Western Kansas

Last week, we all headed to Hays, Kansas. Why Hays you might ask. Well, because Jeff has a conference there every year. We always tag along, because August marks the beginning of conference and convention season for Jeff's business. That means he's gone a lot. Since this one happens before school and it's not too far away, we always got with him. The kids get to swim in the hotel pool and go to the mall and watch a movie, and we get to go out to sinner with Jeff at night and spend time as a family. :0)
The kids swam A LOT this time, and every time, they were the only ones in the pool. Lucky them!  

After Jeff's conference ended on Thursday, we were just going to head home, but we decided to go to Castle Rock in Western Kansas. It is a huge formation of rocks out in the middle of a flat prairie. It's actually pretty cool. It is leftover from when Kansas was covered in water and these are sedimentary rocks that were deposited there. (I only know this because my smart husband told me ;0)  )

Anyway.....The kids thought this was awesome!!

They tried to climb this one, but there wasn't really anywhere to climb.

So we went over to all of the other rocks to let the kids climb!

This is Castle Rock:

It's by its little lonesome self. ;0)
The rest had a ton of places you could climb!

This was the hard way to get up. About half way up, I made Lily come back down and go the easier way.

Even Jeff climbed up!

She finally made it to the top!!

So much climbing to be done!

This little butterfly hung out on my foot. Seriously, even when I walked, he just sat there for the longest time. :0)

(Please disregard my gross feet....I really need a pedicure....)

We didn't let the kids climb all of these. This was a spur of the moment trip, so all they had were flip-flops, which are not great from climbing steep rocks. So, we told them we would come back another time when they had real shoes one.

They weren't just climbing though, they found some cool fossils of shells....

what we think might be a dinosaur bone.....

and petrified wood!

We had fun on our little mini vacation, especially our little impromptu side trip!

Summer Snow Day!

Since the summer is so hot, we decided to have a little cool down by having a Summer Snow Day! We had cousins over and started off our day with a fun game. I divided the kids into three teams. They picked one person to be the snowman and the other two had to turn them into a snowman using toilet paper, hats, scarves, a paper carrot nose, and paper buttons.
Taby & Johnny quickly started wrapping up Riley:  

Alyssa wrapped Lily while Ceri looked on:

And originally, Zach & Ares were going to turn Emma into a snowgirl, but she wasn't really into it. ;0)

So Amy helped Ares wrap Zach:

The first ones done were these three. They did a great job!

Zach also made a very nice snowman. 

And Alyssa & Ceri did a good job turning Lily into a snowgirl!

Our next fun project was playing with freezy dough! All you need for this is shaving cream and either Kool-Aid for the scent & color, or food coloring for just the coloring. Then stick it in the freezer and let it freeze overnight.

They had fun with this, but it melted fairly quickly and it stained their hands.
:0(

Next up was making ice cream in a bag. We mixed 1 cup half & half with 2 tablespoons sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla in a small ziplock bag. Then we added ice & salt to a gallon sized ziplock bag, added the smaller bag (making sure it's closed tightly!) and then closing the big bag tightly.
Each of the kids shook their bags all over the room while watching frozen. 

While the kids were shaking their bags to make ice cream, I made them frozen hot chocolate. (You can find the recipe here: www.yourhomebasedmom.com/frozen-hot-chocolate/#_a5y_p=1752774

It was really yummy & the kids finally finished their shaking and were able to enjoy their ice cream too!

The final treat of the day were these ice cream cookies I made by dipping the tops of Nutter Butters into almond bark and sprinkles and topping with an M&M.

The kids thought these were yummy too!
I hope the kids had fun, I know mine did, and this was a fun new thing to try during the summer!