Christmas time in NYC

We found some great plane tickets to NYC and my Mom has been wanting to go for years...so we went.
Barton and I, Giz and Annie went to visit the Macy's Santa Claus, the waiting line was spectacular. It was decorated like the North Pole.

Here is Barton and Santa, too bad he's looking down :-(

Here is the Rockefeller tree, it was donated by a NY fireman from his property in upstate NY.

Here's the gang by the tree...and yep that's Dewey, he's home from Mexico. He got home late Saturday night and we flew out Wed night.

So this was cool. At Niagra Falls it was so cold that the mist from the falls froze on the trees.

Saturday Attire

Here's the boys Saturday attire, hope the tigers get a bowl this year.

1 year stats

Poor Barton got sick on the night of his birthday, so this is actually the morning after. However I don't think he'd know the difference :-)

At 12 months Barton was:

Length: 29", 25%

Weight: 21 lbs 3 oz, 25% (yay he can turn around in his car seat)

Head circ: 47.5 cm, 80% (Well Grandpa Barton did say that he had a 'Barton' head)

Teeth 11! (#12 came in 3 weeks after his birthday, hope we're done for a while)

Hair: Well maybe one of these days he'll start growing some.

Barton is now a proficient crawler, he gave up the army crawl at 10 months. He is also a very good supported walker, he can walk short distances by himself but is too scared to walk across the room alone. He loves to walk with the huggie box???

First Birthday Cake

Here is my first attempt at a birthday cake. It looks like an old David Brown, for you tractor folks out there. That's the tractor I first learned to bale hay on when I was 9.

Road trip to ND

First stop on the road trip was at Independence Rock, WY.

Here is a side shot of Crazy Horse, the carving that wasn't finished in SD.

We made it to Mt Rushmore. It was a spectacular site to see, I was surprised at how smooth the carvings looked.

Another view...

George W...

A nice old man snapped a shot of us...

Barton and Dad.

Barton playing in the rocks, it was a well needed break from the car seat.

Next stop was the famous Sturgis, wish we could have made it in time to go the motorcycle museum, maybe next time...

A herd of Buffalo on the highway in South Dakota. There was a whole lot of nothingness from Sturgis, SD to New Leipzig, ND (oh except thousands of antelope).

The old Baesler Homestead, the house is gone now, it was bought and moved in the late 70's.

The old Lutheran church, the Baeslers still keep it up. It's about 9 miles outside of New Leipzig close to the old Baesler Homestead.

On the Enchanted Highway coming back from Dickinson, there were these massive metal sculptures. This stop was of the pheasants.

On the hunt, Mace just shot one...and luckily Schorlen spotted it.

Found the bird!

Showing off the catch.

The loot... 9 birds for Mace during the trip.

Mace was sooooo excited to finally get a DUCK....he's been wanting one since he was 14.

Barton having fun with Grandpa Baesler.

Barton digging into an apple from Great-grandpa Baeslers tree.

Happy to be on the ride home...of course this was taken at the beginning on the day, 13 hours later had more screaming.

A whole lot of work, but...

Well it is finally done, and it was a ton of not so fun work. But the grass is done, woot woot. Here's some pics of the progress.


This is the front of the house in the beginning.


Here's the back.


Barton and I spent quite a bit of time on ol' yeller moving 10 loads of dirt around.



Dad and Tyler thought they'd have a go at it too...



Once we dug trenches, Barton helped by eating rocks and diggin in the dirt. I put the sprinkler system in, but Dad helped with some of the nasty digging. Thanks Dad!


We finally got all the sprinklers in and trenches filled back in.


Front yard all smoothed out and ready for sod.


Here's a pic of the finished product. I liked the sprinkler flags so well I thought I'd leave them up for a while :-) Thanks to Giz, Bub and 3 awesome ladies in the neighborhood for the sod laying help!

Back yard with grass, and my sprinklers even work, SWEEEET!!!!

Well it was a lot of work, saved some $$$ and dropped a couple pounds doing it ourselves...so I guess it was worth it.

Barton is 9 mo

Well today is our 3rd Anniversary and Barton is 9 mo.

Barton's Stats:
Length: 28"
Weight: 19 lb 3 oz
Head circ: 45.8 cm
Teeth count: 8!

Thanks to Bub we've got some new pics!

Rocket Test

We went out to the rocket factory to watch the KEI test.

10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1-FIRE

Here is a tour of the Rocket garden.

Riding a BSM (booster separation motor-separates the booster from the space shuttle after 2 min), and ya he's riding it backwards.

Inside a booster case.

By a fullscale booster.