Rock Museum

A few weeks ago, I was going through some old papers and I ran across this:


It is from when I was an 8-year-old fossil lover and had arranged my collection into a "museum" in our basement. I then proceeded to charge my family and friends 15 cents a piece to view my treasures. hehe. Well, as Joshua seems to be following right in my footsteps spending hours outside looking for fossils and other cool rock specimens, I decided to show him this sign I made long, long ago and tell him about my museum. Between hearing my story and visiting the Field Museum about the same time, he had all the inspiration he needed!

His was a "Rock Museum" though, rather than "fossil", since not all of his rocks are fossils...

He turned out to be more generous than myself, however, as he decided admission would be free!












One of the first visitors to the museum: Daddy!












He set himself up as the king of the rock museum, right on the table!



















Closer look at his collection















He kindly provided magnifying glasses of several varieties for the visitors.













He also offered detailed explanations of all items of interest.



He invited quite a few friends from church, assuring them that admission was FREE! If you do decide to come, let us know in advance, as the museum is currently "closed", but can be "open" again if we have some notice. :)

More of Our Life from Summer in Pictures

Well, I have just about caught up on posting for the summer, but I had a bunch of misc pictures that I thought I would go ahead and post as well:

Cheyenne and her newest cousin Moriah











Joshua and Cheyenne being sweet!










Drinking the shakes they earned from the library's summer reading program from Steak and Shake











At a friend's pool













Jodi and Michelle - friends from church who are currently in Spain as missionaries with the Monterroso's. They were home for the summer and we got to get some good time together! :)











Mini pool













Celebrating my neice Jessica's birthday. I can't believe how big she is getting! 11 years old already!

















Israel and Moriah. It was incredible difficult to get a picture of them together! They were both looking in opposite ways and moving like crazy the whole time! This was about the best of the many I took. They're still cute though!















Grandpa Howard and Dominique


















My brother Aaron and I. Do you think we look alike?













My other brother Scott is rather well endowed!
















This was a fun sprinkler I found this year. It is inflatable and has an inflatable ring for each pole that you toss through the sprinkles. The kids had a blast with it!








Dominique and Cheyenne in their matching outfits from Grandma Carol. It is cute to see them getting to be friends and playing together now that they are a bit older. I hope they stay good friends as they grow.









They love to play dress up together too!













Joshua and a couple of cicadas






















Dominique's favorite face to make in pictures these days! What a ham!











"When the cat's away, the mice play!" :-)~















Joshua, Dillon and Gabriel in matching shirts from Grandma Carol. It happened by coincidence that we put these on them the same day!

















A Sunday afternoon snooze with the whole family except Israel........












One of Joshua's favorite pictures of himself!





And now I think I am almost caught up with what I was going to post from our fun-filled and hectic summer!

The Field Museum

Okay, here I am trying to catch you up on our summer's activities! Almost there.....

Here we are at the Field Museum about 3 weeks ago. I hadn't been there since who knows when and it was fun to take the kids now that they are getting old enough to appreciate these kinds of things.



First, Joshua and Dominique with "Sue", the best preserved t-rex in the world. :)












Joshua and Sofia share a love of rocks. :)












Chow time.



















Israel checking out some rodents from the Amazon.



































Joshua thinks there is still a spot in the stroller for him! But, since it was a long day with no nap, it did work out nicely once they started to lose energy. Better than dragging him around while he was whining about how tired he was!











They loved the dinosaurs!

















For some reason, everywhere I go, people keep telling me I have my hands full!
Israel was out cold here....
Funny thing is, when Joshua and Dominique are both sitting in the stroller, you can't notice the difference in their size as much and I have been asked if they are twins!








Checking out the buttons.


















Amazing taxidermy! You really should see this, Scott!






































Did you notice there are far more pictures of me than usual in these last few posts? That's because I got a lot of these pics from the Monterroso's camera. :)









Walking through the museum nursing a baby. Nobody even knew. :)

Lincoln Park Zoo

Well, here is one of our summer outings with the Monterroso's. It will be in pictures only, since Im short on time! Just one comment: Israel is always doing fishy lips and it is SO hard to try to capture it on film, but we finally did!!! I LOVE that picture!
Happy Labor Day, everyone!