August 2009 – Page 2 – Andelin Adventures

Our Garden

We’ve been making some changes to our garden throughout this year and I’m really liking it. For one, our garden boxes used to be spaced around the perimeter of our yard, placed in between our fruit trees. It was hard to get out and water since we didn’t have water going to each box and I pretty much had to go out and hand water with a hose. Then the weeds would get so big it would be impossible to get out and water so everything would die.

This spring right about planting time, Kyle decided he wanted to move all seven garden boxes to one location. I was frustrated that he had waited until planting time to make this suggestion, and that he didn’t have any ideas as to WHERE to move them, only that he wanted to move them. After thinking about the layout of our backyard, and considering which fruit trees had died over the winter and all that, I decided that we should line the garden boxes up along the east side of the backyard. The cedar fence on that side and the neighbors trees provide shade for the garden for the morning (so the plants aren’t in the sun from sun up till sun down, that’s just too much sun!), and the site is easily viewed from the back door. And all the fruit trees that had survived the winter are on the west side of they yard, so since the ones on the east side had died, we could rip them out and make room for the garden boxes.

After moving them and filling them with dirt, obviously I got the garden planted, but as I would sit here at meal times and look out the back door, I decided that moving the garden boxes here means that I have room for more garden boxes. 😀 So after thinking about it for a good long time I decided that I would add one more box for an even 8 boxes, and a bed for strawberries.

When my family was here visiting earlier this month, I bought the supplies to add the box, (after all if I get it made and filled with dirt this season, then next season all I’ll have to do is fertilize and plant) and the handy man in my dad jumped out and he helped put it together and get it placed for me. Then I ordered the strawberry bed, it arrived and Kyle and I just got it set up. I’m so excited and can’t wait for next spring so I can plant some berries in it. 🙂

Ethan’s first day in first grade

Here is my cute first grader all packed up and ready to walk down to the school. He was up SUPER early this morning, and got dressed before coming in to wake us up. And he was carrying his lunch box around the house with him all morning. He is so excited to be going to school again, and this time he gets to take a lunch and he gets to eat it at school.

Museum of Ancient Life

After Farm Country and a lunch break Kyle and I took the kids to the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. As we were walking up to the building there was a mural on the side of the building of a T-Rex crashing through the wall of the building, and Jeremy asked me why the dinosaur broke the wall. I had to explain to him that it’s just a picture painted on the wall, but he was so cute.

The long and insane line to get in, that we saw earlier this morning was now gone, and we just walked in paid and paid admission and we were off to see the exhibits. We didn’t stop and look at things for very long (since the majority of our kids can’t read, and even if they could they would have no idea WHAT they had read) Kyle and I just explained a bit on their level what things were. We spent most of the time just looking around at the different things to see, after all the kids mostly wanted to go see the ‘dinosaur bones’. There was one room before we got to the dinosaur part of the exhibits that was COMPLETELY dark, and you had to walk through it to get to the next room. Jeremy especially was afraid of going in there. Upon walking in there were stars all around, but I will admit that it gave me kind of a funny dizzy feeling being in the complete darkness completely surrounded by stars. I had to reach my hand out to make sure there was a railing to know for sure that I wasn’t going to fall off the path (since the railing was black and the whole room was dark you couldn’t SEE it at all). Then it was time to see dinosaur stuff. Here Kyle is pretending that the dinosaur is going to bite Dinah. Check out his crazy eyes, and Dinah is trying to pull her hand away from the dinosaur as Kyle is trying to pull it toward the dinosaur. 😛

The kids had loads of fun and kept running off to see everything, and Kyle and I had to keep hunting them down.

As we left we stopped in the gift shop and the kids each picked a rock candy ‘lolly pop’. And here they are on the ride home enjoying their rock candy:

PS: There are more pictures in the photo gallery.

Farm Country

Thanksgiving point has been advertising than on Tuesdays (in August) admission for either Farm Country, the gardens or the Museum of Ancient life is just $2/person. So I asked Kyle to take a Tuesday off of work and let’s just go to Thanksgiving Point and do what there is to do. So he did, and we went. When we got to Thanksgiving Point the line to get into the museum was just insane. So we decided to go check out the line to get into Farm Country, and it was a lot more acceptable so we parked and went there. There was so much to see there. There were a few baby chicks and a baby turkey to see, and there were some eggs in an incubator.I got a picture of Tyra and Dinah sitting on a large cow statue (Ethan wanted to sit on it by himself, but didn’t get the chance because other people beat him to it, and Jeremy freaked out when Kyle tried to put him on it.)

We looked around a bit inside and there was a cow statue with rubber utters that the kids could try ‘milking’ and there were bucket weights to show the kids about how much food each kind of farm animal eats in a day, and there was an area showing where milk comes from and the process it goes through from cow to bottle.

Then we went outside. There were goats of all kinds (well many kinds), and Llamas, big horses and little horses. Various kinds of turkeys and chickens and even a male and female peacock. There was also a pond with various water fowl. There were several different kinds of rabbits, and one of them even had a bunch of babies (not brand new babies, considering they were out of the nesting box and had fur already). And there were cows and sheep (Kyle says there were some pigs but I didn’t see them).

There were some dispensers that you could purchase corn from to feed to the animals, but Kyle and I didn’t have any quarters, so our kids picked up whatever corn they found on the ground that other people had dropped, and they had a lot of fun having the goats and other animals lick the food out of their hands.

We went for a wagon ride (pulled by a team of large white horses names Holly and Bell) while we were there. And I enjoyed checking out their small garden area for ideas for what to do with our garden. They had raised beds (we do too) and I really liked the way they had water going to each bed, so we took pictures for future reference. 😉

The kids played in a couple of play houses and there was a building with a whole bunch of vegetable and fruit cards that the kids could ‘plant’ in the ground (actually it was a large tire with plywood in it that had slots to place the cards) or hang the card on a bush or tree (to help the kids learn what type of plant each food grows on).

There were several baby cows to look at and I think the teeth on this one are awesome (Kyle thought so too, so he decided to take the picture). They look like they are too big for the calf’s mouth. Dinah also started crying that the cow bit her thumb, but she kept changing which thumb got bitten, and I didn’t see any marks so she was perfectly fine, but she was certainly afraid to touch any of the animals after that.

And to finish the day off, we purchased tickets for the kids to have a pony ride. Actually we said that we would do the pony ride next time but Jeremy was very upset about that, and since the pony line had died down since we had first got there, Kyle decided to go ahead and get tickets so the kids could ride the ponies. Well after waiting in the line, when it was finally their turn, I went in with the kids to help them up on the ponies (and I walked next to Dinah’s pony to make sure she didn’t jump off 😛 ).

As soon as the ponies began walking though, Jeremy (the boy that was very disappointed at being told we wouldn’t ride ponies today but next time) freaked out! I just looked at him and told him to hold on tight. 😉 (The above picture was taken BEFORE the pony started moving.)

We all had a lot of fun though, and there are more pictures in the photo gallery.

Dinah’s in a toddler bed

Well I’ve moved Dinah from the crib to a toddler bed. She kept climbing out of the crib and has fallen on her head a few times now, so no more crib for her. And now I get the joys of trying to keep her on a toddler bed at bedtime. Tonight she was ‘enjoying’ the freedom of not being confined in the crib, and of course I was going crazy trying to get her to go back to bed and stay there! 😉