animal encounters

Yesterday morning the kiddos and I loaded up the car to road trip it up to Ohio to spend a few days with Nanna before we meet up with friends for Reds v Braves this weekend. As I was packing the car, AP apparently entertained herself by taking pictures of her brother :) We are staying at my sister's house in Ohio. Unfortunately, they aren't here b/c they are vacationing in FL this week :(

AP is a HUGE fan of their cat. She wants a cat really bad.

This morning this little guy greeted us out the backdoor. He was huge! After our frog encounter, we headed to the Cincy zoo. This zoo is a lot bigger than our Nashville zoo. It's easy to get turned around and miss an entire area. It's also hard to fit all the animals in, but I think we did a pretty good job. My favorite part was the elephants. I know every zoo has elephants, but these were so close to us. Then they decided to splash in the water and go for a swim. It was very entertaining!

How cute is this little penguin? The kiddos liked exploring monkey island.

We wore ourselves out and decided to hop on the train.

There are lots of animals in the Cincy zoo that we don't have in Nashville. The manatee is one of them. He was so big. He was eating a head of lettuce while we were watching him.

Our last stop of the day was the lorakeet landing. We bought nectar to feed them, but they liked licking the sweat off of us better!

We had a great time exploring the zoo. One of the perks of our zoo membership in Nashville is getting half off or free admissions at other zoos. The Cincy zoo was half off. There is another Discovery Center in Dayton that we might try to find tomorrow!

despicable us

Saturday afternoon we decided to take a family trip to see Despicable Me. Actually, we gave the kiddos a choice of Toy Story 3 or Despicable Me. Personally, I was rooting for Barbie and Ken, but the kiddos voted for DM. It was pretty cute. I didn't know much about it going in, so I didn't realize that there were three little girls in the movie from a "Home For Girls". The youngest one talks a lot about just wanting to be adopted. Then, without giving too much away, they have a family that doesn't work out. As we were watching this, I was thinking to myself that this would bring up lots of questions from the kiddos. But, nope, they were more interested in the minions!

After the movie, the kiddos splashed around a bit.

And in other news, today was my last day to hang out with this cutie! I have loved my days with her this summer.

I have been keeping her a few days a week since her mommy started a new job at the beginning of the summer, but soon-to-be-changes around here will prevent me from doing that when school starts. She is going to stay with another great babysitter, but we will miss her. C and AP are great with her and love to entertain, feed, change, and annoy her :)

the mystery of the neighborhood friend

Yesterday we tried out a new indoor play area that opened a few months ago. It was great! If you live near me, you should check out Peek a Boo Playtown. I think the best part was that there is a comfy place for the mommies to sit and chat without worrying that the kiddos are out of sight. I don't know about you, but I never relax at places like Monkey Joes or Chuck E Cheese b/c they are just too big. There are too many places that the kiddos could go or creepy people could hide. But, at PeekABoo it's small enough that I felt safe just letting them explore without me traipsing along behind them. And there is a lunch room for you to eat a lunch that you bring in. No overpriced concession stand-type food. They get two thumbs up from me, not that they even care or know who I am!

Anyway, as you can see, even the bigger boys had fun. They got into the dress up and were pretending to be tough firemen. There is a separate area for ages 2 and under. I had our little friend, Pretzel, with us and she had a blast, too. Here she is doing a little shopping.



The girls were right at home taking care of all the babies.

This chef tried to throw a tomato at me :)

It's been super hot around here lately, but the kiddos really want to play outside most of the time. We've been waiting until early evening to play outside. Last night AP found a way to secure her baby's car seat in her Jeep.

Now here is the mystery. We have lived in our current home for almost 2 and a half years. Just last month we met the little boy who lives directly across the street from us. There are only five houses on our street, so if someone is outside you can easily see them. Well, we had never seen this child outside or playing in the street at all until last month. Since then he's been wanting to play with the kiddos all the time. He and C have been riding their bikes together. He even watches to see when we pull in the driveway and then he walks over and talks to us. So where has he been the last 2 years??? I've talked to him quite a bit in the last month. He goes to a small private school in the area and is in the 6th grade. I asked if he had moved recently, trying to see if maybe he had lived with a parent who was separated or something. Nope. Yesterday he was out driving his go-kart. He drove right over and asked C if he wanted to ride.

I asked him if his go-kart was new. He said no, he's had it since he was 6. I have never seen it before! Seriously, so weird. I asked him if he rode it last summer, he said he did. Where were we???? It's driving Hubs and I crazy. It's like he appeared out of nowhere.

He's a really nice kid. He is really sweet with C and AP. He has to be at least 6 years older than them. I heard him calling C "little buddy".
Here AP is trying to explain to me why I should let her drive her Jeep on the road and to the other side of town to her friend's house. She promised she would drive "very careful".

AP took her first go-kart ride, too!

with our new friend who appeared out of nowhere last month :)

outdoor movies, neighborhood parties, and swimming in the rain!

Saturday night our little town played a movie at sunset on a big inflatable screen on our old soccer field. Such a great idea and so much fun! Kinda like the drive in, but it was free and there was no driving in :) AP's favorite part....holding Erin Elizabeth, of course! The movie was Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.

All this past week our church participated in our summer mission trip, but this year the mission was our hometown. There were all kinds of service projects and mission opportunities to get involved in. Hubs and I visited a sweet elderly lady one night who is no longer able to get out and about. We were warned that she was a "talker" and we believed that when we left her house 2 hours later! Sunday morning we went as a family to visit a nearby nursing home, or "nursery home" as AP called it. It was a very different experience for the kiddos, but one I'm glad they had. The residents really loved talking to the kids. As we were leaving, the kiddos and I were talking about how some people there might be lonely and how happy they would be when someone visited them and showed them that they cared. C then said "I feel proud of myself for showing them love!" It was really cute. The mission trip "finale" was the neighborhood party at church Sunday night. Everyone that we had come in contact with that week was invited. My kiddos got to experience their first cake walk, but unfortunately neither of them won.

AP was showing me that she got her hand painted. As she started sweating and kept wiping her face with that painted hand, she started to look like Lady Gaga with pink streaks all over her face :)

This week has been all about playing with friends. Monday we met friends at the park to play. Tuesday we met friends for the free movie, then had a lunch date.

Of course, we had to cool off in our fountains after that. We met up with more friends there.

This is C and his little girlfriend. Who knows why they were both on their heads?

Today we started out at the dentist. Last month at AP's cleaning she had 3 cavities :( She had one filled last week. The second one was supposed to be today, but she was not having it! We now have to reschedule. But after all the dentist drama we cheered up when we met up with friends again to play at a local church's indoor playground.

The next 2 pictures were taken by AP and she wanted to me include them. This is her baby.

and me with her baby. This baby (Erin Elizabeth, of course) has gone everywhere with us lately.

After playing for a while, we left and met up with even more friends to go for a swim. It rained off and on while we were there, but we never got out of the pool. The pool water was so much warmer than the rain water and the kiddos thought it was cool to swim in the rain! There was no lightening, so no worries.

We left our swim date and headed straight to Chili's to meet up with family for my uncle's birthday! A busy few days for sure, but we have enjoyed every bit!

back in the day

We've been watching the British Open this week at our house. This takes place at the St. Andrews Old Course in Scotland. Back in 2006, we took a family cruise through the British isles stopping in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Hubs absolute most favorite part was getting to walk on the course at St. Andrews. I pulled out the scrapbook that I had made of that trip and scanned in part of the St. Andrews page. Do you see little baby C? He was 2 I think, and the only child on that entire cruise! But he did great, and was really excited when I showed him that he had been to the course that was on TV today. While I was scanning in pictures, I scanned in this old picture of me and my mom. This appeared in my office a few months ago, I'm not sure where it had been hiding or why it was out, but we all had a good smile looking at it. This was around 1981, I'm guessing. She wins the good hair prize. I think that's the mark that most women were shooting for back then!