Too Cute for Words

The "Whale-mester" Begins

I am officially there.  It's the last trimester of what I expect will be my last pregnancy.  I have affectionately dubbed it the "whale-mester" because that's what every pregnant woman feels like at this point: A Whale.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you.

There are a few perks to being this pregnant.

First: At this point I actually look more pregnant than fat.  That is definitely a bonus.

Second: I can no longer easily bend over to pick things up off the floor.  This gives me lots of leverage for getting out of picking up toys, books, and other things that collect on the floors in this house.

Third: Tying my shoes is becoming a problem.  This means I should go shopping for new, comfortable shoes that I can wear every day, right?  Flip-flops just can't cut it for me when I have a lot of walking to do.

And finally... I know in my mind that I'm closer to the end than to the beginning.  The baby is doing the tango on a regular basis and other members of my family are finally able to feel the baby kick, move, and hiccup - which is the fun part of being pregnant.

We're... almost... there.

Sam Noble Museum

We finally made it!  There's a museum about 45 minutes away in Norman, OK called the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History.  It's maintained by OU and the first Monday of every month is free admission.

When you say "free", I'm usually there.  However, we've had things going on for the last few months on those "first Mondays" and have never been able to make it.  Until now...

Ben had Monday off for Independence Day, so we decided to make it our Family Fun Day for the month.  And since it was raining that morning, our thoughts turned to indoor activities and I remembered Sam Noble's free Mondays!  So off we went to Norman.

There was so much to see, starting with the huge statue of the buffalo out front.

It was hard getting many shots of the kids actually looking at the camera, for some reason...

I did get them to pose next to a huge femur bone, however.

The kids were all amazed at the dinosaur fossils.

We even got Daddy to pose!

Is this not the biggest dinosaur skull you've ever seen?

Actually, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, it is! 

Connor couldn't get enough of everything.

And the girls were almost crushed by a giant mastadon! 

(Think relative of the woolly mammoth.)

Connor tried very hard to find a hand print his size on the walls in the People of Oklahoma exhibit.  Alas, this was our closest fit.

One of our last stops there was the Discovery Room, which features a mammoth tusk, among other things.

It was such a nice visit, and one we'll have to make again!  I didn't even get to see the special History of Chocolate exhibit...  
*sniff sniff*

But we'll be back in August for a field trip with our homeschool group, so I guess I still have something to look forward to.

Mr. Tough Man?

My boy loves guns.  And for the record, we don't even have toy guns in the house.  Yet some days it seems like he turns everything he sees becomes something he can point and shoot with.  When we go to a friend's house who has toy guns, he finds the gun and is then broken-hearted when we have to leave it.  Yet I can't bring myself to buy him his own toy gun yet since I'm not sure he can understand the "we don't point it at people" rule.

He's a tough one, our Connor - ALL BOY.

Or is he?

Yesterday I got him up from his nap, and this is what I saw in his crib...

Isn't it so cute how he put his bears on his pillow and tucked them in??

And then, last night while Ben and I were watching TV and the girls were at a party, Connor was playing with a couple of the girls' toy horses.  After a few minutes he went into the bathroom, got Kelsey's hairbrush, and came out to brush the horses' hair.

Ben was absolutely disgusted.

I laughed.

Yep, that's my tough boy.


P.S. He also plays with Barbie mermaids in the bathtub...