Menominee Park-Oshkosh's best kept secret

Last summer I spent a lot of time at Menominee Park with Alex (and Laura in the carrier) since we had minimal yard space at the rental and nothing to do inside, so I often looked for other places to go. Surprisingly this past weekend was the first time I had made it back since last summer. Saturday we packed a picnic and headed up there for lunch, afterwards the kids went for a ride on the merry-go-round . Alex would return for one more ride before we left, but honestly I think he spent more time trying to figure out how exactly it worked . They also have a small train that makes a loop around a pond, so we all went for a ride on that .

Afterwards we headed over to their amazing playset which is called "Little Oshkosh", it is very unique in that it is HUGE-and also many of the structures mirror Oskhosh landmarks, and company's such as EAA (wooden airplane), Oshkosh truck (military vehicles), even a landmark church in town on Oregon Street. There are activities for children of all ages, and it truly is not something you see everyday (sorry no photo of it's entirety, since it is so large we both had to keep an eye on "our" kid to make sure nobody got lost).

We stopped and grabbed a snack, and then quickly walked through the zoo, which is a zoo on a small scale but perfect for young children-the kids were getting tired, and it was warmer than we anticipated.

For smaller children, this is a wonderful place to go for a few hours in the day-there are so many things for them to see and do, and the best part is that aside from the rides-it's FREE! So many people I've ran into have never even heard of this park, so that's why I've deemed it "a best kept secret".

Is there a Dr. in the house?

Alright, so I'm not really looking for a dr. but I couldn't resist this photo op. Last weekend Alex got a new movie, so naturally Laura needed something as well. We came across this dr. set which included a pager, stethescope, thermometer, and medicine dispenser/shot and since it came complete with a little bag (similar to a purse)-which Laura apparently has some kind of fettish with, we thought it was perfect.

They both enjoyed it, and as you can see-they decided to not let Mag out on the fun. Surprisingly she played right along.

I suppose I need some sort of disclaimer: the children and Mag were supervised the entire time, and no-I don't normally allow my children to use Mag at their dispense. It was funny while it lasted though.

Last Hurrah

This past weekend we kind of had a Wuest family Summer 08 last hurrah with a trip up north. Our real intention of going up was for Jason to put together a play set, but the weather was beautiful so we got a chance to enjoy some sun and swimming. Words can't describe how excited Alex was to jump off the pier and have his dad all to himself, but these pictures might help:



Laura hasn't really developed much of a love for the water, but she can still give me a nice pose:


Lastly, the weekend ended with a little excitement for us. We gave Alex a Gator for his 2nd birthday, it is one of his prized possessions and one of the few toys we can probably say we've gotten our money's worth. Jason has helped him deck it out w/ conveyor belts on the back wheels to help w/ traction, and an empty peanut butter jar screwed to the front counsel-to act as his cup holder. A day doesn't go by that he isn't on that thing, if only for a few minutes; he's even to the point where he enjoys taking his sister for rides. Well you can imagine my horror while driving southbound on Hwy 51, Jason's tailgate falls open, and the gator falls out at about 75 mph-luckily nobody was behind us, and it went directly into the center median. We pulled off to the right to collect a few other Tonka trucks that fell out while we were slowing down, and just about then Alex was waking from a nice nap. I could tell by the tone in Jason's voice that for a split second, he contemplated just leaving the gator behind-until a little voice said "what doing?". We quickly responded that we were going to get his gator, just then we saw a police car in the northbound lane but didn't think much of it.
So we turned around at our first opportunity, and it didn't take long to notice the police lights flashing and car pulled into the center median in the southbound lane-Jason and I immediately thought that we caused some kind of accident. In the 3 minutes it took us to come back to it, someone has pulled over and contemplated taking it! Luckily the police officer had noticed we were slowed down on the other side, and told the people that they had to wait and see if someone came back for it. It was Alex's source of conversation the entire way home-things like "dad not letting guy take gator, police lady told that man he couldn't have my gator, and wheels broke off" were just a few of the things that came to Alex's mind.
The gator was actually in fine shape-has a few more scuffs to add to it's collection and it needed a small alignment, but it's back in working order. The things we do for our kids:).

Misc

We'll title this post Misc because it will be brief, and probably about no one thing imparticular.

Summer is slowly winding down, RC students start class August 27th and students are already starting to come back. Where did the summer go?! I'm slowly pecking at computers getting deployed, and enjoying the fact I'm on no time constraints this summer.

Laura had her 1 year check-up, she weighed in at 22 lbs, and 29 1/4 inches long. Most people don't have a baseline for what that means, but contrary to what her father says about her thighs-she's kind of a peanut. Our only basis, Alex was 25 lbs, 30" when he was the same age-so he was a little chunk, which you'd never believe looking at him now.



Despite being fairly little, she has an amazingly healthy appetite-and I mean healthy literally. She loves most anything healthy, but she loves her veggies.
Here you can see her enjoying a fresh cucumber out of Grandpa's garden.

Aside from her body growing, Laura's hair is growing like a weed-just as her brother, she was blessed with two sets of genes for a very full head of hair. We're starting to reap the benefits of that now, and as you can see it sometimes gets the best of her: . Jason keeps saying she needs her hair cut, and I assured him that girls don't get haircuts this young-she's "growing her bangs out". Which he had no clue, but I told him soon enough he would learn what a french braid is, and even worse-he will probably know how to put one in within the next few years:).

Alex received his school supply list which was exciting and a little sad for me, hard to believe he'll be starting school in less than a month. I'm very fortunate my boss has let me set my schedule so that I will be able drop him off and pick up everyday, which was important to me.

Jason is coming to the close of his first class, which has went pretty well for him I think. Definitely an eye opener in the sense that he needed to manage his time between work, kids and homework-I'm not sure who was happier when he got his first test back w/ an A on it. I'm sure he was happier, but I was also happy because it was a confidence booster telling him that he could do this.


Alright, back to work. . .