Mammoths, playdate, and camping...Oh my :)

     The weather has been wonderful the last couple of weeks and we have been enjoying every minute of it. We want to make sure we pack in the fun before the winter. We stay in more then to try to avoid all of the germies :/ Anyways, kids had a great time taking Daddy to the Natural History Museum down in Lincoln. There are so many great things to see there! The kids favorite thing is of course the giant wooly mammoth, he is huge! They loved to look at everything but enjoy hearing about how things were found too. There were some crazy fossils of sea animals found in Nebraska too. But, they really loved playing down in the kids room. They dug for fossils, got to feel animal furs, read books, and hide in a tree trunk :) They had a lot of fake animals to play with too. Daddy and Kaleb grabbed some big fake snakes and teased Ella with them. She ended up screaming and flying out of the door in her wheelchair. She just kept going down the long hall, yelling "Ahhhhhhhhh". It was hilarious!
    We had some nice days just hanging around playing too. We visited "Old Grandpa", that's my Grandpa George. The kids call him that and its his special name :) I had told Kaleb that Old Grandpa was in the Navy when he was younger and on big ships. We pulled out the scrapbook i made for him and showed Kaleb all of the pictures of Old Grandpa when he was in World War II. Kaleb was so interested. Old Grandpa was telling him stories of all of the ships he was on and about the Admiral he worked with. Kaleb was paying such good attention, he said, "So...that's the third ship right". I think that Grandpa really felt good knowing that Kaleb was so interested in what he had done :)
   We also had a great playdate with the Bauer family. Ann is expecting number 4 and was nice enough to bring the three kids over to play. Kaleb and Blaise took off downstairs and had fun togther as always. The girls, Elise and Jolee, played doll house with Ella. They were so sweet to her and played around her while she sat in her chair. Elise would hand Ella things and even help her put dolls on the top shelf that she normally can't reach. We love time with our friends, Mommy talk was nice too!
   This weekend was our big camping trip. Well, big for us, it was one night at Mahoney State Park, which is about 30-40 minutes from our house. My family went out a couple of nights before us and set up camp. They brought all of the food and equipment and we just had to bring our tent, clothes, blankets and ourselves. We wouldn't be able to bring everything ourselves so were grateful for all of the hellp so that we could have fun with the kids. We put up the tent, yes we slept in it, and immediately Kaleb was playing football with my cousins and Ella was asking when we were going to start roasting marshmallows :) We went paddle boating under willow trees with the kids, fishing, on walks, did crafts, and of course had a fire. They love making s'mores for Mommy to eat....but they never want them. I guess I can't complain about having to eat them all :) The kids slept great in the tent, even Ella while on her bipap! I didn't take a ton of pictures because we were having so much fun that I didn't have time to grab the camera. There are at least a few I'll post here and more on the shutterfly site later.
   Kaleb is enjoying preschool and is getting a little bit better at telling me about his days. Ella finished her baseball season and had a blast at the awards ceremony. They announced her name and gave her a special little trophy with her name on it. Now, onto watching Kaleb's football games :) I only got to watch 20 minutes last week but am looking forward to the one on Saturday. I heard he has thrown touchdown passes already and rushed for his own :) That will be awesome to see!