A trip to a dinosaur museum!

Morrill Hall

Well, it wasn't really exclusively a dinosaur museum, but that's what the kids were calling it. On Friday, we, along with Emalea with her girls Hannah and Haylea, and my mom, went to Morrill Hall down on the UNL campus. I hadn't been there in years, and we thought the kids would get a kick out of the animals, so we braved the cold and spring break crowds to go there. It was a nice time. The kids really liked the elephant room, there were two real (stuffed) elephants and several wooly mammoths that were cool. There were a couple of dinosaurs that they also liked. There were lots of interactive displays, with animal sounds and things you could touch and play with. Afterwards we went for some lunch at Amigos, then home for a nice long 3 hour nap!

So speaking of long naps, the kids have been sleeping lots lately. They have also been eating record amounts. I believe they're in a growth spurt. Naps have been between 2 1/2 and 3 hours each day. Some nights, it takes the boys until 9:30 or so to fall asleep, but they're still sleeping until after 7 every morning. And, we have been going through tons of milk. We haven't used this milk since they were little drinking it in bottles. Even Grace has been setting milk drinking records. They're averaging 3 bowls of cereal (plus bananas) every morning and eating a ton of lunch like they always have. The difference is now they are eating tons of lunch AND tons of dinner (which they never did before).

Xander has been saying some great versions of words lately, unintentionally. His newest are "buffalopes" for buffaloes and "gamerican" for American. I think it's hilarious when he tries to use big words and gets them mixed up. Something they all three have been doing is mixing up their semantics in sentences. They'll say things like "I get a gummy worm, so I went potty" instead of "I went potty, so I get a gummy worm." Xander said in the car last weekend, after climbing up a down a ladder at the park for about 20 minutes, "I'm tired of climbing." But, since we weren't climbing anymore, we figured he meant "I'm tired from climbing." It is interesting how they experimenting much more with their language and expressing themselves more and more. Will was watching me clean up some scrapbooking things today and he said "That's your scrapbooking stuff. It's only for girls. When I turn into a girl, I can have some." After I finished laughing I informed him that he wouldn't turn into a girl, that he would always be a boy. He said "OK" and went back to his trains. Funny boy!

We had a nice week this week. The weather was nice last weekend and early in the week. We hit the park and then went out to dinner on Saturday. The kids think it's a big treat to go into a restaurant, instead of just driving thru. We need to get them out more. Sunday was church and movie night. Tuesday was storytime, Wednesday was haircuts, then lunch at McDonald's with Grandma Ellen and Carter. Then they stayed with the Niebuhrs on Wednesday night, because they had apparently been asking to spend the night. They came home Thursday morning and we laid low for the rest of the day, as both Will and I were not feeling well (small colds, I think). Friday was the museum, lunch and then nice long naps for tired, sick people. This weekend should be fun, cousin Camden gets baptized on Sunday, so we'll have some family time then. Thanks for checking up on us, and here's hoping the weather gets better so we can get back outside.