Book Score!, Silliness, and a Lesson in Firefighting

 Behold the master builder!  The three year old figured out how to build a tall structure with the Lincoln Logs last week.  He used the roof pieces.  He was mighty proud of himself, so we had to take a picture :)

 I love the creative thinking these little guys go through.  It's fun to watch.  I guess that's part of why I have the daycare.  He really wanted to attach his building to the back of a pickup truck.

 But it turned out to be much easier to put the truck on top ;)

 Saturday I went to one yard sale.  It was actually listed in the paper as a book sale, and said every book would be $3.  I don't pay that much for books unless they are something I absolutely have to have for homeschool.  But when I got to the sale, and the lady selling the books found out I was a homeschool teacher, she handed me a box and said we'd make a deal because she wanted the books to get into the right hands.  All these books are brand new - she used to have a bookstore.  I came home with 105 of them, plus, she gave me 10 make-your-own-bookmark sticker kits for free.  All totaled, she charged me $20.  I started adding up what the suggested retail prices are, and got to just over $1000.  And these are all brand new books - softback and hardback with dust jackets.  Awesome!

 I came home with tons of great books, but my favorites are the cowboy books - like B is for Buckaroo, which is a very cute book.

 In other news, the baby loves the front porch.  If the door is open, he cruises for it.  He usually goes for the sidewalk chalk, and knows how to use it, but Saturday, he found an empty watering can and tried to water one of my dead flowers.

 Pretty pleased with himself!

 Oh, and he did grab the sidewalk chalk too :)

 The three year old is his regular clown self lately.

 He's a wild man, for sure!

We drove up to Jackson Hole again Saturday.  I went to our local grocery store to get soymilk and it was almost $5/half gallon!  Yikes.  And, the only kind they had was Silk, which I found out has traces of things he is allergic to listed on the allergy warnings.  If you read my post about the Walmart soymilk, you know that traces are enough to cause huge problems for the baby, so we drove to Jackson to go to Smiths.  There is a big fire in the Jackson area right now, and we had the chance to get a close up view of the slurry helicopters in action.

 The buckets they draw slurry from are set up on the elk refuge (elk are only there in the winter), just north of the hospital.  The fire is above Snow King ski resort, on the back side of that mountain.  So far, it hasn't come into town, but they're really fighting it hard to keep it that way.

 Here you can see Snow King ski mountain.  There is a helicopter in the sky, just above the ski runs.  It's hard to see in the photo.  I was surprised by how little smoke we saw there.  It's sure smoky here from their fire.  Oh, and then we got home and the next day (Sunday) a fire started up in our area too - up Horsecreek for those of you who know where that is.  It was in a housing development, but they had helicopters and slurry bombers up there right away, and so far haven't lost any structures yet.

 We were really close to the helicopter action in Jackson.  They fly over that hillside, so they aren't over any people.  The road is closed, and spectators were only allowed on this side of the road.  The boys settled in and we watched the action for probably about half an hour.  It was the perfect homeschool field trip, even if it wasn't pre-planned.  A forest service worker was keeping people from being where they weren't supposed to be, and answered a million questions about the whole operation for us.  He was very nice and we learned a lot.

 If you look just past the three year old's head, you can see one of the helicopters dipping into the slurry bucket.

 Of course the baby thought being out in the sun was a lot of fun.

 The buckets - one filled with fire retardant and the other with water are just to the right of this picture.  You can see the Teton Mountains in the background.  The fire engine in this photo was keeping the buckets filled.  I love that they had both the US flag and the Wyoming state flag flying from the pump truck.

 After watching the show, we headed out to dinner.  The boys each ordered the "kids pizza slice" - which should have been labeled a whole pizza.  Wow.  These things are huge.

 The boys didn't complain though.

 The restaurant has a huge flag flying outside - you can see why the firefighters are having a problem getting it contained.  Wind.

 Ordinary orneriness ;)

We always have a challenge finding food the baby can eat when we go out.  At this particular place, he's addicted to the sweet potato fries.  He ate my entire side order.  I had a steak ;)