Duane is 9!

I'm not sure what happened for the month of April, but it seems like being crazy busy is now a non-stop deal for us. For the day of Duane's birthday, we kept things on the down low. He had his cake, which was the only thing he asked for! He also got some lego sets, a new movie, and some other birthday goodies. For his birthday event, he wanted to go to nicklecade. We usually let our kids pick one thing they want to do, but we had a surprise for Duane.

We took Duane to a grocery named Duane's! haha

Jessica found the store when she was driving through Fillmore. When she told me about it, I knew we had to take Duane! (Thank you Jessica! You are amazing!) So we braved the 2 hours + car ride to find Duane's. It was such a cool thing to see and Duane humored me by letting me take pics. After, we found a pretty good hamburger joint and had dinner. The wind was picking up by then. We wanted to meander around town and see what was there, but it was just getting too stormy, so we headed back north. We'd seen a petting zoo in Scipio and thought we might try stopping there.

The kids lasted the car ride pretty well, all things considered. Jessica has the patience of a saint. She even instigated a game of I Spy. ;) <3 So we got back to Scipio, but the petting zoo was closed!! We were still able to see the animals through the fence, but it would have been soo cool to go in. There was a huge camel, as well as some other more expected petting zoo creatures like emus, llamas, peacocks and peahens, and turkeys.

We saw a lot of animals. The horses were actually from the trip down when we had to make an emergency stop for urine to meet tire. haha We named the white horse Slinky...o.0 Let's just say he earned the name.

But, we saw lots of scenery...

and some military caravans...

We visited the grounds of the Lavender Farms, scoping it out for Lavender Days.

It was a great day spent celebrating my awesome helper! He's always so good to us, so it was good to have a day for him. :D