"Am I Smarter"?

Sunday afternoon our little Adam was playing and while doing so he placed his had on top of a scorpion. He ran to Adam and I crying and saying that his hand was hot and he didn't know why. Dadam knew right away that he had been stung by a scorpion. He went to make sure the scorpion was dead and I ran to the Internet to see how to deal with the situation at hand. I learned that he had been stung by a Bark Scorpion, which has the most venom of any other species here in Arizona. Knowing that we didn't want to take any chances. We followed the recommended remedies very closely. Adam was able to use ice water and keep his hand above his heart for about a half hour. He had pain and numbness in his hand which were normal, but it never spread to any other part of his body. Dadam and I continued to watch him for the remainder of the evening. We think that because he placed his hand over the scorpion instead of the scorpion attacking him he was a very lucky little man and a visit to the hospital for the anti-venom wasn't necessary.
As bed time was approaching he came to me and asked if being stung by stung by a scorpion made him smarter. I asked him if he felt smarter and he replied with a simple "yes"! I then told him that yes being stung by a scorpion makes you smarter!!! I was so glad that he felt empowered by having this experience.
Adam's teacher allowed him to bring the scorpion into school on Tuesday so Monday night Dadam placed the scorpion into a clear epoxy mixture and allowed it to dry so that the kids could touch it without incident. I am grateful that this experience ended positively...and that my Adam is smarter through having this experience!!

The First Day of School 2010

My Alex is growing up!!!
Today was Alex's first day of Preschool. When he was getting his backpack on this morning I think it really hit him. He has been riding along to drop Adam and Addison off at school for years, but today was his day. He had a little bit of a hard time walking up to the class/teacher, but he walked right in as I walked away. When I picked him up after class today his teacher said that he had a hard time with Circle Time, but he loved Music Time!!
Last night we had our back to school dinner. We had hamburgers, sweet potato fries, watermelon and broccoli. For dessert we made cupcakes so that we would have fun treats in our lunches. The kids used the dinosaur sprinkles, hearts and confetti.
Breakfast this morning was a hit. We enjoyed our pancake people :) Amelia was so excited for today that she woke up at 5:00 a.m. and just couldn't go back to sleep!!!!

Adam is my big 2nd grader! He woke up this morning brushed his teeth and combed his hair all on his own! Amelia and I walked him to the bus and sent him on his was. He moved up with his first grade teacher this year so hopefully it will be another great year :)
Addison loves school!! When we arrived to Ms. Pat's class she was very excited to be back at school. She had a hard time understanding why a lot of her friends from school last year weren't there today. Ms. Pat told her they had to go to other schools (Kindergarten), but Addi just didn't understand why they didn't go to Ms. Pat's. They will get their classroom helper assignments tomorrow and Addison is excited to get her chore for school :)
All in all I would has that we had a great first morning! Adam doesn't have homework until Wednesday so we will try and take it easy this afternoon and prepare for classes tomorrow!

Dada's & Mohawks

Amelia said Dada for the first time today!! She said it this morning without her Dad in the room.
Adam came home from work today and was able to hear her say Dada. She was really happy to see him this afternoon, she missed not seeing him today what a way to show him she missed him.

All summer long people have been commenting in multiple languages on Amelia's Mohawk. As I have been creating collages for our trip I ran across a few pictures of Alex as a little guy. A lot of people have said that Amelia looks like her brother Alex, I guess that they even sport the same genetic hairdos too :)

Stop # 16- Albuquerque, New Mexico

We spent a wonderful day at Great Grandma Greg's home eating dinner and swimming.
Amelia was able to meet her Great Aunt Donna for the first time! Looking at the collage you can see Amelia doing a balancing act :)

There was a lot of fun had in New Mexico...we were able to spend time with family and friends that we haven't seen for a long time. As a family we went to lunch and then split up for a little while. Some of us went to watch Despicable Me and others were lucky enough to get a car checked for emissions!!! After the car was finished and the movie ended we met at Hinkle Fun Center. The kids road bumper boats with Nanee and Uncle Jared. Everyone got their chance to play video games and skeet ball, but the best part of Hinkle was that I beat Dadam at air hockey!!! The score was 7 to 4, I asked him to take a picture for me, but he refused.
We loved our visit, it was a great way to finish our amazing trip around the country. Thank you to all of our family and friends for housing us, feeding us, showing us around the sights & most of all loving us!!
We had a great summer, one that we will not soon forget. Thank you for the memories!!

Stops 14 & 15- Kansas City & Oklahoma City

Our drive from Carthage to Albuquerque was a hurry up and get there drive. We left Carthage around noon and arrived in Kansas City around dinner time. What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you say dinner in Kansas City? For us it is BBQ, we had never tried Kansas City BBQ before and so we decided to give it a try. Adam did his research and Jack Stack's was the winner. We called as we were getting into town and were able to pick it up and take it right to our hotel room!! Adam said that it was the best BBQ he had ever purchased. WOW that is quite the statement coming from a man that loves his BBQ :) We had the links, ribs and fix-ins, but the best thing of all had to be the burnt ends. If you ever find yourself driving through Kansas City we would recommend the BBQ! Adam liked it some much that he almost turned around the next morning to head back into town for lunch!!
Our original plan was to cut diagonally across Kansas and come into New Mexico in a town called Springer. Sometimes your best plan doesn't always work out for ya though so we made our way to Oklahoma City. We stopped for lunch at Burger King so the kids could play for a little bit. We were happy to see that Adam had be rightfully added to the Twilight door clings! Not having planned to stay in Oklahoma City we found a hotel on the airport property and literally slept and left. I am sure that we will try to visit the sights of Oklahoma some other time.
I don't know if you recall, but on my first post I told you about things we counted. Large crosses were one of the items we counted and between Kansas City and New Mexico we saw two of the largest crosses on the trip.
Before arriving into New Mexico Dadam and I were reviewing the things that we had counted thus far. We had counted the stimulus projects and laughed at the thought of orange barrels in New Mexico, you see they are very well know for their orange barrels. Low and behold as soon as we were driving across the New Mexico boarder orange barrels started to appear and we felt it was truly picture worthy :)

Stop # 13- Nauvoo & Carthage, Illinois

Twenty years have past since I was in Nauvoo as a little girl, a lot has changed since then. I know that is surprising...We began our day trying to get a carriage ride, but they were all booked for the day so we headed to the sights of Nauvoo. The kids learned how they made barrels, candles, bread, pottery & rugs. They were able to help make a rope (which they loved) and see how horse shoes were made. We have good friends that served a mission in Nauvoo and the Sherfys were able to meet us in Nauvoo and spend some time with us. Brother Sherfy is a mason by trade and we saw first hand a few projects that he worked on while he was serving in Nauvoo. The kids had the best time at the kids pioneer game area. Adam figured out how to get the bear to the top of the rope and Alex enjoyed dressing up. Addison made a lot of friends and enjoyed playing school. Mom and Dadam even played stick pull:)

A grassy hole with a few stones was all that was left of the original Nauvoo Temple last time I visited. Today there is a magnificent Temple that was rebuilt and dedicated in 2002. The grounds are beautiful and being able to talk to our little ones about church history was wonderful. An original sun stone is in the U.S. History Smithsonian, I loved seeing Lil Adam make the actual connection after seeing the sun stone as a part of the Temple. We were asked not to have our children sit on the flowers after we were luckily done taking photos of them :)

The pathway that the Saints took leaving Nauvoo is quiet an emotional place to stand. To see the distance and to look behind you and see what they were leaving behind is quiet overwhelming. We saw this our last day on our way to Carthage. Our little ones had a hard time being in the jail. They spent a little too much time in the dungeon (which is upstairs).
To end on a lighter note...do you see the picture of the gas station sign? We were very surprised when we saw that unleaded plus was cheaper that regular unleaded!! They most of over bought and were having a sale :)

Stop # 12- The Windy City

When going to a city you have never been to before it is hard to know what would be good for our family to do while visiting...We asked a lot of local Chicago folks as we ran into them throughout of other visits. They would always list Navy Pier & Millennium Park, so that is where we started!!
We rode the L from our hotel to the downtown area and walked to Navy Pier. Our kids had a great time in their Children's Museum. The picture above show a few of the things that the kids were able to do. They had a great fire truck and fire station for the kids to play with as well as the vanilla smoke filled room for the kids to practice crawling through. Adam went down the fireman pole and Alex enjoyed playing with the fire hose. Adam was able to play palaeontologist again and Addison enjoyed dressing up at a lot of the stations. The slide that she is going down in the picture would play music as she slide down the slide!!

After having fun in the Museum we headed out into the Crystal Gardens which are fountains with the water that flies over your heads and across the room. Adam held Amelia while standing for a photo for the first time! After we took a few pictures we headed out to ride the ferris wheel. The pictures above show the view that we had while on our ride :)

We walked from the Navy Pier to Millennium Park. We came in on the south end of the park and the first thing we saw was the stage where bands were practicing for a concert that evening. When I asked Adam what he wanted to do his response was to see the bean. I had no idea what the bean was...as we kept walking there it was...a huge silver bean!! You can obviously see your reflection in the bean which makes taking photos very fun. I had heard about a fountain in the park that had huge faces of 1000 people that lived in the Chicago area that squirted water and I wanted to see that!! The kids were able to go put their feet in the water as Dad took pictures of this incredible fountain. What a great place to cool off on a hot summers day. Adam found some art titled Made in China. He of course needed his picture take in front of the dinosaur and yes, it did say on it Made in China!!

After seeing everything that we wanted to at Millennium Park we started to walk over to the Willis building (Sears Tower). As we were getting closer we were asked to go a different route because they were filming Transformers 3. We walked a few blocks east and found the Chicago Trade Center, Adam couldn't resist getting a photo! The Willis building is 103 floors and they have added the glass walkouts. We had fun seeing the sights, we were told that we could see 4 states while we were looking out. Addison was surprised to see the grass on top of the buildings, but when she would see the pools on the top of the buildings she would think they were ground level!! Adam was a little nervous at first, but he ended up walking onto the glass for a few pictures. Dadam enjoyed playing with Amelia as you can see! The rides in the elevators were fun as well. They had short films to watch as you went up and down. As we left the Willis Tower and hopped back on the L to the hotel it started to rain. The rain continued to fall and when we got off the L and started to walk back to the hotel ( 3 blocks away) a cab stopped and offered us a ride. When we arrived back to the hotel he wouldn't even accept a tip. We were and are very grateful to that kind man. I am grateful there are still wonderful people like that in the world.

My husband has been a Cubs fan since he was a little boy. His mom has a painting of him as a young boy hanging in her home and he is wearing his cubs jacket. We couldn't go to Chicago and not see Wrigley Field. The Cubs were out of town, but we were able to see the stadium that just so happens to be on Addison St.
The food in Chicago lived up to it's reputation! We enjoyed our pizza, I was amazed by the sauce, it wasn't heavy and thick. The sauce was light and very fresh, which I loved. As for the Chicago Dog...well we don't recommend the ones at Navy Pier! We do however recommend Murphy's Red Hots by Wrigley Field. We enjoyed many different types of hot dogs there and each of them were wonderful.
Chicago was a great town with so much history. We could and I am sure will visit again :)

Stop # 11- Columbus, Ohio

Next stop on the trip...Joel, Emily & Brinly!! We had such a fun time with all the little ones at the Bunny Park (splash pad type park). All of the kids enjoyed playing in the water and with each other. This was our first time meeting Brinly and she was such a sweetie. A big storm rolled in and so we loaded the little ones up and headed back to the apartment.
Emily made yummy homemade pizza and bread sticks for dinner and we were able to chat and catch up. Joel made waffles with whipped cream for breakfast which the kids just loved!!
We enjoyed our visit and meeting our newest addition to the family :)

Stop # 10- Monroeville, Ohio

Our first full day in Ohio was fun filled day. Aunt Donna and I started our our day by going to the Amish market. I had so much fun walking up and down each aisle and looking at everything that they had. I loved the spices and baking supplies the most, I am sure that shocks everyone! They truly had every colored sugar you could imagine as well as sprinkles. I couldn't resist the dinosaur sprinkles or the many different colors of sugar! Let the baking begin :) We then went to a fabric shop that had so many wonderful ideas to try. I have a few different style of bibs for Amelia that I am looking forward to trying out.
When we arrived back home we were off to a privately owned swimming area. The swimming area must have been longer than a football field and full of rope swings, slides & diving boards. We went with Mimi's Family and met up with Jason & Kim (all my second cousins). Our family kept the lifeguards on their toes! Lil Adam jumped off the high dive and was so scared from the fall that he started crying and hid under the water. The lifeguard jumped in after him only to find out he was just shaken up. Addison was dramatic as usual and kept calling out for help and Alex (just being himself) was going off the high dive and scaring everyone that didn't know him!! Hopefully we didn't tarnish the Lund/Ott reputation to badly :)
We ended the day having a wonderful dinner with Uncle Tom & Aunt Sue. Alex ran outside as soon as dinner was over so that he could watch Paul spray the bean fields. He walked along the edge of Aunt Donna's and Uncle Butch's yard just watching the tractor go up and down the fields, so cute. After dinner Kelly and her family along with Jason and Kim came over. We enjoyed the great company and Aunt Donna enjoyed teaching my little ones how to drive the golf cart!! Each of the kids loved being driven around by their cousins, but when Aunt Donna wanted to teach them they lite right up. The kids ended the day catching fireflies and keeping them in their rooms that night :) What a perfect day!

Lake Erie is the home to many islands. Aunt Donna and Mimi thought that Kelly's Island was the right choice for our families visit and we must agree. We began our day with a ferry ride on Lake Erie over to Kelly's Island. Once we were off the ferry golf carts would be our source of transportation on the island. We had a wonderful lunch on the water and then drove across the island to the Glacier Grooves. What an amazing thing to see, the Great Lakes were formed from glaciers and the rocks still show the different water levels set by grooves in the rocks. There was a park ranger that was able to talk to Lil Adam and show him fossils that were older than dinosaurs. She was even nice enough to let him take some home with him. Of course that put him on cloud nine! Ice Cream and Silly Bandz would be next on the agenda...it was so fun to see Mimi's kids so into the Silly Bandz. They had a great time going through all of the shapes and trying to teach Addison how to trade. She would always trade and then want hers back!!
We headed off the island and went to the Marblehead Lighthouse. We all headed up 79 very tightly wound stairs to reach the lookout. The view was amazing, after we was the lighthouse we headed back home for the evening.

Amelia Ott is the sweet cousin that sent our Amelia her pretty outfit when she was born. I blogged about how thoughtful I thought she was for thinking of my little one. I couldn't go to Ohio without having pictures of both Amelia's taken while our Amelia wore her outfit sent to her from Amelia. We couldn't work a smile out of our Amelia, but lucky for us her cousin's smile was wonderful.
Addison had such a wonderful time with Amelia during our visit. She wanted her picture taken with her as well. Oh how I wish we lived closer to cousins, I love seeing how close all of the Lund/Ott/Smith cousins are and I hope that my kids can have those tight relationships with their cousins during this lifetime.
Thanks for all of the extra efforts to have us visit. We know that lots of extra errands and plans had to be put into place and I am so grateful. I truly enjoyed our visit :)

Stop # 9- Washington D.C.

Grandma and Grandpa took the four oldest grandchildren to the Crayola Museum in Pennsylvania.
The kids had a great time creating wonderful pieces of art. They painted, colored with melted crayons and learned
how crayons are made.
The National Canal Museum was close to the Crayon Factory so they also went there. They had a great time
building their own lock system canal and watching the boats rise and move forward.
The day was long, but the kids had a great time and are still talking about their artwork.

Adam and I only had Amelia and Alex while the kids went to the museum so we headed up to Baltimore to enjoy lunch. We went to a Russian restaurant. We enjoyed a tomato,radish, cucumber & cilantro salad, beef & chicken kabobs, pelmeni (stuffed dough)with lamb & vereniki stuffed with pumpkin and potatoes & last but not least kompot (a fruit drink) to wash it all down with :) The food and company (the owner & restaurant patrons) was amazing. I always find it funny that people think that Adam is from Russia living in the U.S. now. I guess that is a great compliment to his speaking skills!
The Folk Art Festival was going on while we were in D.C., the kids learned dances, created projects and played with toys from the many different ethnic communities that create our great nation. After strolling through the Natural History Museum (the busiest I have ever see it) the kids took a break in the grass on the National Mall.
After spending the afternoon on the Mall we headed to Ben's Chili for dinner. This is truly a Washington D.C institution, my favorite part was looking at all the fun pictures hanging on the walls throughout the restaurant. The food was good, Adam and I shared a smokehouse (Bill Cosby's Favorite) and cheese fries. Alex loved the bear that sits outside of the restaurant. He was taking up so much time with the bear that a few people actually had him take a picture with them in front of the bear!!
Amelia and Alex enjoyed a bath together, it was the first time that Amelia sat in the tub by herself (using her Bumbo of course)!!

The Fourth of July in D.C. is truly an amazing experience. To be standing on the National Mall surrounded by fellow American cheering throughout the fireworks was very awe inspiring. The Washington Monument is Lil Adam's favorite monument in D.C. and it was the backdrop for the fireworks. I thought that was a great highlight for him. Addison enjoyed spending time with her cousins and making new friends on the mall. She truly is a very social little girl. Dadam enjoyed taking pictures and filming the evenings events and I loved being surrounded by national monuments and feeling the unity as citizens of this great land. As we rode the metro home that evening we even had fireworks going off in the cities and towns surrounding the nations capital.