Local cavern visit

Well this week we are getting ready for school and doing things that I have wanted to do with the kids the entire summer. One of our trips was to go to a local Cavern where we went into a cave system, mined for gems and was attacked by local donkey's. We had a blast. Nathan was a little weary of entering the caves and kept turning around and going back up the stairs. I had to carry him down the stairs and once he was in it he was fine. You are not suppose to touch the wall since it stalls or kind of destroys the natural formation process of the caves but that is hard to do with a 2 year old. But he managed to not get his greasy, oily hands on too many walls or formations. The kids loved mining for gems. That was their favorite part. The least favorite part but the most talked about part of the trip was having two donkeys and one goat want to aggressively eat our picnic lunch. The kids were so mad and screaming at the animals that we had to move our picnic to the back of our car. We noticed after we were eating that feeding the animals the food that the caverns provided was foreshadowing into the aggressiveness of these animals at the sight and smell of food. The poor kids trying to feed the animals tenderly from their hands turned into the animal grabbing the bag of food out of the child's hand and running off with it. I later heard the lady at the desk tell one person who bought the food to not let the animals get the bags or they would eat the bags. I was thinking in my head, "good luck with that". So anyway, the animals were the talk of the trip but I think that Julianne really enjoyed the caves and she was in the front of the line listening to the lady talk about the history of the caves.








Look at this goat's pupils. They are square. It was really interesting and wired to look at them.


I put the girls in Jail for a time out!! Just kidding.



We received the girls school teacher names in the mail this weekend and they both have the teacher that they wanted. Julianne really wanted her teacher and she is very happy with that except all of her close friends are not in her class. There are a few other acquaintances in her class that we are aware of and her next door neighbor but that is it. So it will be interesting to see how she does the first day of school. Additionally it will be interesting to see what friends she sticks with over the coarse of the year. She has three really good friends of which two of them were in her Kindergarten class so this will be a new start for her. I hope she stays friends with her existing friends since they are great girls, but I know she will meet new people. Mallory got Julianne's old Kindergarten teacher so I am excited about that. She is a pretty laid back teacher with four kids so she understands kids. Mallory's teacher's daughter is actually in Julianne's class this year and it just so happens that they have the same birthday. So that will be interesting also.

Other things we have been enjoying are playing in the pool. The kids are enjoying it and I actually got into it the other day in order to clean the slippery bottom. So it was fun and it has warmed up considerably since the first few weeks we installed it.




Things I am grateful/thankful for:
-Nathan saying "I want to bite you" after I told him I wanted to kiss him.
-Nathan sleeping with his sword every night since my friend gave it to him.
-Beginning school soon. We have enjoyed our summer but some structure will be nice.