Como Zoo

I decided to take Ammon to Como Zoo today, and we happened upon the free Monday for the carousel!
Ammon was not excited about riding the carousel. He's never really been on a "ride" before. He tried to sneak away from me, so I had to hold him.
We shared a horse, which I think calmed his fears some.
Once it got going, he was still somber, but liked it.

I guess I didn't take any pictures of the animals. Ammon loved the new rain forest room. He especially loved the turtles, snakes, and fish. He hated the fire ants. They "freaked his freak."

I love his reflection. It's fun to see tree ferns native to New Zealand in this room.

As soon as we walked in the sunken garden, my senses were going bee-zerk. Then I saw fresias. Mmmmm.

Oriental Garden

What is it? Fun colors!

Ammon begged to go on the carousel again on our way home, and loved it.

*****

I need to add that we went to Target before and after the zoo. I don't journal about my great coupon savings, but I think it'll be fun to remember some day. Spent $18.59; saved $70.94. And guess what? It's all stuff I would buy anyway. 15 lbs of chicken breasts for $14.

Whineys

Ammon woke up this morning acting like he hadn't slept all night long. He whined about anything AND everything. Doesn't make for a fantastic Mother's Day. He has learned how to fake whine and cry. Most of the time I can't tell when it's real or not. I think it blends on occasion.
At church today, he was acting okay, until I pulled out the stack of magnets. It was a tall stack. About 15 little 1/2 inch circular magnets, similar to the ones in the picture.
(Aunt Grandma taught the kids a trick several months ago with the magnets using the hymn book. Put one on the inside cover and one on the outside, and you can move the one on the outside using the one on the inside. Wow. That probably made no sense.)
Justin was going to help Ammon do the fun little magic trick and took five magnets from the stack. Ammon whined in a soft little voice, "don't break my Tower of Power."
(don bwake my towa of powa)
I don't know where this saying came from but it's a Dittmer household favorite.
I got the magnets back into one nice tower and he was fine again.

Eloise Butler Garden

3rd Annual walk through
Elloise Butler Garden in
Theodore Wirth Park, Minnapolis



Zoe Thomson, Isaac, Allison, Ammon, and Jacob

Isaac made a red cardinal

Jacob a blue bellied Dittmer

Wonder what I was thinking about...

I'm pretty sure I was thinking about naps in this one.

Isaac, Jacob, Barbara Thomson (Aunt Grandma), Ammon, Zoe Thomson, Allison, JoAnne
(back) Quinn Thomson, and LaMon Thomson (Uncle Grandpa)

Trillium

Isaac worked on identifying 10 types of plants for Scouts.
Not sure what the outcome was; I'll have to look into that.

Ammon loves to squish his Daddy.

Ammon wasn't quite tall enough to reach the drinking fountain. He figured out a way around it though.

I love to go to this garden. It is peaceful - with the exception of the Dittmer clan rampaging the area. I love to go here in the spring. I love the fiddle heads on the ferns and the translucent new leaves on the plants. I love the majestic trees and the birds chirping. I wish we would have had time to visit the quaking bog across the street.

This was the most intense vivid full double bow rainbow I've ever seen in my entire life. I wish I had my camera with me. This was taken with my cell phone. It was stunning.

Random Pictures

I love spring flowers.

I hope we get more than three strawberries this year. I've dedicated one whole box to them.

Troop 906 Court of Honor
This was Justin's last court of honor. He was released on Sunday and is now 1st Counselor in the Young Men's presidency, and assistant scout master. Jacob and Isaac both earned the Citizenship in the World merit badge that they earned from their Grandma Dittmer (pictured in an earlier post). Jacob also earned Emergency Preparedness and Isaac his Scout rank.Dusty Johnston, LaMon Thomson (my uncle), Ryan Koch, Jacob Dittmer, Isaac Dittmer. & ?

The boys are working hard on their personal fitness merit badge the past few weeks. Justin had them make up a fitness plan. They run one mile one day, the next do sit ups/push ups in certain amounts. Plus they're trying to get in ONE pull up.
It takes them 10 laps around the back yard to get one mile. Justin clocked it on his bike.

Bunnies Bunnies Bunnies.

I wanted another raised bed/grow box so Justin built me one a year ago, but it was outside the original fence. The bunny rabbits loved my garden last year; so much that I didn't get to enjoy it as much as them.
This year, Justin revamped our old garden and included the new grow box plus some in ground space. Yeah! And I think it turned out great!
It took him two days , but he did a super job.
It's hard to tell, but there are three grow boxes. Jacob and Ammon are digging a hole for the compost.

There is a spiritual side to this story.
We aren't rolling in the bucks this year, so we were going to utilize the wood we have in our garage. We have lots of pine shelving from a store closeout that Justin wanted to use and to seal. I wasn't excited about the idea of having to take care of it year after year, so was urging him to look at treated lumber at Menards when we went, just to price it out.
Before we left for the store, I checked a local freecycle type website and someone had posted ten minutes earlier exactly what we were looking for. Justin called, and no answer. He left a message. We've tried to get a few things from this website. It's nearly impossible to get things, because they're snatched up almost immediately.
While we were in Menards, they called us back and said it was available and that several people had called after us so they had to pull the listing. Crazy!
We bought our stuff and drove to their house, which incidentally is in Blaine as well. They had this huge stack of lumber already on a trailer and said we could take as much as we needed. They were happy to get it out of their garden.
One of the best parts was that they drove the wood to our house!

Here's the spiritual story:
The night before was my turn for family prayer. I asked Heavenly Father to guide us in building the fence for our garden.
Not only did he guide us in the design, he helped us build a much better fence and strengthened my testimony of prayer.

Stoic

Allison's Hospital Story

Not only were we on time, we were 20 minutes early to Children's Hospital, St. Paul. We didn't need to be there until 6 AM, but arrived at 5:40. Before the employees were even there. Grrr. Allison was all kinds of hyper and excited and I wanted to sleep on the couch.



They supplied Allison with her own hospital jammies and socks/slippers. Notice the big grins.
They let the kids choose a flavor of Lip Smacker lip gloss to paint the inside of the mask they use for the anesthesia. By the way, these really are Lip Smackers. They help cover the smell. Allison was set on Watermelon for days ahead, but at the last minute heard they had
Dr. Pepper, so chose that instead.

After Surgery:Everything went great in the surgery, which is awesome, except Allison had a horrid reaction to the anesthesia and/or the pain medication Loertab (sp). She was SUPER nauseated all day, didn't want to eat anything, drink anything, somber, definitely no smiles or joking around, and vomiting.
Children's Hospital has Bingo on Friday's only and she was able to "participate", although it was just about two hours after surgery. There was no excitement. She had me playing for her, until the end, when she was up to doing one card. She did win one Bingo. If you're wondering how this is done, well here ya go: they broadcast an employee on their hospital channel. It's pretty cute. We had to call in as soon as we got Bingo.
Even though Allison was super D duper sick, she wanted to go upstairs to choose her prize.
After the wheelchair arrived we went up to the third floor and she got to choose from an impressive array of prizes. She chose a Gabriella barbie from High School Musical 3. Just to let you know how yucky she felt all day, she never asked to open the box or even look at it until the next day.

Justin was able to stop in for about half an hour. This smile was one of the rare ones I'd seen since surgery.

Justin and Allison played a heated game of Checkers; she creamed him. I'd played her earlier and she beat me too. ;)

The nurses kept commenting on what a brave girl Allison was. One nurse told me that she'd heard about her and how "stoic" she was. I'm proud of my little girl. She's awesome.

There was a minute of silliness. She wanted to play with the Play Doh, but only had one hand available because of the IV. I made a lamb, but she thought it was so funny, she started giggling, I'm sure out of pure craziness and hysterics. It was great to see her laugh, even if for just a minute. Looking at the picture, it really was a bad lamb. Yikes!

Sleep was hard to come by. At least for me. I opted to sleep in the bed with her, instead of the purple vinyl recliner, so was kicked at, snored at, and heard lots of moaning all night. The poor little thing. My heart was breaking for her. I wish I could have taken away her pain. She was only taking regular Tylenol by the evening because of the nausea, so I don't think it was keeping her pain at bay much. 

Her heart monitor kept coming unplugged so the nurse would have to come plug it back in.
The morning brought a new Allison. She had an appetite and was even smiling! The nurse was so excited (and me)! We got home at 11 AM. That was one of the longest 24 hours of my life. (Well it was actually 29 ish hours). It felt like the never ending day.