Small Town Manhattan

There are lots of perks to living in a small town. Here are a few:

One of my friends set up a little preschool where we rotate houses and we all take turns giving a lesson on a particular theme every other week. In between those weeks we go on a field trip. We wanted to tour the air port since kids love planes. The closest big airport is over 2 hours away but Manhattan does have a teeny tiny airport. My friend called them up and just asked if we could have a tour. Not only did they say yes but it was free, the director of the airport did the tour, we got up close to some of the planes, they got to watch one take off, and they got a little wooden plane at the end. How awesome is that? You could never do that at a normal airport.

 Cade and his friends flying their wooden airplanes. 

Also there are weekly farmers markets. I love the idea of supporting local farmers. And there are plenty around here!  This particular week there were some extra fun things to enjoy.

 Rylee, of course, loving the pig. 

Cade is loving being inside the fire truck. We walked up to it to go inside and they all of a sudden shut the doors and jumped inside and took off.  They got a call. Kind of cool to see then do their thing. But then they came back.

Walters Pumpkin Patch

We had such a fun day today! We were able to squeeze in a family outing to Walters Pumkin Patch in Burns, KS. I don't think I can stress to you enough how in-the-middle-of-nowhere this was. It was about an hour and a half away. There were so many fun things to do. This place had so many creative ideas. There were even more things to do that were closed since it was a weekday but, nonetheless we had a blast. The weather was perfect, the kids had fun, the parents had fun, and we brought home a pumpkin.  I know I may have posted too many pictures so maybe at least enjoy the beautiful scenery.

 Cade loved the boat. The whole time he was on the boat he kept saying, "I've never been on a boat before! I've never been on a boat before!"

 Way awesome slides!

 A big blob to jump on. What could be more fun than a big blob to jump on?! Cade is in the air on the second picture.

 Rylee and her animals. She just loves them. She is doing the cow sign in the second picture. She also just recently learned to say moo. It is so adorable.

 Fun bikes. Love that they also had child seats. (I think Rylee's hair resembles Doc from Back To The Future)

Super fun teeter toter. It was fun having the whole family on it. 

This was so hilarious to us. We tried to teach Cade to take a picture and he didn't do too bad! Cade was ecstatic to take this picture.

 On the way home, Cade was falling asleep as he was eating. It was so funny. Needless to say he had an exhaustingly good time.

Books

I have been so busy lately I almost completely forgot about the idea of blogging. It just has not even crossed my mind lately. So now I am back.

This is simple but I wanted to document. I love of how my kids love books. As rambunctious and crazy and hyper Cade can be, he will jump at the chance to sit and listen to a story. Thank goodness. And I find Rylee all the time looking through books by herself. I love it when she will lug a book over to me and then crawl into my lap and wait for me to read it to her. They love going to the library. And we have the best library. It is so good and catering so well to kids. There is always something going on at the library.

Partying!....I mean Babysitting!

My parents had the awesome opportunity to visit some friends who were serving a mission in Russia. So I had the awesome opportunity to go home to watch Alyssa and the house. Which basically meant I was pretty much on vacation since it was more like hanging out with Alyssa, having a house full of food, and plenty of fun things for the kids. Best of all Shanna also got to come for the latter half of it! So fun!! We had quality cousin time, sewing time, seeing old friends time, and then got to hear all the cool stories about Russia. I would say that is a pretty good time. Here are way too many pictures at random.

 Rylee making the 'cat' sign. To say she loved the cat would be an understatement. 

 Playing in the sand.

 Cade made me and him a party with the play food. Complete with chairs, a cake, and pizza with candy on it.

Rylee got rides in the dump truck. I am not sure who had more fun- Rylee, Cade or Cole! (Cole was there for a few days because of a conference in Ft Worth.)

 At Alyssa football game. She was a darling cheerleader. Oddly enough 8th grade cheerleading is the only activity all 5 Black sister have done that is the same. Cade was really enjoying actually watching the football game and being able to see, somewhat up close, the players get tackled or throw the ball.

 Cousins! We loved sporting dad's car all week!

 

Gathering eggs at the Matheney's house. The kids loved it. Cade was continuously concerned that we were hurting the chicks inside. How do you argue that? I told him some eggs were for eating and some were for chicks to grow. I'll figure out how to tell the truth later.

 Making cookies with Alyssa

 This typified these two the whole week. They would drive these things all over the house together.

 Trying to get a decent grandchildren shot.

 Playing dolls with Aunt Shan

 Rylee loves ducks. Mainly because she knows the sign, can somewhat say the word and loves them in her bath.

 At the park with Julia and Aria. Weird that now we are all moms. We have 8 1/2 kids between all of us!! Crazy!

 Getting Russia from Mimi.

 Cade and Austin looking over their Cars gifts.

 Cade and Austin watching Cars together. They were really excited about it. That is about the only thing similar about these two boys- their love for cars.

If you made it to the end of the post basically we had a blast. Glad mom and dad were safe in their travels. They brought us back nesting dolls (mom used to collect them so all the sisters have fond memories of playing with them) and best of all Cole got a BYU one. Each smaller doll inside is a different football player with his name on the back. I should have a picture up-it is too funny.