Last Days of Summer...

Summer is winding down. :(  Oh, who am I kidding?  It's done.  I already have a full week of school under my belt (5 days down, 175 to go!)!  After we got back from Wiers family vacation, I had about a week and a half or 2 weeks before meetings started at school, so we tried to finish up the summer with some fun activities!

We enjoyed watching Adam's final softball game of the summer!  J LOVED going to Daddy's games on Wednesday nights-- he liked seeing Daddy play, but he REALLY liked playing in the dirt! :)

He makes a dirt mustache look good!

"Watching" the game.

One day J and I hit Union Park in Des Moines for some fun.  We went to the playground and the splash pool for a bit, and then of course had to ride the carousel!  At 50 cents a ride, we even splurged and rode it twice in a row. :)

I have no idea.

Loving the carousel!!!

Another day, J and I headed over to Sunset Park here in Ankeny-- we had been there for an Easter Egg Hunt in the spring, and knew that there was a digger to play with in the sand!  Well, diggers are J's favorite, of course!

Unfortunately, we did not play there long.  J ran right over to the digger to play, and about 3 minutes later he came running over to me crying that the digger pinched him!  He was right. :(

Ouch.

This was the picture I texted Adam, frantically asking "Um, does this need to get checked out?!?!?!?!"  I wasn't sure.  J started getting pale and clammy, and then started gagging like he was going to throw up, so I knew he was in pain!  We left the park and stopped at Urgent Care, only to find a full waiting room (of course, darn you Urgent Care!).  It wasn't bleeding all that badly, as long as the flap of skin stayed down (how gross is that?!?!?  Sorry if you are squeamish..... I survived it, so I'm sure you will, too).  We opted for Neosporin and fingertip band-aids, and it turned out just fine.  You will be happy to know that 2 and a half weeks later, it is all healed up (Adam did have to clip off that skin flap, though, twice.  YUCK.).  And now poor J is scared to death of those diggers!!!! :(

I did head back to school one day to get my classroom all set up, and J went to daycare for the day.  I got my room about 80% done, so wanted to head back the next day for a few hours to finish up.  J LOVES coming to "Mommy's school" so I thought it would be fun for him to come along.  Know what his favorite thing was??????  The copy machine!  I think he would have stood there all day watching those copies go through. :)

Lunch break!

Of course, we also needed to hit up the Iowa State Fair before it ended!  We went in the evening, which was just about perfect.  Tickets are half-price, and we had time to eat dinner and see most everything we wanted to see! :)

First stop was "Little Hands on the Farm."  J loved it, of course!

Our little farmer!

Planting his tomato seed.

Picking an apple.

Transporting his produce in a John Deere!

Selling his produce at the farmer's market.

He got $1 for his work on the farm, and used it to buy a little carton of orange juice. :)  He thought he was pretty cool!

A stop to see the hugest bull!

Next we set out to find the animals.  We found the biggest bull and biggest hog-- and yes, they were HUGE!!!

No.  We are not getting a bunny.

 We got sidetracked for a while (a LONG while) by the tractors and farm equipment.  This is just a tiny glimpse of all the machinery we saw!  And J was VERY disappointed when we made him move on (Mommy was getting bored)!

Once we pulled J away from the tractors, we stopped to see some baby animals before heading home.

Checking out the baby ducks!

We thought this guy with the fuzzy hat was pretty funny!

If you blur your eyes, I think this looks like Auntie Abby!

We also got to watch some chicks hatch out of their eggs-- so cool!  Overall, a very fun evening at the fair!

With the 95-100+ degree temps that we are expecting today and the rest of the week, it feels like summer is just heating up, not winding down!  I wish that was the case! :)