, and Rich got 40/40 on his project, I got a 40/40 on my paper, and Ben got 15/20 on his presentation (only marked down for not making eye contact....a complete Asperger's thing that really he shouldn't have been marked down for, but whatever.  I'm really worried about how he'll do next year and in jr.high.  I think we'll work toward getting him an IEP or a 504 by next year....it would kill me to see him struggling through school.

Tulips

I'm happy to report that my tulips have survived the harsh North Dakota spring!  So far anyway....we may get a little snow overnight this weekend.  They are so pretty, and really haven't even totally opened up yet.  We still don't even have open leaves here, if you can believe it!  Grace had her friend Carli over yesterday, and I got a cute pic of them in front of the tulips.  I took a couple of Grace by them today.

Mom and Ben weekend

Grandpa Jim offered to take the kids for the weekend (THANKS GRANDPA!!), so Tyler, Matt and Grace went over to Daglum.  Ben was planning on having a sleepover with his friend but that fell through, so he stayed home with me (Rich is working midnights so he's been sleeping during the day).  We decided to have a Mom and Ben weekend and do a few fun things just the two of us.  The first evening we went to "How To Train Your Dragon" and to McDonalds for dinner.  Then today we went for a drive to do a little research for Ben's North Dakota project.  He's going to build a reproduction of a keelboat, which is the type of boat Lewis & Clark rode up the Missouri River.  There is a big keelboat repro. down by the river you can climb on, so we started there.  Then we drove up north to the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center.  We didn't find any information on keelboats, but had fun looking at the other stuff!  We had a picnic at a table there too.  Then we decided to drive back to Bismarck and go to the library.  We rounded off the evening at Applebee's with Dad and a trip to Blockbuster.  I think Ben would like to be an only child :).  It was a nice weekend....the weather kind of stinks, but I'm happy to report that my tulips are coming out!  Rich said there's a chance of snow tonight, and I think I'll have to murder someone if that actually happens.  NO SNOW!

                                  Ben ordered the Big Breakfast with Hotcakes at McD's this am.
                              He ate almost the whole thing too :)!!

One more post today

I had to show off this cake that Matt made tonight, it was fabulous!!  Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting topped with strawberries.....probably his best yet!!