Rawhide

We went to Rawhide tonight, it's a little western town with gun shows, saloons, a jail, a bull riding machine, steakhouse, different kinds of rides including a Camel and of course Rock Climbing as you should expect from an old western setting. It was really fun. Next time we'll take the hayride to a BBQ and Dance.




Daniel is definitely a fan, Sing Along!






Mule Rides:


Train Rides:


Daniel is simulating blowing the horn with his left hand in this picture "choo choo!"


Stage Coach Rides:


Daniel gives the train ride two thumbs up!

Bonding

Heidi calls this "bonding." I call it "training." Either way, we agree it's important.

New Trick

Daniel has learned the new trick of spitting. Lately whenever he gets a drink from his sippy cup, he will instantly start spitting it everywhere. Here is some pictures from the zoo depicting Daniel's new trick. Notice in the last picture how upset he is that I would take his sippy cup away from him. Unfortunately Daniel is making a mess wherever he goes and always has a soggy shirt (although with the upcoming summer heat, he may have come up with an ingenious strategy to keep cool).

The Zoo

Lately Daniel and his cousin Orson have become best of friends. Today Heidi took them to the zoo. Although overall oblivious to the animals around them, they did love the Orangutan and the spider monkeys. They were mesmerized by how silly they were. I think they both felt like they could relate. Daniel was more enthralled by the train and kept on saying "choo, choo" whenever he saw it.
The Orangutan (look at how intrigued they are)
Can you tell how much Daniel loves choo choo trains?
The spider monkeys (you can actually walk into the fenced area and be up close and personal!!)

Easter

Here are a couple of videos from the Easter party we went to at Pacana Park. The news said there were over 1,000 kids there. So including adults there were a ton of people. In addition to egg hunting, they had all kinds of other activities, mostly for older kids between 3 and 10-ish. Daniel desperately wanted to go in the giant trampoline-bouncing-castle thing but there were too many other kids in there and they were all bigger than Daniel so he would've just gotten trampled. Daniel loved the animal petting, he was so excited to see and touch the little goats and rabits. He ran up to the miniature donkey and drummed on it's side with his hands. We'll have to teach him about Caution with animals too.




Well I guess if you have to hide hundreds of eggs in a park, there's no better place than in a big pile of hay. The little kids liked it. They redeemed their collection of eggs for a small bag of candy. That way they could recycle the eggs again for other hunts.

White Water Rafting

I finally found the video cable I was missing to our camcorder, so now I have 6 months of video all about Daniel. That was way too much to try and sort through right now, so expect more videos of Daniel soon. But I did find these pictures in the same box as the video cable I was missing.

These are pictures of me Rafting the New River and Gauley River in West Virginia, October 6 & 7, 2000. That brings back a flood of memories. No pun intended. There is a nice little story about how I one day decided to drive across the country and ended up in Virginia back in the year 2000. A story for some other time.

Notice the long sleeve wet suits everyone is wearing, and gloves. This was the last weekend the rivers were open before they were closed for winter. It was pretty freakin cold! Good Times!!

Excessively Happy

Last Tuesday we were watching Dancing with the Stars and for what ever reason Daniel was so giddy with joy he couldn't sit still. His favorite thing to do is throw all the pillows off the couch on to the floor then romp around with the pillows. Tuesday after he got tired of that he started dancing to the music on Dancing with the Stars, which we thought was cute and funny. Then he started turning around in circles and falling down as he got dizzy. It was all fun and games at first.

The only problem was that he was spinning right next to the entertainment center which has sharp, square, heavy, unfriendly particle board edges. He kept losing his balance and falling, but he was becoming a little more erratic every time and getting close to falling into the entertainment center so I kept running over to him to step between him and the entertainment center so he wouldn't fall into it and split his forehead open or something.. After about ten times of getting up and running over to intercept his inevitable fall, I got tired. But he wouldn't stop. You'd think he would be throwing up by now and get sick of it, but no, he just kept going and going and going.

I tried to get him to stop and distract him with something else but he would just go back and start spinning again. I finally scolded him and said "Daniel, stop being so happy!!" What kind of dad am I if I have to scold my boy for being excessively happy!

Heidi asked him if he wanted to take a bath. Bath was the magic word, that's his 2nd favorite thing to do. He immediately stopped and bee-lined it upstairs to the bathtub.

Renaissance Festival

Here are some pictures of the Renaissance festival we went to a couple weekends ago. I think it takes a special type of person to be able to wear a costume with tights while trying to speak like William Shakespeare. It was like an English Star Trek convention. The people dressed up are as entertaining as the shows they put on. It is amazing how people who usually wouldn’t exploit themselves do so with this type of excuse. There aren’t many places were overweight women try to show their sexiness with plunging (past immodest) necklines, chunky bare backs, etc…
Sadly, I don’t remember any goth batman characters in any of Shakespeare’s writings.

Piano man

Keeping this blog updated is hard work. Actually I'm just lazy, it's so much work to have to carry the camera around everywhere trying to get awesome pictures, then after you've collected a few you have to plug it into the pc, download, preview, separate the good from the bad then upload...

Anyways, here are some new pictures because I did all those things.



This is Daniel showing off his piano skills for Corban and Peyton, they came to stay with us for a few days. They said they enjoyed our 65 degree weather as opposed to their 12 degree weather in Idaho. Maybe we'll go stay with them in the Summer!

They left us with a parting gift which we thought was generous. It's a little Dust Devil hand vacuum. I think they were trying to make a statement about the condition of Heidi's car that they drove around in. A vacuum. But it's nice and Daniel loves it. After using it for 10 minutes straight I tried to tell him he did a great job and that he was finished but he got really mad when I tried to take it away. Thank goodness it was cordless, after another 15 minutes the charge ran out, which he got mad about too.

But look at the spotless job he did, even the stairs!