Jump!

A week or so ago, my mom had a conference at a big casino and she was able to stay at the hotel part during the conference. That meant fun for us! The casino has an awesome pool! We haven't been swimming in a big pool all summer so we were all excited. Our goal was to get Liam to jump off of the edge to daddy or mommy. He was pretty scared for quite some time, but eventually he did do it. What a brave boy! I didn't get an actual picture of it, but that's ok. We had an awesome time and Liam and Izzy had a blast.

Liam and Izzy would take turns swimming to each other.

Liam liked piggy back rides.

And he thought it was super cool when daddy would hold him up like this and he could fall into the water. :)

A Parade of Alpacas?

Actually it's a parade and alpacas. ;)

The weekend of the Fair, we went to the annual Hometown Parade. As a kid, I rarely ever remember missing the parade and I really just loved to go for the candy. I thought for sure Liam would have a blast, and I think he would have, if it wasn't for an unfortunate incident at the very beginning of the parade. The firetrucks throw candy and they sort of lead the parade. Well, Liam went out to get candy and the back of the firetruck opened a flap and let out a huge blast of water, right next to where Liam was standing. It was pretty funny, but not to Liam, and I can't really blame him. So he spent the rest of the parade back in the shade on Titi's lap afraid of everything. Izzy, however, was fearless, and went and got him candy. What a nice cousin!

This first picture is before the water incident, when getting candy was still fun. Nana teaching Izzy how to run out and get candy. :)

Toward the end of the parade, there are all the loud derby cars. Izzy decided that she wanted to be scared like Liam for a few minutes, so this is how they spent that portion of the parade. Pretty funny. Poor Titi. :)

The night before my mom and sister had been at the fair and seen some baby alpacas. The lady gave us directions to their alpaca farm and told us we could go out and see all their baby alpacas. We thought it would be fun so we took the kids out there. Technically, it really could have been considered a parade of alpacas. There were a lot!

Here's the baby pen. They still had a huge fenced in area with dozens of grown alpacas, but we went in to see the babies and mommies.

This little fella walked right up to Liam and got close enough to lick his face if she would have wanted to. He thought she was really cute.

Aren't they the funniest looking things? They are actually really quite cute. We got a brief history of alpacas and how they are descendents of camels. You can really tell in this picture. I also got to give Liam a little lesson on how babies drink milk from their mommies.

This little gal was sooo cute. I just love her coloring.

Izzy was a little scared of them, but by the end she was saying "ALL-PACA!" She even got up the nerve to pet one.

Liam said, "Ohhh they are soft!"

When we drove from the farm, Izzy yelled, "Bye, Alpacas!"

The Fair

Liam had a wonderful time at the Fair. I can remember how big of a deal the Fair and Rodeo weekend used to be. We always were jam packed with 4-H activities, fair rides with friends, the parade, etc. It was fun to revisit it and see Liam have so much fun. He's finally getting to the age where he really appreciates super fun things. :D

My sister and her family had been out to the fair the night before and tried to get Izzy to go on a pony ride. It was a no go. They thought that maybe if Liam went, Izzy would go. I wasn't sure Liam would go especially after the morning's parade events(more on that later), but he did. AND he LOVED it. He did awesome and didn't even flinch. I guess it's time to get horses again, huh Papa? ;) Unfortunately, the plan of getting Izzy on didn't work. Maybe next year. :)

I love these pictures. So cute. (notice the nice shiner on his head? he acquired that the night before at a wedding... that was fun) Daddy helped him out a bit in the beginning, but he sure didn't need it.

Petting his horse, Billy.

Super cute. I love love love seeing him have so much fun.

Well, you thought the pony ride was fun? Think again. Liam spotted this little train and begged and begged to ride on it. Izzy was technically too small but they let her on. Liam convinced her she wanted to go. She wasn't too sure at first, until...Liam started giggling like CRAZY when they started going. Well that got Izzy going and their smiles were bigger than the moon. It had to be one of the cutest things I've ever seen. Who can resist those smiles?After the ride stopped, Liam jumped out and said he needed to start the train and drive it. It was really funny and he didn't understand why he had to go out of the gate and wasn't able to drive it.

The fun didn't stop there. Last year, and Liam STILL remembers this lady, there was a fun lady that puts on a balloon show and talks all about the rain forests. She's very entertaining and the kids love her so the dads took the kids to the show while we went to look at the exhibits. We came back to find this...

I think it's kinda funny that she won't keep a regular hat on to save her life, but she could wear this thing all night. At the end of the show the lady asked the kids to tell her something they learned for a prize and she asked what they knew about rain forests. Wes told Liam to go up and say 'It rains a lot' and he did, so he won this balloon palm tree. Wes made Liam's handy dandy hat for him.

They also had this cool little science exhibit for the kids. Well, I think the kids and the dads(papa included) had a great time with it.

Do you recognize these kids? (love their typical, flashing fair rings? Liam HAD to take his for show and tell at school. )

Can you imagine an evening with more fun?

Trying to Find the Planets

Liam and Izzy always stay fairly busy at Nana and Papa's. I'm certain that there is never a dull moment. One morning they tried to find planets in Papa's telescope. I think we have to teach Liam the correct way to look through a telescope before he can find any. He disagrees. He told me he saw 10.

Just a cute one of Izzy that morning.

Papa's Garden

We went down to my parents' house this weekend for the Fair and Rodeo. All summer long my dad has been growing a fairly intense garden. He has zucchini and squash growing like CRAZY, so if anyone needs some, I'm sure he'd be more than willing to share. This is his first time growing watermelon and he wasn't quite sure when they were ready, so he took Liam and Izzy out there to 'help' him pick one. I just thought these were some cute pictures of the kids with their papa in the garden.

Three Down, One to Go

That's what my status for school is! Yay! I just finished up Level III of nursing school and am on a one week break before my final semester, level IV(hence the reason all the updated blog posts--I'm trying to get caught up, so make sure you read the posts below!). It was a crazy, busy summer, but I had a fantastic clinical group, clinical site, and instructor. I couldn't have asked for more, really. Our home base was an apartment facility for residents over 65. We each were partnered and had a patient that we visited in their home weekly. My clinical partner was Darren and we made a great team and worked well together, which was so nice. We had the most amazing patient ever, who will always have a special place in my heart.

That was for one day each week and the the other day we were at two different sites. One site I was at was a home health hospice agency and another was a pediatric and adolescent mental health facility. Both offered amazing learning experiences.

For our community project, we did a weekly learning afternoon at a local Boys and Girls club. We all split into our partnerships and each focused on a different body system. We had a giant poster of a boy and added the body parts each week that we talked about. Darren and I had the skeletal system and talked a lot about safety and nutrition and did some fun games and such with the kids. It was a lot of fun. I have a ton of pictures, but I don't really feel comfortable posting pictures of the Boys and Girls club kids, even though we had permission, on my blog.

For our health promotion project, we did a fitness program for the residents at the apartment complex. We did chair yoga and a walking club. We had a map of the US and had the clients pick where they wanted to walk to. We logged all their miles and did weekly weights and blood pressures. It was a BLAST. I've always been hesitant about working with elderly patients, but these amazing people proved me wrong. They were so much fun and I learned so much from them! For our finale, since we ended up walking to HOLLYWOOD, we had a Hollywood themed ice cream social. It was soooo much fun. All the residents got dressed up to participate. We each got little awards and gave awards to our participants as well. I have a lot of pictures of this as well, but again, don't really want to post the residents' photos on the Internet. Anyway, here are a ton of random photos of our finale.

This is our amazing instructor, Kate. We learned so much from her. One of my classmates making her entrance!

Serving up the ice cream! (don't worry, we had healthy options too. ;))

Our amazing group!

This was the poster we left with the residents about our project. Darren, Bri, Maria and I designed the poster. We were pretty happy with the outcome.

We had a little photo booth to take pictures. Here are just some fun photos.

Onward to Level IV!

Torture

Liam is definitely his mother's child. This was the torture he was put through when asked to try a tomato.

Do you think this means he didn't like it?