Goodbye Summer

Before the school year began... here are our last images of summer .

Downtown splash pad with our new friends the Hansens.

 The animal shelter. The cat room is called "Purrasic park"

 Cats love hiding under Luke's volunteer vest.

 Silly kiddo in the bath. She has a book called "Just One More." She loves that book! Inside the story the little girl is told to choose just one bath toy and so she chooses a giant duck floaty. So Athena asked for her floaty that day too.

Storybook Island with Julia and Laura Elliott

 The animal shelter

Ty's Birthday Week

There is an awesome indoor water park nearby called Watiki. Very expensive! We went once in the wtinter after we moved here and have not been back since. Well, during Tiberias' birthday week his best friend Eli Hickman invited our family to join them at Watiki. They had guest passes so they gave them to us. We all got in for free...except Sterling who stayed home. We had a blast!

 Then on Tiberias' birthday we went to Burger King for lunch and ice cream. We invited Eli and his family! Fun times!

 Photo above: Natasha, Sawyer, Alyosha, Tiberias, Athena, Eli, Luke.

Dyed my hair dark dark brown...

First Day of School

Third grade does a contest over the summer to see who can grow the largest cabbage. Here is Luke's.

 First day of school ! 1st grade and 4th!

 I love this one...

For their teachers we made paper backpacks "Back to school." We placed homemade cookies inside with a note that says "You will make me into one smart cookie."

 Athena at the playground when we dropped Ty off for his first day of school.

Luke was on the other playground with the older graders. Jaycee is Ty's new best friend and she is on Luke's side of the school. She is in Ty's church class though. She is one year older than Ty and one year younger than Luke. 

10 Years of Marriage Road Trip

Sterling is great at planning vacations!  He planned a romantic 10th anniversary celebration trip to do without the kids. That trip is set for a month after our anniversary day. As we often end up doing, we planned a more "spur of the moment" trip for our actual anniversary. This time including the kids.

We began our road trip on Friday the 9th. Our first stop was Oahe dam.

Pictures taken by Sterling:

 Then we drove to the state capital

  Pierre, SD

Here is the beautiful capital building. We all enjoyed the self guided tour of this building.

 Even the drinking fountain had a fancy flair to it.

Sterling's photos:

More of mine(obviously his camera is better than mine. Sadly, it use to be mine but I couldn't learn how to use such a complicated camera):

 A memorial across the street from the capital building.

Another memorial was a small walk down the street.

 Before getting back into the van we had lunch. 

Sterling had packed all the meals and snacks for the trip...to avoid spending a lot on dining out.

 Here is where I FAILED at opening the honey and spilled it all over the bread bag.

A cathedral in Pierre

 

 The kids were anxious all day to get to the hotel because they love to play in the pool. We did our best to get the kids to enjoy the trip before the hotel. And once we did get to the pool it proved to be as great as they imagined.

 Movie and rest time

 Sioux Fall Zoo!

 "I know a rhino! We like to take tea. I have two sugar and rhino has three."

 Feeding the goats is fun!

Sterling's pictures:

 

More of Tiffany's pics

After seeing all of the silly animals we went into the museum to play...

 We visited Sioux Park that week.

 We walked up many stairs to get to the top of the tower for the real view of the park.

 Athena has loved waterfalls this year so it was fun to be near such wide and loud falls.

Before leaving Souix Falls we went to the Battleship South Dakota Memorial.

"The most decorated battleship of WWII" 

It was a lot of fun at no cost.

 

On the way home on Friday we took a detour to visit the Corn Palace.

The corn palace is decorated with corn and husks! Inside you can buy corn, popcorn and more. You can check out art pieces made with corn...similar to the art of the outside of the palace.

They also have a play room as large as a gym. We loved it!

 Across the street from the corn palace is a castle. It is a shop but also an experience. The owner is a man from Romania. He bought the building and turned the majority of it into an experience. You walk through the gift shop then into Bible times. Dim lit to make it look cooler than it is there are fake trees and fake people...an entire room set up to look like Israel in Bible times. You walk the path and check out the different sets then go into a smaller room that was transformed into a play jungle for kids. With vines hanging from the ceiling, a tricky playland to get through in order to find the slides, baksetball and even giant eggs with a gator.

Sunflower fields on the drive

 We also stopped to see the river Lewis and Clark sailed up on their journey of exploration. There was a beautiful native american statue at the stop. I just love her.

Sterling's pictures: