Goodbye Indiana, Hello Kansas!!

Whew!! What a wonderful trip we had. The kids Yip, Yap, Yahoo and I just returned from ten glorious days in Indiana visiting family. The weather couldn't have been better. It was in the 70's with mild breezes. Even a rainstorm didn't ruin the vacation!

Oh, and the pictures and stories I have to share with you! First flight on an airplane, wooly mammoths, Children's Museum, water and mud (hooray!!), new twins, crawdads, and the horror of the blood sucking insects that Indiana is full of!!! Yap is convinced that Indiana is an awful place considering his body is covered with mosquito bites. Poor kid. I've got to admit the mosquitos did seem especially drawn to him.

The funniest story I have to share with you is about a leech, imaginary of course. We visited my brother in law in southern Indiana. The kids had a blast playing in his woods and the stream that meandered through. Yip was sure he saw a leech in the stream. (I really doubt it! :) ) Anyway, on Sunday my sister and I were driving the kids to church we were explaining how leeches were sometimes used by doctors on infected wounds. From the backseat Yahoo forced a fake cough and then said, "Mommy, I'm siiiick. I need a leech."
HA! Too dang funny!

Anyhow, we had a great trip but I already miss trees, green and ALL my Hoosier friends and family!
 More pics to come!

I haven't fallen off the edge of the Earth, I swear!

I really am alive. Honestly. 

Life has just gotten so darn busy that blogging is on the back burner. 

It's Holy Week and that's been keeping me busy with church stuff. We had an Easter egg hunt this afternoon and had over 60 kids show up! 60!! That's more than our average Sunday attendance. I have another couple of church projects coming up that hopefully I'll get to blog about. 

I've began the huge project of painting the interior of my house...every room but the bathrooms. I hope I don't get bored before I get everything painted. 

Check out the 7 ft. shelves I built for all of my photo frames! Isn't that so much better than a hundred new nail holes in the wall? I found the plans here.  Dang, they were so quick and easy to build that now I'm seeing places all over the house where I could put shelves like this. I could use them for books, toys, kitchen stuff...endless possibilities! 

One room painted, seven to go. 

It's been a couple weeks since our family spent a few days in Kansas City and I still had a few more photos to share of our trip. I know, I'm way behind. 

Kansas City has a Legoland and it was a big hit with our kids. We were there for three hours and we were exhausted by the time we were done! Check out the Lego Wizard of Oz land! 

The Emerald City. 

Dorothy's house raised up and spun around. 

Munchkin land and the yellow brick road. 

Yahoo was never too interested in Legos until she found that there were pink Friends Legos. She's been building with her new Legos all week. I've found though, that even though Yahoo (a girl) and her brother Yap both play with Legos they play very differently! Boys build lego cars, towers, wars but little girls build backdrops so their Lego figures can have conversations. 

Lego land had a big section where the kids built cars and rolled them down a variety of ramps. I'm not sure if  Yap barely left this section! He LOVED building bigger and better cars. 

Walking on a pit of Legos? That looks tortuous to me...how do kids do it? 

Lego land was a bit pricy but considering how crazy our kids are for Legos and, we were there for three hours, I think it was worth it. 

I'm still alive, just really busy with all kinds of different projects. But I'll blog when I can!! 

Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve

 One of the places I enjoyed most on our quick vacation was the last place we visited, the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve . The preserve is located near Strong City in the middle of the Flint Hills Region. 

Tallgrass prairie once covered 170 million acres of North America. Within a generation the vast majority was developed and plowed under. Today less than 4% remains, mostly here in the Kansas Flint Hills. The preserve protects a nationally significant remnant of the once vast tallgrass prairie and its cultural resources. Here the tallgrass prairie takes its last stand. (borrowed Tallgrass Preserve Website)

Over the course of many years a ranch was built and ran by numerous different families until 1996 when it was turned into a national preserve. In the early 1880's a huge 3 story stone barn and mansion was built on the ranch. 

Inside the barn was dark and empty though there were a few farming artifacts; a buggy, barbed wire, old tools, etc. It was just huge and still in wonderful condition. I always enjoy going to see old buildings that someone has had the foresight to preserve. 

I can't imagine building a stone barn on the Flint Hills but they sure did a fabulous job. The barn and mansion stand on a hill. Down the hill, across a modern road, is a bottom land where there were orchards, gardens and vineyards. It's been so very dry these last few years that the prairie flowers and grasses have had a tough time coming up. Though, the prairie has a natural way of dealing with drought that I'm sure when the rains come (I have faith that they will) Tallgrass will be a breathtaking place to visit. 

The mansion is huge. It's built into a hill and has two basement levels and two above ground levels. It really must have been something to see in it's heyday. 

It's kind of hard to see but there are three terraced levels in front of the house and I was standing on a fourth taking the photo. Each level was surrounded by a stone wall roughly three feet high. The walls weren't just for show at the front of the house, rather they wrapped around the mansion until they naturally ended in the hill. Wow! 

Inside there were many more rooms than I was expecting and nothing had been added to the original design. At the very top of the house there were six bedrooms, I believe, but all locked. On the ground floor there were a total of 5 rooms. The basement was the kitchen area along with a cold storage area and there weren't as many large rooms since it was built into the hill. 

The kids thought this was an extravagant building. 

A three seater outhouse!! Pretty fancy! 

About a quarter mile down the way was a one room schoolhouse that was used up until the 1930's. It was locked up but my was it a pretty view! 

There are roughly two miles of hiking trails through the preserve, though we didn't go on many of them. We were pretty tuckered out from our trip by the time we hit the preserve and it was mighty cold and windy the day we visited. 

DR thought this outhouse must have been the work of the WPA because it was a concrete floor. Any input on that? 

It was pretty much a self guided tour when we were there but the preserve gets pretty busy in the spring/summer. We were told that if we came back in the summer we could take the bus tour through an area where a herd of 20 buffalo were kept. 

• From the last Saturday in April through the last Sunday in October, 90-minute prairie bus tours offered 1 time daily at 11 a.m. and more as staffing and budgets allow. Other tour times may include 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. (as staffing allows). Call ahead for availability.
• From Memorial Day through the last Sunday in October, special interpretive natural resource and cultural history programs on alternating weekends as staffing allows. Ask the rangers for the location of the scheduled interpretive activity.
• One-room Lower Fox Creek Schoolhouse open weekends (Saturday and Sunday) from 12 p.m. - 4 p.m. in May, June, September, and October.

Here's a YouTube video about Tallgrass and another with Lyle Lovett in case you want to know more. 

I'd sure love to see that schoolhouse open too! It sure looked like a gorgeous building from peeping into the windows. I think we'll have to see about taking another trip to Tallgrass in the future! 

Vacation Recovery

Well, we survived a short vacation trip to Kansas City. Wait...didn't I say in my last post we were heading to Denver? That WAS the plan but Mother Nature stepped in and laughed at us. We were planning on driving to Denver Saturday but the mountains ended up getting hit by a storm that day so at the last minute we decided to drive the opposite direction (about the same distance) to Kansas City.

Though it was a last minute plan we still were able to pack in tons of sights and we had a great time. In a lot of the museums we visited there were interactive exhibits that gave you the option to take a video or photo and then email a link of it to yourself. When we visited the Rock and Roll Museum they gave us each a backstage pass with a scanner code. You entered your email once into their computers and scanned your pass, then after every video you recorded you simply scanned your badge to send the video to your email. I think the kids, and DR, created a dozen total videos. (Though DR won't let me share his with you. Party pooper!! ) Here's some the kids made, I think this was one of the highlights of our visit to Kansas City! 

   

Yap on the drums. They also had guitar, keyboard and other music stations. 

Yahoo singing her own song; "We are the best turners in the world." 

Makes total sense, right? 

The boys teamed up to perform the song their class will be singing in the spring concert. All the kids at school have been excited about this concert and have been telling me all about what kind of bugs they are. This song is so stinking cute, I can't wait to see what the entire school comes up with! 

We also visited Legoland, the WW1 Museum and the Money Museum at the Federal Reserve Bank (highly recommend them both!), Kaleidoscope, Science City and Tallgrass National Preserve. I didn't get photos of everything but I'll share what I did get later. 

If anyone is looking for a place to take a family on vacation I highly recommend Kansas City. Not only is there LOTS to do but everything we did was concentrated in one area so we weren't constantly driving. In fact the only driving we did was to and from the hotel. 

Enjoy the music! 

Colorado Ghost towns and Waterfalls (lot's o' pics)

Ah, so you have bravely returned to hear about the remainder of our mini vacation in Colorado Springs eh? The last couple days I posted about Pikes Peak and the Cliff Dwellings which kept us busy Saturday morning. After a quick lunch we stopped by the Ghost Town Museum. 

The museum is actually old buildings from a ghost town housed inside. Within each building there were artifacts from the gold rush era; home and saloon furnishings, blacksmiths, general stores, you get the idea. 

The kids especially liked it because there was plenty of stuff for them to TOUCH and they weren't just stuck looking with their hands in their pockets. They climbed on saddles, turned a butter churn, climbed in a carriage, played a song on the player piano and listened in to a conversation on an old telephone. 

A 19th century dentist drill....I think I'd have been toothless! 

That thing looks scary!! 

All around the museum there were characters like this guy who would "talk" to us and give us a some information about their job in the town. 

Well look at that...did you know Indiana printed money? 

We even tried our hand at panning for gold. I think I may have even found a couple of flakes but since I didn't have anything to carry it in I left it for the next tourist to find :) 

After a morning packed full of sight seeing we were pooped! So we crashed in the hotel for a few hours. I would have preferred a nap but my kids were having none of that.....tv all the way for them!! My kids are deprived. There were two tv's in our hotel room and they kept running between them to see what was on both. You can tell we don't have cable! 

Toward dusk, after I finally peeled my kids eyes off the televisions, we headed to Seven Falls. What a beautiful place! It reminded me just a bit of Turkey Run back home in Indiana except, well, the hills are just a bit higher in Colorado! 

This part freaked me out just a bit. If you look close at the photo above you'll see a couple huge boulders surrounded by, what looks like, a mesh net. What was most disconcerting was those boulders were right above where visitors walk to see the falls. Yikes! 

A view with the falls behind us. I love Colorado! 

There is a Native American family that boasts three generations that have danced at the falls. My kids enjoyed it, especially when they chanted and danced to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. 

You are probably wondering why I'm talking about seeing waterfalls and yet to show you many photos of them. Well, it's because it's really hard to get a view of the entire falls together. You have to climb....a lot...to see see them! There are two sets of steps to view the falls. 

224!! I was dying, but Yahoo practically ran up them! This set took us right along side the falls. And across the falls you climbed 186 steps (or wimped out like me and took the elevator) to get a full view of the falls. 

At dusk lights turn on to make the falls appear to change colors. 

Look at those stairs!! Now, imagine walking up and down all of them with an independent three year old! I was stressing! 

Lovely! 

Okay, I promise, tomorrow's post is the very last one about our Colorado trip. 

I think. 

But come back and check it out. 

Our last step was definitely the neatest stop we made!