Save a Horse Ride an Ostrich...

Friday we found ourselves at the Prairie Meadows Casino/Racetrack. We normally do not spend our weekends at the race track...but when I heard there were going to be exhibition ostrich and camel races I knew we needed to go! The whole experience was a new taste of Iowa for us and rather entertaining.

The camels getting ready to go!

Ethan could always push his way right to the front...he loved watching the horses come flying by.

Here are the camel and ostrich names a little bigger...too funny. Clark was rooting for Chile con Queso.

Ethan enjoyed his first corndog.

A little video of the ostrich races. The ostrich that won the race dumped the jockey off in the first couple of seconds. Then that bird just took off and escaped. He ran completely around the track and then jumped over the fence and got away. Everyone in the crowd was rooting for him to get away. "Free Willy!"

Living in a Tornado Zone

Every Saturday at noon there is a practice tornado warning siren that goes off. I don't think it works very well...because pretty much everyday my house is hit with a tornado and I've never heard the warning siren go off!

It took me about 15 mins. to do the dishes and about 20 mins. to clean up the mayhem that happened on the floor while I did the dishes. The tornado strikes so fast around here and pretty much nothing is safe!

This whole process seems rather inefficient...maybe I should just stop trying to clean my house.

First Day of School

1st Day of 2nd Year.

Bye-bye Dada!

Our little Clark is growing up!

Kissing a Smoker

Our Story of Saturday Afternoon:

Beautiful weather.

A good little outing.

Ethan loves riding "Krazy Kaptain" on the Heritage Carousel.

Mom is terrified as she takes Ethan down the rocket slide and gets a fiber glass burn from holding on too tight.

Ethan swings, runs and plays.

Ethan gets one more ride on "Buster" before we leave.

Ethan runs around the carousel a few times, loving the music and all of the kids.

As we start walking to the car Ethan somehow finds a cigarette butt on the ground and without Mom or Dad noticing starts to eat it (this all happened in a matter of 1.7 seconds)!

Mom quickly fishes the remains of the nasty cigarette out of Ethan's mouth and is thoroughly disgusted!

Ethan who is very into giving kisses lately leans over and gives mom a huge open mouth kiss right on the lips!

Mom cries and feels like she just kissed a smoker...Dad laughs hysterically and takes a picture.

SICK! He did sleep 13 1/2 hours last night though...maybe he was having withdrawls.

This is Ethan being funny.


I just can't get enough of my little smoker!

A Week of Heaven for Ethan

Ethan was so happy to have his grandma visiting for a few days last week! (Clark and I were really happy too!) We had been looking forward to this visit all summer! We had such a fun time. We visited the Farmer's Market and Grey's Lake (where Ethan dove in with all of his clothes on - I barely had time to get my shoes off - he LOVES water).

We visited the Dutch museum and windmill in Pella!

Ethan stayed awake the entire day until we went into the quilt shop and he fell fast asleep! We thought this was a typical little boy, "come on guys, this is so boring!"

Tuesday and Wednesday we went to Nauvoo. The weather was fabulous and we loved visiting the sites and feeling the spirit of Nauvoo. I dropped our camera down some cement steps right when we got there...so we don't have many pictures - but if you are curious about what Nauvoo is and what we did, check out this website: www.historicnauvoo.net

Tuesday night we went to the Nauvoo pageant. Before it started they had a 1840's style county fair set up. Clark and I tried the stick pull (he won), the stilts (not a good idea for me), and joined in on some pioneer style round dancing. Ethan loved the dance and loved being able to run. He joined in on the parade of flags before the pageant.

Ethan and Clark trying the stick pull!

The Nauvoo Pageant was awesome! I loved it. We were surprised to realize that the actor playing Joseph Smith was one of our good friends from our mission, Jeff Dickamore. He was so good! It was fun to catch up with him a little.

photo taken from www.pjstar.com

The days went by way too fast! It was such a fun visit! Thanks for coming Karen, we love you!

Happy Birthday Jessica!

What a way to celebrate! Good friends, good food, good fun!

Our friends just got back to town with their new baby girl - Ethan didn't know what to think about not being the center of everyone's attention! The poor kid needs a constant bib right now, he has so many teeth coming in he is always soaked in drool.

For Christmas Peggy gave us this fun Cupcake cook book-

I have loved looking at the yummy pictures, but it took me a little while to build up my courage to try one of these recipes (I've never made a cake without a cake mix). When Karen was here we tried the German Chocolate cupcakes and they were so good, so for Jessica's birthday I tried the Triple Chocolate and the Turtle cupcakes...so good! I can never go back to the box again!

The screen of our camera just broke so we can't see what we are taking pictures of - I think this was supposed to be Jessica blowing out her candles! You can imagine.

And we missed Tyler & Carolyn a lot!

The Newest Addition to Our Family

The baby Buick is dead!

R.I.P.

It has been a trusted little friend that got us around a lot of places the last 5 years.

We have been looking around at used cars to replace the Buick so we can have a second car when Clark gets going busy with school again. We found the Chrysler Sebring at an auction in Kansas City. In a very exciting bidding war I won the thing...

(If you look carefully you can see Ethan driving the car).

So Monday we left on the 3 hour journey to go pick up our car. We found the place, saw the car, and were relieved that it really did run. I took Ethan with me to the DMV in the quaint historic Strawberry Hill district to pick up some temporary tags so we could drive it home. That is when the real fun began.

OH my! Ms. Shirley (the wonderful employee that sits at the information desk and filters people to where they need to go) was not even going to let me talk to anyone because I only had a copy of the title (the original is in the mail). So I got on the phone and Clark talked to the people at the auction to see what we could do. I stood in the line 5 times and Ms. Shirley wouldn't even let me talk to anyone. When she would see me coming she just rolled her eyes and thrust her loose tooth at me (it was pretty sick). My 4th time in line another employee was just walking by the information desk, so I jumped out of line and told her my plight. She said we could get a transit permit but I needed to call Topeka and get permission. I got the number and quickly called Topeka. It was now 4:25, the answering machine at Topeka said they closed at 4:30. I was so FRUSTRATED! Had the lady given me that number the first time I stood in line (45 mins. earlier) we could have taken care of it.

So not really wanting to drive illegally back to Iowa we decided to stay in KC for the night and try again the next morning. Clark went to the DMV early Tues. morning. Ms. Shirley knew who he was before he even opened his mouth - she referred to me as "persistant." I won't tell you what I referred to her as. They tried to give Clark the run around even after he had obtained permission from Topeka - one employee even tried to tell him she made a phone call when he was staring at her and never saw her pick up the phone. Finally...Ms. Shirley let him talk to a manager of a manager and we got our temporary tags.

How come the DMV manages to be so unhelpful, I've dealt with the DMV in a few different states now and it is always the same!?!

We finally made it home Tues. and we are hoping the baby Sebring was worth the trouble.

The coolest part is that our Sebring is the same color as Michael Scott's, we don't have the convertible top though, but still we feel pretty snazzy bombing around Des Moines in such a sweet ride! Muah ha ha!