This walk led us across some railroad tracks and under Cantrell Road (highway 10). Some old supports run adjacent to the railroad tracks. I thought it looked nice with the downtown skyline in the background.
Mark decided to play balance beam...Jennifer stepped out too.This is along the bike trail that goes under Cantrell Road near Dillard's. On the underside is an old "No Parking" sign bolted to the underside of the road. That's what Jennifer is looking up at. I thought these cross supports looked interesting with the light and shadows and dead vines.
There were some lower ones further along, so I had Nick put Brandon up on them. Brandon wasn't too thrilled about it - he thought it was scary. But he's a good sport & smiled so I could take a picture.
Nick pushing Brandon & Laedyn on the stroller near downtown.
It was getting too late to go any further, so we turned around at the next stop light, went up to Markham & home.

Nick led a recent neighborhood walk & took us to a really really steep hill. We all came down very carefully. Mark helped by holding onto the front of the stroller just in caseThen Jennifer decided to go back to the top of the hill! She just can't get enough of those suckers...
Nick & Mark stared back up the hill at Jennifer's craziness...
Brandon wanted to go back up too, so we let him follow her. He got about half way and was scared to continue, so Mark had to go after him. Brandon refused to wait until Jennifer was on the way back down - he just stood there crying pitifully until Mark got to him. Poor thing! It's hard to tell in the picture, but just past where Brandon stops it gets much steeper than it is up until then. If you're going up, you can practically put your hand out in front of you & touch the ground without bending over at all...

Laedyn's growing up so fast. She's started using the highchair instead of the Bumbo seat and bouncy seats now. She really likes it with the big tray to hold her toys and cheerios (yes - she's eating cheerios too).

http://www.papajan.com/

This a cool website I ran across looking for mazes for Brandon. It's full of printable activites for kids. Brandon will sit and do 20 mazes at a time, so I need to stock up. They also have coloring sheets, letters & numbers worksheets, dot-to-dots, and cut & pastes pages.

Friday got to be a little icey here in Little Rock. Nick stayed home in the morning with the kids while I went to the office briefly. When I came home, Brandon wanted to go out to see the ice. He called the little icicles "crystals" and had a great time breaking them off the car. After he had finished his examination, we went back in and painted together. We each did a snowman ornament for next years Christmas tree and then he did 3 little winter animal knick knacks - very colorfully...

We went out to dinner at Shotgun Dan's last night. The only reason we went out in the first place was because I had to buy a new computer for work - my laptop serial port was having issues with my large flat screen monitor. It's been PINK for several weeks. I'd just got to the point that I'd had enough of the pink. Anyway, Best Buy needed to install some more memory on it, so we had to leave the computer there for 1 1/2 hours. Instead of driving home & back again, we just decided to grab dinner. Jennifer was with us because she was looking to buy a digital camera. She made up her mind & then ... they were out of stock. I took her to North Little Rock to pick one up at lunchtime today. She's pretty excited.

Since dinner out wasn't a planned affair, I didn't have any "out to dinner supplies" for Brandon, so we had to improvise. I made him grids of dots and he had fun connecting them. After dinner he gave them to the waitress & asked her to hang them on the refrigerator. He thought that was standard since a waitress at Vino's did it for him once.
Jennifer was trying to listen to the President on TV. Of course Brandon could care less about George W, so he was talking away & asking Jennifer to play connect the dots with him.As we were waiting for a really long checkout line to clear out, I had some fun embellishing Jennifer's pizza box. Much hilarity ensued...

We were just hanging out and I wanted some shots of Brandon & Laedyn together. Laedyn wouldn't look at the camera - she was too busy watching Brandon. Check out her cool boots. Goo gave them to her for Christmas. They're really nice because they're higher around the ankle so she has a harder time pulling them off. It seems like we're forever hunting down her lost footwear. She just loves to pull it off and chew on it. It's especially challenging on walks. There have been several times that Nick has had to run back along our path hunting for her slippers or socks. Brandon has become really good at keeping an eye out for fallen footwear as we travel. Aren't they cute?
Daddy's girl :-)
She's good at sitting now as long as there's something in front of her to keep her occupied. She's really interested in these peek-a-blocks, but they're a little big for her to pick up yet. This was one of Brandon's toys when he was a baby.

The other night Jennifer had other obligations so the rest of us walked without her. Anyway, we decided to go the opposite direction (we usually walk through Hillcrest). We walked all around the state Capitol grounds, and read all the memorial signs. Jennifer is probably glad she wasn't with us as she reads that bit of info!!! I didn't have my camera with me, so I kept nabbing Mark's. Next time I'll be sure to bring my camera if it's daylight- even when we're in our own neighborhood!

Here's Laedyn all ready to go, but before she's wrapped up in layers of cozy blankets and all that's visible is her pacifier, her nose and the whites of her eyes. Her knit hat has a little kitty face on it and kitty ears. Too cute. She gets really excited when we're getting ready to go out for our walks ... then she sleeps for the majority of the time we're out!
This is the new memorial to the Little Rock Nine - the African American kids who first integrated into the all white Central High School. Little Rock had alot of activities honoring the group at the 50th anniversary of the integration last year. For those of you who have not been to Little Rock, Central High School, which is still in operation, is also a National Historic Site. They have a visitor center and offer tours of the school. If we're still living in our current nieghborhood when Brandon reaches high school age, he'll attend Central. Brandon enjoyed getting a closer look at the sculpture while the rest of us read the surrounding signs. There were nine signs, each one a quote from one of the Little Rock Nine. This monument is on the north side lawn of the capitol building.

Directly behind it, under that conctrete structure, is a replica of the Liberty Bell. Apparently all 50 states have one. They were made by the same bellmaker that made the original Liberty Bell that's in Philadelphia. The U.S. government gave one to each state in honor of the bicentennial and they were all rung simultaneously during a nationwide celebration. Do you know where the one in your state is displayed? There's also a time capsule displayed next to the bell. It was sealed during the bicentannial celebration and is scheduled to be opened in 2075.

This was taken on the Capitol Mall which is directly behind the capitol building - to the West. It was nice and deserted when we were there, but during the week it is impossible to find a place to park along there. The buildings house various government departments like the AR Department of Education. There's also a very nice library along here. (I only know that because I was sent there to get some legal information when I was clerking at Chisenhall, Nestrud & Julian). Most of the buildings do not have signs identifying what's in them - at least as far as I could see. Along the center of the Capitol Mall is a wide grassy lawn. It's on a slight slope and Brandon wanted to run all the way to the other end. I told him he could go to the first sidewalk.

Here's where he stopped to turn around at the first sidewalk ... and I've zoomed the camera a bit to make him a little bigger!

This giant boulder, weighing 20 odd tons, was quarried near Little Rock and placed on the Capitol grounds in honor of 100 years of statehood. Needless to say, it's been there awhile. Brandon and Mark are standing on the back side of it, which has alot of smaller rocks mortered together to form some kind of support for the actual boulder, which is smooth. Since it's on a slight hill, it's probably meant to prevent the boulder from rolling down that nice grassy lawn that Brandon ran down and back up. Do you see Nick peeking out from behind the boulder? He was hoping to escape being in the photograph. Haha...I'm very patient. There's another boulder across the steet, closer to the Capitol. It's an example of bauxite which was (is???) mined in Arkansas. The boulder was placed in rememberance of Arkansas' contributions to the war effort in WWII. Apparently Arkansas was one of the largest supplies of aluminum. Who knew. All in all a very educational walk ... I hope you enjoyed learning a little bit too.

Brandon told me he wanted to hold Laedyn on his lap the other night, so I grabbed the camera and set them up on the couch. They were both so happy. Laedyn has eyes for no one else when Brandon is in the room, so she was so happy to be on his lap! Nick was behind me trying to get them to both look towards the camera and smile at the same time. It took a lot of shots to get just a few that were decent. These are the 3 I liked best.

We took a walk along the North Little Rock River Trail a couple weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to posting them. It was such a big batch I haven't had time to do it. It was an absolutely gorgeous day - as you can see we all gave up on our jackets it was so warm. Instead of sticking to the paved trail, we detoured off road to see what interesting things there were closer to the old quarry. One of the first places we explored was a little waterfall. Nick heard running water & went to check it out. Then we took turns going up the hill since someone had to stay behind with the stroller. Brandon was a little nervous about being on the slope so I told him to just sit there while I climbed closer to the water to take pictures.
Jennifer wanted her picture taken too...
The next stop along the way was an old drainage pipe Nick has ALWAYS wanted to get a closer look at it. He got his chance finally. Since all the underbrush is dormant this time of the year it was much more accessable than we've seen it in the past. See how happy he looks??? The rest of us stayed up top.

While we did our exploring, Laedyn snoozed.
When we got closer to the old quarry the landscape changed quite a bit becoming very rock strewn with a lot of pine trees. It's really pretty and reminded me a bit of Lake Tahoe - particularly the place we played disc golf on one of our ARID trips with Sandy and Mike way back when. We stopped for quite awhile to take pictures on a hillside.

Jennifer nabbed my camera and made me pose with Mark. It turned out nicely. Thanks JG!

Brandon was even cooperating with the posing. He's such a ham.
OK - so he wasn't completely cooperative, but I still really liked this shot.
After we got done with our "photo shoot" we got distracted by this weird green algae-ridden puddle. The color was so vibrant, we all spent some time checking it out. It was almost like it was percolating ... there were little bubbles all over the surface of it.

After we finished our off road exploring, we returned to the paved trail for awhile. There are these big concrete circles peiodically along the way. Brandon loves to run around them as fast as he can. It's even better when someone will play chase with him!The rest of our walk was pretty routine ... we continued until we figured it was going to get dark before we got back to the cars.