An Unscheduled Week

We've been enjoying a little unscheduled time the past few days.

A 30 minute round of Disney Monopoly on Saturday evening.  

 Sylvia was thrilled about it...

Sammy came over Monday to spend the night, and the kids tried to play some more Monopoly while watching Cars 2.

 These guys are good buddies.  Friends since birth.

Tuesday afternoon, we decided to try using our Orange Leaf coupons from the dentist.  That place is really cool!  (And really expensive!)

Caeden's swim meet was canceled for Tuesday evening because of the cold temperatures (on July 7th!), so the kids and I decided to try a little geocaching on the way home.  

It had been almost a year, but we had fun finding 3 caches!

Sylvia likes my giant sunglasses and says she doesn't have a face behind them.

The temperature kept dropping, and we decided to snuggle up and watch a movie.  We chose Jonah (Veggie Tales).  Caeden covered me up with a big fuzzy blanket and I couldn't stay awake.

Swim practice was canceled for the cold temperature and cold water Wednesday morning.  We went to the Ramirez's for Addie's lesson Wednesday and Dawn made us a yummy lunch. We love hanging out with them.  

Yesterday we had rain ALL day and ALL night.  The basement flooded, and pretty much the entire county is flooded.  It has been in the 50's at night most of the week, and didn't reach 70 during the day until today.  Sure doesn't feel like July! 

Today we had another chilly morning and Sylvia wanted to bake.  She and Caeden made soft pretzels--all by themselves.  They were so good!

Caeden's last home swim meet for tonight was canceled.  Colfax is so flooded it isn't safe for people to drive there.  Water is over many roads.  It's a mess.  I think we would welcome some sun and wind soon to warm and dry things up.  

"When He utters His voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, And He causes the clouds to ascend from the end of the earth; He makes lightning for the rain And brings forth the wind from His storehouses."

-Jeremiah 51:16

Last Hurrah of Summer Break

I have a few piano lessons throughout the day tomorrow and knew we wouldn't be able to go adventuring, so I took the kids to town for a "last day of summer" adventure today.  

We had lunch at Moe's.  While we ate, we looked back through the blog and talked about all the many things we've done this summer and thanked God for each blessing and wonderful memory! There have been so many!!

And, really, this has been THE BEST summer, weather-wise!  It's been so mild, and we're grateful!  I even saw our neighbor's burning bush next to our garage is starting to "burn" already today--a sure sign of Fall!

After lunch, we went back to work on a puzzle cache Caeden and I had started at Maxwell Park.  We found another cache there first--one we hadn't been able to grab because a softball team was practicing near the field where it was hidden.

Then we started the puzzle cache at the beginning and let the girls find the first stage of it.  We came across this cute wooden bridge.

We followed trails through some pretty thick growth today...

I never knew this park was so wooded and sprawling.  It's right next to ISU campus.  

We walked a long way before we had to go off the trails and through very long grass to find the second stage of the cache.  Caeden and Annah found it even though it was very well camouflaged.  Cool find!

We walked a long way again, and into the trees, just a bit off the trail to find the third stage.  Annah saw it in a stick that looked out of place wedged up in a tree.

We walked and walked (honestly probably a few miles today!) and ran out of time when we had trouble finding the next stage of the cache.  We had to give up for today because we were really sweaty and had to get home to wash up a bit.  We had fun adventuring though!  I do love spending time with my kids!  They're the best!

We were a bit late because we stopped at home to change and wash up a bit, but we spent the evening at the R Fam's!  Jeremy brought us our group fav--Little Caesar's!  Dawn found this awesome D23 puzzle at a garage sale and we girls put it together this evening.  Addie made an awesome video with photos and videos from our trip and we all watched it together.  She added super fun music and we all loved reminiscing as we watched it.

What a fun way to celebrate our wonderful summer!

Hangin' with my boy

We've run all the errands we can run this week while the girls have been at camp from 8:15-noon every day.  So today, Caeden and I went to the park, just for fun!

I don't think he'd ever tried one of these out before.

It wasn't so successful...

This kid is just so goofy!

While I was watching Caeden play in the park, I looked on my Geocaching app to see if there were any caches nearby.  It turned out there were 6 right there in the park!  We decided to go looking for the closest one, and Caeden found it right away!

There was a puzzle cache in the park that we worked on for over an hour.  (We haven't done many of these, so we didn't know how to decipher it.)  We finally translated some Morse Code and found the first of 5 stations in the cache before getting stumped again.  We will have to do some thinking and hope to go back and finish this one later.

After the girls' concert, we went to the mall for lunch.  The girls didn't drink much of their sodas, so Caed decided to help them out.

We hit some good sales and got jeans, socks, underwear, and haircuts.  I think we're almost ready to go back to school!

A bit o' 'caching

I didn't realize it until today, but it's been nearly 2 years since we did any geocaching!  We got a few in today though, and it was really fun!

Annah climbed down to this one near a little bridge and found it in the hollowed out end of a log.

This one was an educational one at the windfarm lookout.  This is about 3 miles from our house.  Kinda pathetic we didn't know it was here until we went looking for a geocache!  We really enjoyed our time here!

The kids found this one mostly by themselves up in a tree at a cemetery a couple miles from our house. (Another thing we didn't know was there until today!) It was a beautiful, peaceful place.

This one, the kids did by themselves too.  They are getting good at following the radar, thinking about where things could be safely hidden, seeking out camouflaged items, and signing the log.

We had fun getting these caches and back into our little treasure hunting hobby!

Exploring Peoria

We decided to go out to lunch in Peoria for my birthday after the quiz today, and enjoy the city a bit.  I chose to go to Red Lobster, since we don't have seafood often.  Jeremy is not a fan, so I especially appreciate him sacrificing his tastes for the day and granting me a big treat!!

Caeden liked getting to see the lobsters in the tank, and the hostess even took one out so he could get up close and personal.  He asked her why the rubber bands were on it.  I don't think he believed her that it would actually try to pinch him if they weren't on there!

After lunch, Jeremy wanted to take us around Peoria a bit.  We drove through the city, across a few of the bridges over the Illinois River, and then to Peoria Heights to take Grand View Drive.

We stopped at a park to try to find a geocache, but had no luck with that.  It was a big, beautiful park though, and we did see some neat things.

Annah found this big leaf and knew right away that it was a Pin Oak!

The kids enjoyed playing in the beautiful park and on the playground.  I think this will be Caeden's 7-year portrait.  It is hard to get him to hold still and look at the camera with a nice smile, so I don't think I'll try to get him to pose for a better one.  This is him, how he is these days, and I love it.

It is always fun to watch this sweet girl play on a playground!

Grand View Drive was dubbed "The World's Most Beautiful Drive" by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1910!  We did enjoy it, and thought about a week or two ago it was probably absolutely gorgeous.  (Most of the colorful leaves blew off the trees this past week.)

We stopped at this nice lookout point to read the sign and enjoy the view.  Poor Caeden was so scared by the steep drop-off that he wouldn't get out of the car and whimpered until we got moving again!

Peoria Heights is a very beautiful area, for sure!

We should visit Peoria more often!  We really enjoyed the day there!