Siouxland Families

Spring and baby animals are such an iconic combo, and I'm excited to share a new picture book out for spring 2025 that combines them adorably,  Barnaby the Runaway Sheep: A Parable of the Lost Sheep .  Thank you to Paraclete Press for providing me with a free review copy of the book so that I could check it out before sharing it with you! The Amazon links in this post are affiliate links, which doesn't change your price, but means that I get a tiny bit of Amazon's profits if you choose to purchase through one of them. Thanks for supporting SiouxlandFamilies.com! Barnaby the Runaway Sheep is the latest title from Maria Antonia, an imaginative writer best known for the Christmas Elephant . You can learn more about Antonia and her books on her author website . Barnaby the Runaway Sheep  is sweetly illustrated by Sayani Mukherjee and is published by Paraclete Press .  As you might have guessed from the full title, this book is based on one of the parables from the Bibl...

Get ready to join your favorite Sesame Street characters for a spectacular afternoon in downtown Sioux City! For more than half a century, Sesame Street has been delighting kids with entertaining and educational shows, first on TV starting in 1967, and on the live stage starting in 1980.  Thanks to Skopos Productions, who is sponsoring this post, I have all the details for you about the latest iteration of Sesame Street Live and how you can catch it this April in Sioux City. The newest live stage Sesame Street show is  Sesame Street Live! Say Hello , starring Elmo, Abby, and Cookie Monster. It's coming to Sioux City in April 2025 to entertain the next generation of Sesame Street fans, and it's sure to be a big hit with its young audience. Here's what you should know about Sesame Street Live! Say Hello and about the Sioux City performance : What is Sesame Street Live! Say Hello ? Sesame Street Live! Say Hello is a live stage production starring c...

Disclosure: I am currently a social media "ambassador" for McDonald's of Siouxland and receive some free food from them as part of that program. But, I have been eating Happy Meals since I was a toddler in the 1980s, buying them since I became a mom myself more than a decade ago, and McDonald's did not ask me to post this or have any input in the contents of this post. As always, I strive to provide you accurate, authentic, information based on personal experience and thorough research. As a mom of four, I love a good kid's meal, which should include kid-appropriate portions of tasty food, for a reasonable price, and with an element of fun. And as I try to write about more of them, I thought I absolutely had to include the GOAT: McDonald's Happy Meals. So, here's my guide to McDonald's Happy Meals, and a review of trying them with my 4 kids.  Happy Meal History I still have--and let my kids play with--some of my childhood McDonald's Happy Meal Barb...

Easter is just around the corner! Easter 2025 will be on Sunday, April 20th, 2025 and Palm Sunday will be on Sunday, April 13th, 2025. Consider this your headquarters for Siouxland Easter fun for kids. If you know of an egg hunt or other Eastery things to do this Lenten and Easter season in or around Sioux City, please   send me an e-mail   so I can get them added to the list! 2025 update currently in progress!! Easter Egg Hunts in Sioux City and other Siouxland Communities in 2025 Friday, April 4th Charlie Battle's Egg Hunt , at the Sioux City Musketeers 7:05pm home hockey game@ the Tyson Events Center Thursday, April 10th 4:30pm: Community Easter Egg Hunt at Bressler Park in Wayne, NE. More information here . 5-8pm: Under Water Egg Dive at the Siouxland Y. More information here . Friday, April 11th 4pm: Easter Egg Hunt @ Holy Spirit Retirement Saturday, April 12th 9am to noon: Kids Easter at Pub 52 in Sergeant Bluff, $15 per child.  More information here .  10a...

Seasons on the Farm is an adorable new picture book that any kid who is interested in farms is going to love. It's also one of my recommended reads for March 2025! I received a free copy of the book from Sleeping Bear Press for review purposes, because I will never recommend books for you to read to your kids unless I have personally read them. Here's what parents should know about Seasons on the Farm :  Let's start with the basics:  Seasons on the Farm is a new picture book written by Chelsea Tornetto, illustrated by Karen Bunting and published by Sleeping Bear Press. It's available in bookstores online and in-store beginning March 15th, 2025.  Chelsea Tornetto is a Missouri author and mom with several other books already published, and more on the way. She used to be a teacher, and to me, her experience and expertise in knowing how to present information for kids in an age-appropriate and engaging way is very evident in the book. You can find out more about Chelsea an...

South Dakota might be right at the heart of a fun idea to celebrate American history as we head into the nation's semiquincentennial: the National Garden of American Heroes. The idea itself has been around for a few years, but a new offer of Black Hills land in Keystone, SD via Governor Larry Rhoden might be the catalyst needed to actually bring this garden to life. Lewis & Clark (as seen at Sioux City's Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center) are two proposed statues for the Garden In 2020, President Trump proposed a "Garden of Heroes" and set up a task force and offered some ideas of who might be captured in statue form in  EO 13934 . In this initial order about the Garden of Heroes, he suggested: "The National Garden should be composed of statues, including statues of John Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, Daniel Boone, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Henry Clay, Davy Crockett, Frederick Douglass, Amelia Earhart, Benjamin Franklin, Bil...