Zach enjoyed his Easter trip to Des Moines, but most of all, he liked going to the play ground, even though it was cool and breezy and there was water on the slides. You can't beat a good swing & slide set.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Des Moines Playgrounds
Zach enjoyed his Easter trip to Des Moines, but most of all, he liked going to the play ground, even though it was cool and breezy and there was water on the slides. You can't beat a good swing & slide set.
Kickball
When we got back from the Open House, Zach had to show Kyle what he could do with his big blue and red balls. He's an excellent kicker.
The grass was starting to green up everywhere in the yard.
I did it! Hi cows!
That's what Zach kept saying every time he climbed to the top of the fence and looked over at the cows at the display outside of Weber Arena at the K-State Open House.
Fountain Fun
The highlight of K-State Open house for Zach was the fountain in front of the bug hall.
Tornado Shelter
Hey Andrea and Kyle, it just says you shelter there in case there's a tornado, not that there is a tornado.
Zach and Mommy at K-State
Andrea provided a quick and consistent distraction for Zach when we were distracted by events at the K-State Open House.
Beta House Visit
We dropped by the Beta House while visiting Manhattan for Open House.
Zach liked to hang out in the window. Steve showed Kyle a picture of his Grandfather when he was a Freshman at K-State. Bobbie had the situation under control, as usual.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
It's a What?!
I attended the baby shower for Shane and Kelly in early April. One grandparent did not want to know what the baby was beforehand, even though everyone else in the room already knew. It was quite elaborate to have a shower and keep a big secret like that, but we managed it. Molly's mom did pretend to spill the beans, and then reveal that it was an April Fool's like fakery.
I had to get the shower gift myself, without the aid of my wife, a normal essential component of all things to do with babies. I got a little canvas soft box and filled it with diapers, as well as a soft squishy thing for the baby to lounge on. I tried to arrange the diapers to make them look like a big flower, with mixed success. Since Easter was coming up, I carefully seeded the basket with small Reese's peanut butter cups. This could have been interpreted as a parody of the wonderful little gifts the baby would soon be depositing in the diapers, or a blatant attempt to keep the daddy half of the mommy/daddy team interested in the gifts.
Burned Prairie
On the way down to Hutchinson in early April, I passed through the Flint Hills, a large expanse of grassland in the central planes of Kansas. It's called hills, but anyone from Appalachia or the Rockies would be hard pressed to call it that. It's rolling country with ancient rocky outcrops.
Each spring, fires are lit or are started naturally by lightning and they sweep across the plains, burning off the old dead growth from the years before, and making room for new growth. This is natural and good.
It is also dangerous if you happen to be driving on a road with a grass fire right next to it. It is beautiful to see the hills off in the distance ablaze at night as you drive through the country. I drove down at night, passing through an area with many fires until I reached a line of thunderstorms with high winds. The hard rain of the storm as it swept through put out all the fires and their charred remains were visible when I returned through in the daytime.
It's a sight you never get tired of.
Fast Forward
On a short trip down to Hutchinson Kansas on 4/9/11, I got to see a fast forward into Spring. The season is always at least a week, sometimes two ahead of us here, so the tulips were in full bloom there.
This time, I went to a tiny (genuine) Mexican restaurant in town and got to speak to the little bambino playing in the back yard behind the restaurant.
I also dropped by 600 East Avenue A, the childhood home of my father and site of many Thanksgivings with Dot (my grandmother). The old place has been fixed up nice and is looking really good.
Mower Repair
We got a nice short visit from Kyle and Steve and took the opportunity to take the mower in for repairs. Kyle is definitely getting too big for sitting on the hump in the back.
Bruiser's at home
By the end of the month, not only was Bruiser no longer afraid of us, but he was a little attention hog when we got home. He now comes up to us and looks at us with the patented "Are you going to pet me now? See how cute I am?" look, which always works.
Double Dog Trouble
Not only does this guy let his dog drive his truck, but he lets him sharpen knives. He must really have some kind of death wish. I don't know what is wrong with some people!
Let Me Drive!
Sometimes when we get home, Zach likes to sit in the driver's seat and push buttons and turn the wheel. We had just gotten home from the Hardware store, where he had his little treasures from the $1 bins, a small level keychange and a keychain light. He discovered the joys of turning the overhead lights off an on.
One more drizzling of snow before spring
On 3/28/11 we had ANOTHER snowstorm, this time not so stormy, maybe more of a dusting. I'm not a meteorologist, so I don't have the lingo down.
This one put funny little hats on all the starballs on the driveway.
Jacomo's Sailboat Cove
We went to Sailboat Cove on 3/20/11. It was warm that day, so I bundled Zach up and got out the backpack. I had been curious about the remnant of an old road at Jacomo. After you pass the Hoofed Animal Enclosure pens and the entrance to Old Missouri Town, the road goes up a hill and cuts hard right and drops down a steep hill to Sailboat Cove. If you look straight rather than going down the hill, there is a gap in the trees where the road used to go straight. I noticed it some years back, and it's not as obvious as it used to be.
There's another road out there that does something similar, and I noticed that you can see a road on the other side of the lake lines up with it perfectly, so you can tell that this was a through road from back before the lake was filled in around 1958.
This old road had a lot of small trees and wild rose bushes growing in it, and it terminated in a strange little hillside pond above the parking lot for Sailboat Cove.
We went down to the Sailboat Storage and the docks and Zach got to run around and see the sailboats on trailers with tarps over them. He also got to throw rocks in the lake, which is just about his favorite activity when any water is nearby.
Cell Towers at Prairie Township Fire Department
I have to be honest, the only reason I'm putting this here is because my brother's company works on cell towers. I imagine this is not very interesting to most people.
The crew was working on the older tower, which has been behind the Fire Department since probably the early 80's, back when no one I knew had a cell phone because they were horribly expensive to use. I took photos of the towers when I was in college for our Engineering Magazine, and wrote a little article about them. I remember thinking that it was ridiculous to get a cell phone, because the towers only transmitted about 3 miles back then. And they weren't "mobile" phones, as much as they were car phones. They were wired into the battery and console and you usually had an antenna on your car in order to get a decent reception. Now the antenna is next to your skull frying your brain, and you get no reception. We're really advanced now.
Thomas the Train chair
Andrea got Zach his own little Zach-sized lawn chair with a Thomas the Train picture on it. He liked having something his own size immediately.
Howard Lake
Here's a really large pond off Howard that also looked interesting in the snow that morning of 3/15/11. I don't take many pictures of it, although it's more intersting on some days.
Heart Pond
Beware the Ides of March! Here's my favorite little pond, the Heart Pond, just 3/4 of a mile down the road, shaped like a heart from above.
When I first started this blog, I used to put the heart pond as the main photo of the blog. I would put a recent photo on every few weeks, so it would be a current snapshot of the seasons. I still want to photograph it when I go by and it's a pretty day.
Pi Day
We had another snow storm on 3/14/11, which I like to call Pi Day. This was also our neice Abby's 4th birthday. So Happy Pi Day!
The storm was short and quick and it made snow stick on every limb of the trees. While it coated everything and looked really pretty, it was melted away by the end of the next day.
Bruiser
We had a new cat adopt us this winter. We called him (her?) Bruiser because he looks big and tough, like a back alley cat brawler. He showed up during a really cold and snowy part of the winter, and we felt sorry for him and glad he was eating the outside cat's food. We could tell they didn't like him, but he was so big and tough looking that they couldn't run him off. While they huddled in their little ball of 4 cats in their fleecy cat bed on the porch, Bruiser would wander in, eat his fill, and go back into the barn, where I'm sure it was a lot warmer than under a bridge or in a log somewhere. He built himself a little nest in a galvanized tub with an old towel lining it in the greenhouse part of the barn, so he probably spent many an hour in security and comfort out of the winter wind and warming in the weak winter sun.
Once he figured out that we weren't going to throw a shoe at him, we found him to be pretty friendly to us, too. He had to belong to someone, he's too tame and nice not to have known people well. I imagine him sitting in some old lady's lap while she knits in a room with doilies on all the furniture.
Turkey Time
Between snowstorms, it got nice enough by 3/6/11 for the Turkeys to trot about and eat right off the ground without scratching through snow. Here they are enjoying the bonfire area, probably the Turkey equivalent of a weekend barbeque.
2011 Auto Show
I bundled Zach up and drove him down to Bartle Hall for the 2011 Auto Show.
I think it was close to nap time, because he was pretty quiet and content to watch without saying much. I think he was tired.
He did perk up at the police display of dummies flying out of the car rolling over. The other little boy was interested, too. He had to make sure the dummy was not injured.
Flashy Old-Fashioned
There's always a part of any car show with the beautiful old classics. Unfortunately, no one is trying to sell me one of these, so they are just sort of unceremoniously set up in a roped off area in the corner of the Exhibition Hall.
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