oregon trail days

where we live, in western nebraska, we live right on the old oregon trail. so, every year it is a big thing here to have "oregon trail days" where we have parades, a carnival, a craft show, an art fair, and other activities. it's always the 2nd weekend in july. this was jacob's first time going to anything related to "ot days" really. we went to the international food fair on friday and of course jacob wouldn't eat anything because he was too busy watching people, but mommy enjoyed "nebraska twisters" which are homemade potato chips/french fries. they were really good! daddy got hotdogs and potato chips... how exciting... but they're his favorite and it benefitted the alzheimer's association. then on saturday, we got up and went to the otd parade. this was jacob's first parade ever and he seemed to really enjoy it. he loved whinnying at the horses and honking at the firetrucks. there were a lot of really "normal" style floats with the ribbons and kids just sitting on them and waiving, but there were a couple really cool ones too. one of my favorite floats was the one from the bank, they posed as the statue from the twin towers. jacob also really enjoyed watching all the people. he is definitely his mother's child. at the parade, one of the banks was handing out ice cream push pops, so jacob tasted a push pop for the first time and devoured it! he also enjoyed it when the people threw candy, because even though he was too little to go and fetch it, he had his own little fetching mate. one of our friends from church would run out and get candy for him, so it was even better, because he didn't have to fight through the other kids. that was about all we went to as a family for ot days. i went to the craft show, by myself of course. ;) it was a great weekend overall.

my other kids...

as many of you know, i teach a sign-language class for high school students at our local community college during the summer. i am pretty proud of my kids there and i just wanted to share with you some of their "letters". we did these to make a sign-language alphabet book. the kids formed their letter that they chose and then they had to bring an object in to represent their letter. some of them did really well, while others just grabbed something when they walked in class, but regardless, i'm still pretty proud of them. and for those of you who are wondering... it's plaster of paris inside of a powder-free latex glove. here are the w (is for water), the d (is for dollar), and the f (is for frog).

4th of july weekend

well, we hope all of you had as much fun as we did over the fourth!?! we did go up to hart ranch in rapid city, s.d. but we did not end up going to rushmore as planned. we found out that they actually did them on the 3rd at rushmore and we didn't know that 'till it was too late. it was good anyway, because afterward we were watching the news and they said that they hoped to get the last of the cars out of the parking lot of rushmore by about 3:30 a.m. on the 4th. it's always packed on the fourth. we watched the fireworks on the t.v. on the 3rd and on the fourth we did a little shopping and relaxing and swimming. jacob of course loved the swimming! he was not happy when we decided to leave after about an hour/hour and a half. then on saturday, we went to "storybook island" in rapid and jacob had the time of his life! there are a bunch of characters and objects to climb on and play with and a park area and train that the kids can ride for .75 and lots more. we were only there for a couple hours, but could have spent MUCH more time there and the best part is, it was free except for the .75 train ride. then we went out for lunch and back to the cabin to rest and take naps... haha! jacob was soooo wound up after that, that he didn't want to sleep until it was about time for jason and i to go on a little date. so, we had to wake jacob up to go stay with grammy and grandpa for a couple hours while mommy and daddy went out to play glow in the dark putt-putt and go out for dinner. we had a great time being alone, which doesn't happen very often. then on sunday we got up and went to the restaurant for breakfast with grammy and grandpa. they went off to church and we played hookie and went swimming instead. we wanted to go at least one more time before we left and we kinda' wanted to get an early start back home, so we went swimming and then met up with grammy and grandpa for lunch before we left town. over all we had an awesome weekend! hope yours was good too!?!

isn't technology wonderful!?!

just incase any of you are trying to email me my email is not responding and i haven't been able to check it all week, so i am going to set up another email account this weekend and i'll let all of you know. in the meantime, i will have to get everyone's email addresses again, so i will try to contact most of you... sometime. ;) hope you all have a happy fourth! we'll be spending it in beautiful rapid city south dakota, at mt. rushmore... i think. as long as i can handle goin outthere early on friday. you have to get there about 12:00 noon to get a spot. we'll see what happens. we may just stay at the resort. ;) that's fine too.