Deanna Rose Farmstead in Kansas City

Another reason I like blogging is that when my husband leaves town (for work, not because he's simply had enough of us), he can still check in and see what's going on around here. Although I'm not usually posting up-to-the-minute breaking news posts, he can still see photos from our past exploits. Lately we don't spend much time going over digital photos taken every day like we used to when we first got the camera back in 2006.

So recently we went to Deanna Rose Farmstead in Kansas City just for fun. It was a pretty day, and apparently the rest of the city had the same plan as we did because it was cuh-razee there!

Okay, so here is Callie doing something I am totally opposed to: bottle-feeding an animal just so it will be kept tame for the kids to handle. I want them to show nursing animals at Deanna Rose, too! I'm such a big baby; I could never work on a farm because I'd be trying to milk a dairy cow while it's baby nursed on it at the same time. It would be like tandem milking. I couldn't stomach weaning an animal from its mom.

Thanks, Joel, for taking this picture of the rest of us.

My sweet babies at the waterfall at what used to be the entrance. Do you know how hard it was to get them all to face the same way?!

Little Sam is not afraid of anything, least of all a little goatie. I'm not sure what's up with Callie here ... crying because she wants a turn or yawning?

I love getting out of the house with my kids. Why have kids if you're going to sit around on your butt all day at home? I'm reading a book called The Idle Parent and the author suggests rarely going anyplace and just playing with your kids at home. That's cool, and we do that ... I let them have a lot of playtime together and I play with them, too, but getting out into the world is nice, too. We just normally try to pick days when most other kids are in school (another reason why I lightly homeschool in the summer is so we can get out and have some fun in the fall!).

My Name is Kerrie, and I'm a Bravo-holic

I think I’m watching too much TV, which is like 7-10 hours a week, mostly while Sam sleeps on me early in the morning or while he sleeps on me for his naps and the kids run amok in the house. Specifically, I'm watching shows my mom tapes for me from http://bravotv.comBravo Channel. It’s no secret I love all the Real Housewives (although I’m falling out of love with the New Jersey one), much to my husband’s disappointment. It's not exactly uplifting television, I know.

Lately I’ve been watching something I never thought I would like called Million Dollar Decorators. The other day I said something to my husband like, “Hmmm, the pea green chair next to the pea green glider with the pea green drapes as a backdrop and the rose-colored carpet is not the aesthetic I’m aiming for in our living room.” Yeah, he looked at me like I'm crazy because it generally takes an army to get me to wash a dish, and why the H would I care what the "decorating" looks like?

Watching this show makes me want to rip out my dark wood cabinets with gold pulls in my kitchen and put in something a little more "fresh." It makes me want to touch up the paint on the baseboards. It makes me get more mad than usual when Eva covers her body with hot pink lipstick and then rolls around on the light gray carpet. [Aron, "Who would give a 3-year-old this color of lipstick? Who in their right mind?!" And I have to sheepishly reply, "Oops, uhm, me."]

I also love Flipping Out because Jeff Lewis makes me laugh my butt off when I can't figure out if he's being funny or a serious jerk. I love everyone who works for him and dig his design aesthetic. Specifically, I love wallpaper like this? You?

Kansas City Children's Museum: Kidscape

Back in May we hit a cool place called Kidscape at the Johnson County Museum in Shawnee, Kansas. It's FREE (donations gladly accepted), and is small. My only beef with it is that there are two ways out of it that lead into the main museum, so you can't relax if you have a kid like Sam who will keep trying to run out of one side or the other. Then again, the benefit is that you will lose some weight. Unless you use chocolate to medicate any mommy problems you may have.

The first room has a Wii, which we don't own and I had never played. I dug bowling! The big boys played it while Callie taught Sam how to fish.

Eva had a blast in the medical room caring for her 7 babies of all nationalities.

Michael found a cool box of connecting tile thingamajigs.

This is the front of the dress shop, where you can work on your fashion creation skills. Boys love it.

There's also a theatre where the kid can play dress-up and put on a play while you sit in cushy red velvet seats. Did somebody say red velvet cake? Gotta go.