The Lives of the Jacksons: April 2010

Last Friday we took Tyson on a special outing with just Vaughn and myself. (Taryn stayed home with Grandma Jackson). We headed to Albuquerque, NM, to the Dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum. It was the "coolest thing," Tyson said.
Right outside the museum were the two statues pictured above. Tyson had to get pictures beside both of them. He first started liking Dinosaurs about a few months back. Grandma T had sent him 4 little dinosaur books, easy fast reading ones, and he has been fascinated with them ever since.We couldn't get into the museum fast enough for Tyson. He wanted to see the T-Rex and a Stegosaurus right now! I was relieved that they had a big T-Rex right in the foyer of the exhibit.
This T-Rex was huge with menacing, large teeth. I wouldn't have wanted to be the caveman he chased around. YIKES!
The whole exhibit went through the different eras of the dinosaurs, and it explained about the land and plant life that was present when they were alive. This cave was the lava cave and it looked like we were walking over the lava. Cool stuff!
This was my favorite part of the whole thing. These are models of a Supersaurus and a mini T-Rex. They were massive and I felt like a little ant standing next to them.
Tyson liked to see all the fossils and skeletons, especially the ones with the teeth.
Yes, we found the Stegosaurus! Around this exhibit they had questions about this particular dinosaur and Tyson could answer them all. He thought he was pretty smart stuff.
I wouldn't want one of these running into my yard!
The afternoon spent at the museum was amazing, Tyson was enthralled the entire time and wanted to stay longer than the 3 1/2 hours we were there. I hope they have something similar to this museum in Knoxville for him, because he just loved looking at the dinosaurs and having us read the "facts" about them. It was fun to spend a day with him and I know he enjoyed having mom and dad all to himself. Thanks for the great time Tyson!!!

The last supper! HA HA HA At least that is how Jenny and I saw it. This was our last "Girls Night Out" for a long time. She is headed to Evansville, ID and I to Knoxville, TN. We aren't too far away but far enough that we can't see each other in five minutes. It was nice to have one more chat session with my good friend. Good Luck Jenny, call you soon.
(Ok so this blog entry is a bit off on the time frame. This all happened about 3 weeks ago. I just haven't had time to write. This one is going to be a long one, 3 weeks long, so bear with me) We have been packing, packing, packing and almost packed up our whole house, and with that I have also packed up most of our food and fun. So the kiddos didn't get a Easter, but our good friends the Johnsons and the Buccellatos came through and invited us to an Easter Eggs hunt and dinner. My kids were excited. So on Easter Sunday, after long hours of cleaning, we headed over to Jen and Jason's for some fun.
Looking for Easter Eggs. The older kids hid them outside all over the place. Tyson and Bodie were the hunters of the day. They had tons. Unfortunately we couldn't take all of Tyson's spoils with us, since we were moving the very next day, but we did take two eggs for the road.
Even Taryn got in on the action. She found two eggs and was finished. The child is easy to please. She had her eye on other things.........
She was all about the little car that she could get in and out of with the opening and closing door. She didn't ever try to move it, just wanted to get in and out of it. Love the smile sis!
All the kids on the trampoline. These two families have been so very, very good to us these past 2 years. Thanks you all. We will miss hanging out with you and seeing you all.
George, Vaughn and Jason. The three stooges, just teasing. These two guys have been good friends to Vaughn and I and they were so kind to help us pack up the POD yesterday. Thanks to them the job was finished earlier than I had expected.
After the Easter festivities, it was back to the almost empty apartment to clean, clean, clean. The office staff has changed since we moved in our apartment 2 years ago and this new staff is a bunch of swindlers. We made sure everything was cleaner than it was when we moved it. We also wanted our deposit back. So we scrubbed walls, and carpets and ceiling, etc.. The place was spotless by 1 in the morning. We spent the night on our air mattresses. (Not very comfortable)
Sniff, Sniff. It was kind of sad to move out everything and then to look back at the empty apartment. We have made some fond memories in Michigan that we will always cherish. We all are going to miss this place immensely.
Bright and early Monday morning they came and picked up the POD and away went our stuff to a storage facility in Knoxville, Tenn., awaiting us when we return in June. We then were checked out of our apartment and it was time to leave Michigan. Tyson cried when we left the parking lot of the apartment. He was sad to leave all of his friends. It about broke my heart. For anyone that has never had to pick up and move, and pick up and move and do it over and over again, they will never understand what it is like to do this process and how emotional it all is, but for Tyson he knows this process all too well. I think he is getting sick of it. It is hard to leave everything and everyone you know and move to a brand new place and make friends all over again. I told him that he would love Knoxville and that he and I would make lots of new friends. That helped a little bit. So on we drove. Vaughn was in the truck and I was in the Edge with the two kiddos. It took us about 11 hours to drive to Knoxville, Tenn from Auburn Hills, MI.
Notice how happy the kids were to travel. Thank goodness they slept for a better part of the trip. The rest of the trip was spent singing lots of songs and playing the ABC game. (Q's and Z'z are hard to find). We got into Knoxville, Tenn., around 9 at night and checked in to the Days Inn and all passed out. The next morning was spent meeting our landlady Melinda, looking at our new home, going to Tyson's new school to pick up paper work for that evening Kindergarten sign up, going to the health center to have Tyson's shot records put on Tennessee forms, then back to the school for the Kindergarten sign up, lunch was in there some where and then back to the condo to rest. Melinda was so nice to let us stay in the condo for that second night. We slept on our air mattresses again, but it was better than spending a bundle for a hotel room. We also had brought some of the more fragile things with us, lamps, pictures and such to store in the condo; another sweet thing of Melinda to allow us to do. See she is still fixing up the place for us and it is about 1/2 way finished. She is redoing the whole thing. She has put in new carpet, lights, vents, floors, doors, paint and redoing the back yard and the front. It is going to be so nice when it is all done.We were up again at the crack of dawn and ready for another day of traveling. This time we were headed west. We traveled across the whole state of Tennessee, and across the top part of Arkansas. There were some tornado storms coming across Tennessee as we traveled. I got a pretty good picture of one, above. That night we stopped in a small town in Arkansas. We had been traveling about 9 hours and the kids were tired of sitting in their seats. I didn't blame them. The country we traveled through was beautiful and did make the drive a lot nicer.Up again the next morning and onward to Colorado. This is a nice picture of Oklahoma City, OK. Never been to Oklahoma, now I can say I drove across the whole state. It looked a lot like Kansas, (sorry Jenny). We were going to stop in Amarillo, TX, but we got there sooner than expected and still had a good part of the day left. We decided to just stick it out and get to Manassa. We rolled in about midnight and we were so dead tired. The kids were ready to kill us because we made them stay in their seat for about 13 hours. Sorry kiddos!!The next day we slept a long time. Once we got up the kids run and run. They were so very happy not to be in the car. Taryn tried on all the boots she could find throughout the house.It didn't take her long to snuggle up to Papa. They spent a lot of time watching TV in his big, comfortable chair. And she also learned to love the horses, or "hee hees" as she calls them. And she will con anyone into taking her outside to see them. She doesn't care what time of day it is, she just wants to go and see them. Funny kid. She loves to be outside.
Tyson too, has enjoyed the time outside here and the room to roam and run. He loves to jump on the trampoline and makes up new tricks daily. Here is his vertical jump. Pretty good huh!
These two have spent most of their time here, outside. When they get up and get dressed their shoes are on, and out the door they go. They hate to come inside for any reason. I am sooo glad. They had such a long winter of being cooped up in the apartment in MI, that the time outside is so important to them. During our stay here in Manassa, Uncle Brett had his senior prom and Tyson and I were able to go and watch him march. Tyson even got a picture with his uncle and his uncle's date. While we were there Tyson asked me to dance. AHHH! What a little gentleman. He is going to be one sweet kid!Tyson the motorcycle man. Vaughn bought this bike a year after we were married. When we started medical school, his dad housed it for us. Now since we are still far away it just stays here in Manassa. Whenever we come home Vaughn will shine it up and ride it around. Maybe one day we will be able to take it with us. Tyson likes to go on little rides with his dad.Another favorite past time is to go out and feed the horses. I love the fact that Tyson and Taryn aren't afraid of the horses and dogs and other animals. They revel in being around the animals and feeding them. We have been here in Manassa for 2 weeks and it has been blissful. We have been able to relax after weeks of stress and packing. We don't have to return to Knoxville for another month, so it is just relax and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the time.