Diego's Getting Serious About This Rescuing Thing

We're now about 45 minutes into the annual sugar high. Logan and Liam probably set a record for trick-or-treating this year, we were out for over an hour. Liam wasn't all that keen on being Diego or carrying his rescue pack around - that is, until the candy started to flow. What he DID want to carry around was Logan's Boba Fett blaster - apparently the jungle's getting a little rough for an animal rescuer. Time to pack heat.

Happy Halloween!!

Don't Try to Pull One Over on ME...

Earlier this year Liam got a couple of new jammies from Grandma Sue - nice, fleecy pajamas with feet, good for the oncoming winter. It's been getting colder here in St. Louis lately, so we put Liam in one of the new pajamas last night.

Five minutes later, I start hearing the familiar refrain of "Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad...Dad..."

That'll go on all night if I don't go see him.

So I walk into the bedroom, and Liam's standing in his crib, stripped down to his diaper, and the new fleecy pajamas are crumpled in a wad on the floor. Liam looks at me and points down to the forlorn little pile of new pajamas and says "Dad...those are not jammies."

"What?" I wasn't sure what he was talking about.

He pointed again. "Those are NOT jammies. Need some jammies on."

So I got some of his old Diego jammies and he wore those to bed.

Sorry, Mom. They ARE nice, though.

Camping, Camping, and Some More Camping

The last two weekends have been camping weekends here in Missouri, while we enjoy our two weeks of fall before winter sets in. I fully expect it to be freezing by mid-next week. The first weekend we spent at Long Branch Lake in north Missouri with the Barlands. It was supposed to be a weekend-long trip, but rain forced us home a day early. At least the night we had was pretty fun, and the campsite was great. The boys had a great time at the lake, mostly by throwing whatever they could find into it. Once it got too dark to throw things into the lake, they figured out how fun it is to throw things into the fire. Mostly a weekend with a lot of throwing.

We woke up the first morning to rain, and the campsite was soaked. We did our best to get up and get breakfast and still let the boys play once the rain quit, which they did, getting absolutely FILTHY in the mud. Getting dirty was to be kind of a theme for camping, kind of like the fire.

This past weekend we spent camping at a campground near St. Louis with some local friends. It was a much larger group, and the campsite wasn't quite as remote, but the weather was much nicer and everyone had a good time. There was still a lot of desire to throw things in the fire. In addition to Logan and Liam there were 6 other kids there, so they had lots of playmates for the weekend.

Photos From the Shedd Aquarium and Field Museum

As promised. Unfortunately, like all museums both of these were fairly dimly lit, the better to see the animals and exhibits inside. Great for vision, sucks for photography. There were plenty of fun moments, but most of them were hard to get in a photo. Here are a few of the better ones.

The Aftermath

Okay, okay, I promise there will be more pictures soon. Yesterday was the last day in Chicago and we didn't get home until after 10pm, so it was pretty much get out of the van and get into bed, for everyone. I'll have time tonight to go through the last day or two of pictures and post.

The Field Museum was pretty good, better for the boys than I anticipated actually. They spent a lot of time in the animal exhibits, which despite being stuffed instead of alive were still pretty interesting to them. They had a lot of exhibits where they challenged visitors to "find 1 turtle, 3 snakes, and 7 beetles" or something like that. Combining two of Logan's favorite things - animals and "I Spy" games - was a surefire hit. We also took them to see the Dinosaur Hall upstairs. In retrospect, it might have been better to do that first. This was later in the afternoon and I think both of them were getting tired of the museum. They both still thought the dinosaurs were cool, and I got a kick out of Liam's reaction. Pretty much every time we turned a corner and there was some new huge animal skeleton, he'd cry out "WHOA, look at THAT little guy!!" They also both thought the fossilized mammoth poop was hilarious.

We packed it in around 4pm and made it back to St. Louis in right around 6 hours. All in all, a very good vacation.