Hannibal Day

Dominic wanted to see a cave before school started.  We decided to have a "day before school" adventure and went to Hannibal.  Here the boys are outside the Mark Twain Cave.

Here they are inside the cave.  We took the first tour of the day so we were privledged to see several bats.  By the end of the tour, the boys thought the cave was a little too cold.

 We also took a river boat tour.  I thought this was great - the boys thought the boat went too slow!  Here is Luke covering his ears as the pilot blew the whistle signaling us to leave the dock. 

Once back in the historic district, we took a tour on the "clopper".  This is a horse drawn buggy ride.  We all liked this.

After our ride, the boys were able to feed "Barney" corn and apples.  Barney even posed for this picture!

MUD!!!!

 Boys will be boys!  They found a very nasty, deep, and stinky mud hole at the edge of the sand and grass at Baring Lake.  They called it "quick sand" because they would literally sink into it past their knees. 

Dominic thought it would be a great idea to take a "mud bath".  He smeared the mud everywhere - including his hair. 

Bath time later that night required getting hosed off first!

What a Week!

Dominic came down with the stomach flu on Monday evening.  He was a total champ with the whole thing - I'm very proud of how he handled it.  After running to the bathroom every 20 mins from 9pm-12am we both decided it was time to camp out in the bathroom instead.  Once the diarrhea hit, Dominic decided that his underwear were only "one more step" that we needed to avoid.  We sat on the step stool in the bathroom for over 2hrs until we both thought it was safe to try to sleep in the bed again.  Yesterday evening I announced to the family I had officially cloroxed all the bathrooms so it was now time for someone else to get ill!  So far so good .....

It is so hot and humid here.  We have been going to the pool in the evenings just to cool off. 

Dominic starts K next week.  He seems somewhat excited and I'm getting nervous!

Dentist

Dominic had his first cleaning last week.  He did very well and received a clean bill of health.  His bottom tooth is loose (which we knew) but he doesn't work on it much so it will be there for a while longer.  He does have a long frenulum (the piece of tissue between your upper lip and gum).  This may cause him issues with his adult teeth in the future.  So we will keep an eye on it and it may need to be sniped later on.  Ironically I have since read this long frenulum could be a contributing factor to poor breast feeding - which Dominic had.

Luke let the dentist look in his mouth too because we believed he was missing a baby tooth on the bottom.  After looking at it, she thinks the 2 teeth are actually fused together (instead of one missing) because the tooth is 2X larger than it should be and compared to the one next to it.  This is good news because we are keeping our fingers and toes crossed that Luke will also have all his permnament teeth.

Strep Throat

My poor Luke has strep throat.  He is miserable.  Between the pain and the fever he is not "Luker" at all.  He has been living off sips of gatorade for 2 days because he just won't eat.  I have even tried popsicles and ice cream to no avail.  I'm hoping once the antibiotics kick in today or tomorrow, he will start bouncing back to normal.

I know this may sound strange, but this was the first time ever either child has had to take an antibiotic.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that it works quickly since he had never been exposed to antibiotics before.

School Supplies

Kindergarten is getting closer.  We ordered the backpack this week and now have a sack full of supplies setting in the corner.  Dominic is so excited to start school and I'm excited for him.  I know that Luke is going to miss his big brother at the babysitter in a few weeks.

He Did It!

Yesterday (while I was at work of course!) Dominic did his first ever successful deep water start with the ski sled.  I'm so proud of him for being persistent at achieving this goal.  Now we just need to keep working on tying his shoes!