ICF

Our first stop on our Baraboo trip was the International Crane Foundation.  We got there a little before 3 pm, just in time for the last tour.  It was interesting, glad to say we've been there.  Probably something you wouldn't bother going back to, but it was fun.  Lots of space and walkways for the kids to run.  

 Loud cranes....

 The boys thought the ants were more interesting at times....

 Whooping crane on her nest.

 The various crown cranes were the neatest, they puff up their feathers.  Looks like a gust of wind, but it was just coincidence!

We spent a couple hours here and headed to Ochsner Park Zoo, a little free zoo on a city block in Baraboo.  Pics to come!

boys {new} toys

 We now have a deck, so why not get a nice grill!

Luke has been wanted a mow tractor forever.  Dave's friend Gary has one for sale.  Do you think they bought it?  Working on Baraboo pictures.  We covered a lot in just a couple days.  Today is the big parade and the weather isn't looking too good for this afternoon.  Lately, if it's not raining, it's hot and muggy.  We'll see what happens, we are hoping it is still on since we are planning to visit with (old) neighbor Carol!  And park in her driveway :)

netflix

Emily set the boys up with Cars Toons the other day.  Since moving, the kids have been watching barely any TV.  I know, that should be a good thing.  All we have is the little TV in Em's room set up in the family room and haven't bothered to get the cable box from HBC yet, so channels are disappearing.  It would be nice if they would just sit and watch a show once in a while.... I'm talking to you Logan!  He's even losing interest in Daniel Tiger, but I don't blame him, they rarely play new episodes.  And if I'm getting bored with Daniel going to the doctor, eating new foods and taking breaks for going potty, Logan might be too.

bridging day

 Here are the kids before the bus came on the last day of school.  The last day was especially special since both are moving up a level!  Luke bridged to E1, so he'll be the youngest now with 1-3 grades.  And Emily will be in E2, the youngest of 4-6 grades.  The kindergarteners did a little performance of 4 or 5 songs and then we had a pizza lunch in Emily's classroom before the 3rd grade bridging ceremony.

 The children's house teachers all said a short little snippet about each child moving up.  It was kind of emotional since the teachers have had some of the kids for 3 entire years.  I suppose you can get a little attached!  Here is Luke's:

After walking over the bridge, the kids meet the 3 teachers in the next level.

 Emily and Anna!

Luke and his teacher, Ms. Katie.

peanut butter {love}

 You know you love your puppy when you share a spoonful of peanut butter with no hesitation.  Trying to get somewhat caught up on pictures, although I'm sure I even have some from Easter yet, so we'll see what I get to.  We finally closed on the house, everything went smooth enough (considering not knowing what our fate was going to be for a while with this house) and it's officially ours.  With that, comes the sit and wait, people coming for estimates for various projects, scheduling them to do work when they are a month or so out for jobs, and living out of stacks of clothes in the laundry room and totes of clothes in the living room.  I have a lady coming today to look at painting the upstairs.  Anxious to see what she says, since that's the first thing we need done before we can go forward with new carpet and then finally put the bedrooms together.  I'll feel much better when that is done, maybe I'll want to get caught up on laundry then.  At least there will be somewhere to put it!  We got an estimate back for windows and some outside work.  We'll likely go forward with new windows, but still unsure of what to do to the outside of the house right now.  Do we go maintenance free or fix some spots in the siding and paint?  The common "look" of houses in the neighborhood is the redwood siding that we have, but we'd like to ditch the blue color I think.  We'd like to do some stone, cedar shake or something to the front, just don't know what. Wider wrap around the outside of the windows and ditch the shutters?  I wish someone could read my mind and just tell me what do do.  All you hear is "it's all personal preference.... you can do pretty much anything.....!"  I just need someone to tell me what would look nice for our house.

I made the executive decision to opt out of a lot of summer activities for the kids.  Although Emily is perfectly fine with it.  Her and the 9 year old neighbor girl across the street have spent every.free.waking.moment together since they met, so she's excited for a summer full of playing.  Now we just need a little 6 or 7 year old boy to come out of the woodwork in the 'hood..  No summer swim team, no t-ball, no llama work or 4H, probably no swim lessons.... but it still seems like they have plenty going on.  Luke will still keep up with karate and piano weekly.  They are doing a couple weeks of park and rec camps each, and a week of YMCA camp at least.  And I have a couple fun "mini" vacations planned (Baraboo and Dubuque) and a week plus in Green Bay/Door County. That will get a few places crossed off the vacation bucket list.  I really wasn't planning on Dubuque this summer but I really want to see the Field of Dreams movie site in Dyersville and in 2014 they have plans to expand it into a huge sports complex.  So, gotta be this summer.  And I guess they have a spectacular river museum/aquarium.   I need as little going on this summer to try and get settled, so to speak.  This move has definitely been a hard transition.  We really like the house (ok, the upstairs bathrooms I don't like), everything is just different.  Hopefully it'll feel more like home after some things get done.  I just hope it will start coming together before school starts again!

stella's spots

 Stella has a couple favorite spots in the new house.  The front porch couch and the mudrooms cool tile floor.  We've been going back and forth about what to do for a fence here, mainly for Stella.  The kids will eventually grow and not need to be contained and seeing all the nice sprawling (fenceless) back yards behind us made us lean towards Invisible Fence.  Plus, that's a lot of weedwacking that would need to be done around a fence.  So, we had Invisible Fence put in yesterday and she had her first little "training" session.  A couple more will follow in the next few weeks or so.  She had an encounter with a deer the other morning when she was on her tie out in the back yard.  She was barking so I look out and a deer was about 15-20 feet away from her huffing and kicking a front leg up every once in a while.  Looked kind of mean really.  I guess they'll just have to learn to cohabitate?  The IF guy thinks that the deer will eventually learn there is a dog here and stay outside the "fence."  I don't know...  She's getting a beauty treatment at the salon now, time to shave the back end.