South Dakota - Part 2

While our first few days in South Dakota were a lot of fun, Monday was pretty boring. It was raining, so Sonja wouldn't let us ride on the parade float with her and Silvia. We were kind of sad, so she let us watch from the car. After the parade, it was still dreary, so we just hung out with Sonja and Silvia.

On the last morning, we got to stop at Silvia's office and see a Rapid City landmark. He's a giant cowboy that is outlined in neon at night!

Too bad it's light outside.

We found out that Rapid City is known as the City of Presidents and wondered why until we found our first President. We found James Garfield, the 20th President!


Then we found another one! This one is James Polk, the 11th President.



We wanted to keep looking for Presidents, but Sonja said it was time to leave because we had a long drive back home.

Sonja promised that I could come back with her the next time she comes here to visit her sister and look for more Presidents. Since Val got to come this time and Riley had to water the plants at Sonja's house, I think next time I might ask Jenni if Riley can come along.

Conquering the Airbus

Recently, Andi and I went to The Airliner in downtown Iowa City with Jenni and a few of her friends. Jenni usually eats the pizza when she goes there because it's soooooooo yummy, but we decided to be adventurous.

We looked through the kids menu because we're kids. No, we're not baby goats, we're baby sheep! Shesh!

That's the kids menu? LAME!

Have you noticed how BORING the kids menu is? Andi and I decided that we may be kids, but we needed something exciting! Something BIG! Something YUMMY! Something CHALLENGING! We decided to conquer the Airbus!

Ohhhhhhh, yummmmmmy!

2 pounds of ground beef, lots of bacon, four slices of cheese, onion rings, lettuce, and tomato in a ginormus bun, served with a large order of french fries. Yeah, we can do it!

We convinced Jenni to order the airbus for us. We're growing sheep, we need it! Jenni said that we could share it. No way! We each needed our own. We ordered two while she was drooling over the pizza menu.

Wow, that's a lot of burger!

Wow! The airbus is big! It was bigger than us! We worked hard, we tried to finish it. Alas, we petered out.

See how much we ate? Quite a lot!

We're going to practice at home so that we will conquer the airbus next time we're at The Airliner!

Apple Orchard

Jenni took us to Wilson's Orchard not too long ago. We had a blast! We got to ride a tractor out to the orchard and pick apples! It was pretty hard for us little sheep to pick the apples from the tree, but Jenni helped us. She's not too bad, for a human. We even got to eat a few apples while we were apple hunting. I wasn't sure if we should do that, but Andi and Hawkeye seemed to think that it was okay. Sheep-pressure (much like peer-pressure, but for sheep) hit me hard, and I decided to enjoy the apple eating too.

Mmmm! Honeycrisps!

Andi, you're the apple of my eye...

Hawkeye's apple

Wow, I am cute!

Halo Reach

Erin came home from work today and said she had a surprise for us. Said something about how Summer was almost over and that she knew we would be crawling the walls soon. But she said we would have to wait for after dinner to get it. Of course, D.J. couldn't wait. And of course, D.J. drug Sheepy into it. They went snooping in Erin's purse; and what did they find?

HALO REACH!!!

Erin brought home Halo Reach! And on release day, no less. And out it came from her purse. Have we sheep told you lately that we love Erin?

OOO...bonus spartan recon helmet...what ever sheep needs.

D.J. started to put the disk in the Xbox when Erin walked in front and threw up her hands. She said, "Well if you're going to play video games without even eating dinner than you might as well set up the new Xbox 360 I bought."

OOOO...shiny.

New Halo AND new Xbox!? Have we sheep told you lately that we love Erin!?

We'll we pulled the Xbox 360 out and took a look. It is SOOO COOL! As we were looking at the new improved Xbox I swear I heard the song from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Very monolithic...if it starts singing Daisy, I'm out of here.

D.J. of course still couldn't wait to play.

READY!!!

But Chris pulled out the instructions and explained that we needed to set the box up before any of us could play.

We need to plug it in first.

Plugging the box in meant that some sheep had to brave the dangerous mess of cables behind Erin's computer. So Sheepy and I nominated D.J. since D.J. was too busy gnawing on the headset cord to be listening to us.

I'm scared!

After D.J. plugged in the cord we were off and running. Time to set it up. Our first language wasn't on the Xbox but Erin told us to pick English. She said that Xbox doesn't support Baaa-ing.

OOO...pick that one it's got pretty letters.

And then we got to a page that asked us if we wanted to have any game restrictions.

Quick, select skip before Erin comes back!

Unfortunately, Erin had never left the room. She always seems to be around when we don't want her to be and never around when we really need her. How does that work?

We were all ready to game when...NO INTERNET CONNECTION! What was that about!? I had to crawl under the desk and check it out this time.

Fix it, Jesse! Fix it NOW!

And of course, I found that D.J. had unplugged the router while he was back there plugging in the new Xbox. You know what they say; Never send a lamb to do a sheep's job. But I fixed it.

Ya, green dots!

And then D.J. said, "Out of my way, I want to play!" But Erin stopped us again and said, "No you have to transfer all the content from my old Xbox to my new one." And she said something like, if we had just waited and ate dinner she would have had it all finished in no time at all. But with all us sheep it was going to take longer. She obviously doesn't understand that we are helpful. Silly human. So I took the controls and Chris and D.J. took over the hardware.

Ready!

And finally, D.J. tossed the disk in the tray when Erin wasn't looking. We were off. Erin said something about cleaning up the mess we just made.

"Clean all this up before we play?" Ya right.

But I didn't hear her because I had my headset on. The opening scene looks good.

Oooo....shiny.

Well if your wondering where us sheep will be for the next few weeks, you can be sure to know we are on Erin's Xbox. Someone else will have to hold down the blog while we are gone.

And to all those Halo fans out there; we hope you enjoy Halo Reach. Not that you have time to read our blog. We all know your standing in line at your closes game store waiting to buy it at midnight when it goes on sale. We'll see you in the game lobby!

South Dakota Part 1

Hi from South Dakota! Val and I have been here for a couple of days now and have seen a lot of cool things. For starters we meet Sonja's sister Silvia. She was really nice to us and wanted to make sure we saw everything!

This is Silvia who took us on a lot of great tours through the Black Hills.

One of the first places we stopped was the Purple Pie and Ice Cream Palace in Custer, SD. Were we ever surprised to find a big purple pig in front of the store! Neither of us had ever seen anything like it.

We didn't know pigs came in purple...

On our way into Custer State Park we stopped to get our picture taken with Smokey the Bear.

Shortly after meeting Smokey, we saw a group of bighorn sheep. They would have been a lot easier to spot if they had been white like us...

A couple of miles down the road, we meet their girlfriends. They were hanging out in the camp ground dodging the sprinklers. Silvia told us afterwards that it was hard to find sheep in the park because they usually live higher in the hills.

There were buffalo everywhere! We wanted to get out and see them closer, but Sonja and Silvia said it wasn't safe because they could run faster than us and were very big.

Sonja and Silvia found a great place for us to sit in the front of Silvia's car. Right between them...

After we drove around some more and saw antelope, prairie dogs, mules, and a lot more buffalo, we drove through the Black Hills to see Mount Rushmore. It was a little late, but we got to stay for the lighting ceremony. The presidents looked really pretty lit up at night.

The next day we drove a lot. We went all over the Black Hills and through some beautiful gulches. It got a little bit bumpy on some of the gravel roads, but the scenery was totally worth it. In the afternoon we stopped at a waterfall for a picnic lunch.

What did they pack for us?

A few miles down the road we found a really nice spot to sit by the river. We really wanted to go wading with Silvia, but Sonja said we should stay on the shore because the water was cold and we might get wet.

Our first 2 days were really busy. Tomorrow, we get to go to a parade. It might rain so Sonja said we might have to stay in the car, but we'll see!

2nd Annual Costume Parade

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Halloween Costume Parade! Halloween is just around the corner...ok maybe it is 2 months away. But we had such a great turn out last year that we wanted to make sure that all the entries this year got some good top-billing time. And we already have some entries coming in!

This year we are asking for entries to be submitted by October 1st. We know it's early. And yes, we will still post entries submitted after October 1st, we just want to start filling up the parade route. And if your sheep are anything like ours, they're already tugging at your apron strings wanted to pick out a costume. If your creative juices need a little squeeze to get started, check out last year's awesome parade here.

If you would like to participate in the parade, please send entries to Sheep.4225SC (at) gmail.com. Please, only one sheep (or whatever plush animal that provides you with therapy) per picture. And remember to provide explanation of costume if needed, general location, and favorite Halloween/Scary movie. Yup mixing it up a little this year.

We have had request to know what costumes are already taken to avoid repeats. But we don't want to ruin the surprise. So if you want to be original, email us and we can tell you if your costume is already being worn by another.

Need some more creative inspiration? Well, DJ was so excited that the little lamb wanted to have a practice run. So enjoy the creation of DJ's practice Halloween costume and start thinking about your own!

DJ wanted to play pirates so we collected all the pirate-ie materials we could fine. And then started putting it all together.

Look at all this fun stuff!

But then DJ insisted on setting the scene. So off to create a pirate stage. (Backgrounds not needed for costume entries...but always fun!)

I can't believe Erin lost my crayons.

And despite the fact we lost the crayons, DJ had a great time coloring with Erin's normally off limits color pencils.

With a few materials, some time, and a lot of love, we would like to present to you the DJ, the Pirate!

Arg...don't forget to send in your entries ye mates!

Meet Sammy Sheep (That's me!)

Hi Everyone!

I'm Sammy Sheep. I'm just a baby, but I'm much more grown up than Riley and Andi. (Shhhh, don't tell them I said that!) I belong to Sonja, who is a pretty cool person. Almost as cool as Jenni. Yes, almost as cool. Don't tell Sonja that I said that, she might be sad, and might leave me in South Dakota. I'm currently on vacation in South Dakota, and have lots of fun things to do there. I'll be posting South Dakota pictures soon!

Hey! Get me out of this mean sheep jail!

I'm so cute! Just remember, I'm the biggest of the babies. :)