Renewed

On Friday me and the girls got to go to Wilderness Prairie State Park in Peoria with friends, Jon and Sarah.  I had never even heard of this place, but I wish I would have.  I totally would have taken my girls, other kids, and scouts here over the past 5 years if I had know what a neat-o place it is!  There are huge areas of free-roaming animals.  We saw elk, buffalo, black bears, a cougar, foxes, a possum, and a lot more!  They have a cool playground that is complete with a 50 ft. slide.  The best thing is that on our way out we stopped to slide "one more time" and some other people who were there loaned the girls sheets of wax paper to make the slide down even faster!  Usually at zoos the animals are laying around or in there houses sleeping - as I would be if I had such a boring enclosed existence.  But the animals here were mostly awake and actually doing things.  The cougar seemed restless, and one of the bears was asleep although he was out in the sunshine instead of a hole, but mostly the animals were out and about.  It was cool to see them in a near-natural habitat.  Wilderness Prairie also has a Reptile House.  While it isn't the biggest or most spectacular reptile house I've been in what was cool was that it was feeding time when we went in.  Gwyn, Celee, and Lyla got to help feed the frogs and turtles.  They each had to count out the right number of pellets and then put them in the tanks.  Then when the lady was feeding the snapping turtle she got him out to show the girls his worm-like appendages on his tongue that is used to attract fish that he then eats.  This poor little guy only got meal worms that day, and I think it made him pretty made to be dragged out to show us how long his neck can reach and what his tongue looked like.  So thank you Reptile House Lady and Mr.Snapping Turtle for the cool learning experience!

Saturday we watched every episode of Wallace and Gromit that was available on Netflix.  That shows how motivated I was to do anything Saturday morning!  We had to be shaken out of our stupor by the afternoon though because we had a party to go to!  Barnes and Nobles held a Harry Potter Party complete with a costume contest.  This worked well for Celee who was going to dress up for Halloween as Luna Lovegood anyway, but the other 2 not so much.  We finally decided that Gwyn could be Aunt Petunia, but none of my clothes looked right.  Later we did find  a suitably marmy outfit at Goodwill that wasn't too horribly large for her.  Then, what to do with Lyla?  My parents bought her a butterfly costume when they were down and this is what she wanted to wear.  My bright idea for the week was to let her wear that and hold a picture frame.  Whalah!  She's a portrait off of the walls of Hogwarts!  Clever if I do say so myself.  :)

The party was fun - Everyone got sorted into House tables and then played games.  They had a scavenger hunt to find their House keys.  They tasted and tried to accurately identify Bertie's Every Flavor Beans.  Then they had the costume contest.  Each table that won a game got to enter their names into a drawing for a Nook.  Well, who won the contest?  The child with the least amount of thought and preparation put into her costume.  Yes, Lyla.  She won the costume contest.  And her prize was the "longest candy bar in the world."  Which was ok with Gwyn and Celee (and me) because we knew she'd share.  None of us won the Nook, but they did get more Bertie's Beans and a poster.  It was a lot of fun!  And I do have to say I think my girls' costumes were pretty cool!

The girls have had a lot of friends over.  They're trying to cram a lot of friend time in too!  Today we had one of Gwyn's friends over and ended up having to go to Meadowbrook because someone was coming to view our house.  (This is always a good thing!)  What a beautiful day to be at Meadowbrook Park!  The trees have all changed colors and the sun was shining.  It was a little windy, but the wind wasn't cold.  There was a guy flying an awesome kite out in the field behind the playground.  Every time he made it take a dive it sounded like a helicopter coming in.  The girls were convinced that it had to be remote controlled.   They got a kick out of watching him maneuver the kite once they believed me that he was controlling it with strings.  It was a beautiful sight.

God is so good.  He just lavishes His affection of us and humors us so much.  I've been in quite a mood this past week and got a good dose of wallowing in self-pity so I am so thankful that God gave me today. I'm glad I didn't publish this one with what I originally wrote.  I had to wait until the end of today and this post is decidedly different than it would have been.   Today I am renewed.  And who knows?  The people that came to see the house today stayed for a really really long time (we had to make several blocks and finally park in the church parking lot to wait on them to leave even though we were at the park for an hour).  Maybe they'll be the takers.  If not, that's ok too - someone else will come at the right time and love our home as much as we do.