The Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

We went to the zoo on Saturday, and boy was it hot.  We were trying to be fun instead of boring, but being boring is sure a lot cooler.  We packed a lunch and drove to the zoo only to find that every other person within 50 miles had the exact same idea.  There were people parking on the grass.  Craziness.  We made it in after a long and sticky walk from the parking lot and found that the actual zoo wasn't that crowded.  I think most people were at Zoombezi Bay (the attached water park).  So we got a table and had some lunch.

Whilst we were lunching, E decided that he should mess around on the bench and then fall off and bang the back of his head on the concrete and get a huge goose egg.  Luckily he didn't have a concussion and wasn't bleeding, but he was a little somber the rest of the day.  Poor guy. :(

We headed to the aquarium to see the manatees first.  I don't know why, but they are one of my favorites.

 Geez, would someone wipe this kid's face already!?  He was eating Cheez-Its.

 This sting ray smiled at us.

 Me with the flamingos

 They have a little pen with goats in it that you can brush.  E has been nervous about it in the past, but we gave it a go since Sammi loves animals so much.  E would only comb the goats that were laying down facing away from him.

 Sammi wasn't scared at all.  In fact, she kept screaming with delight.

Can you guess what E's favorite part of the zoo was?  THE TRAIN!  Here's his happy little face.

Sammi also liked it, but probably not as much as the animals.

Little Sillies

We had some post-parade fun with our bubble gum.  No matter how many times I explained that you were supposed to just chew and chew without swallowing, the gum always disappeared.  But look at this huge bubble he blew!  (That's how he was picturing it anyway...)

And look!  Sammi's pretending to show a wad of gum just like Emerson!

Sammi took her first steps this week!  She also discovered that the bottom step is a handy place to sit.

She's been melting our hearts with her walking as well as her newfound vocabulary.  She now says "hi", "bye", "mama", and "dada" and has learned to wave.  She still claps whenever she hears a positive comment such as "yay!" or "good job!" to anyone. 

She's been quite the stinker with her naps.  She's transitioning from 2 naps to just one, but most days she can't make it to E's naptime around 1:00 and is dead tired at 12:00.  But sometimes she drifts off if we're out and about in the morning and then she won't go down for a nap at all even though I put her in there and let her talk to herself for an hour until she starts crying hysterically.  In short, it's just a big mess.  But I'm sure she'll figure it out.  Right now my strategy is to take the kids to do some activity outside so they get good and tired for their naps.

And E, silly little E has figured out directions.  He laughed and laughed when I almost turned right on our way to the Bunny Fountains this week.  He said, "Mommy!  You're siwwy.  We don't turn to the right, we just turn to the weft to go to the Bunny Fountains!  You're so siwwy."  He knows exactly where all of his friends' houses are and if we're even remotely close he asks if we're going there.  He cracks me up...most of the time.

Mini-Me

Most people think that our children look like Ben.  I finally have proof that I am at least the mother of my daughter.  My mom sent me a picture of myself at the same age that Sammi is now.  What do you think?  Is she a mini-me or not?

Then...just to blow your mind with three generations, I present my mom's picture:

4th of July

We had a wonderful 4th of July.  It's always been a favorite holiday of mine, not only because I'm so grateful to live in America, but also because it means spending so much time with my family.  I really missed celebrating my birthday with my brother Brad again this year (mine is on the 3rd and his is on the 4th) as well as the family bbqs, fireworks, and the Murray parade.  Those things, along with the salt water taffy that just isn't catching on in Ohio, are definitive of the 4th.  Since we aren't in Utah though, we had to make some fun of our own with our good friends who are really starting to feel like family to us.

We attended the Hilliard parade:

 Little girl is still pretty even though she has a cold...

 I'm living vicariously through her by buying her jellies at a young age.  I loved jellies and always wanted some when I was little.  My dreams came true when I got my first pair. :)

 The little fam

 Me

 Ben and his mini-me

 Silly E telling some story

 Girl loving the horses.  She is in love with animals right now and makes little excited noises with her mouth in the shape of an "o".

After some good long naps by all, we let the kids go swimumum.  It was a special treat to have Daddy join in.

Her limp pigtails make me giggle

We had a barbeque with some friends at Frank's Park and hung out until the fireworks started.

E really enjoyed the sparklers

Our whole family right before the fireworks show.  E kept pretending to grab them and hand them to me.  He called them "golden globes".  Sammi sang to the big fireworks but hated the illegal ones that people kept setting off because they were so loud.  The kids were both troopers even though it was such a long day.

Happy 4th of July!

Happy Berfday to Me

I had a very happy birthday this year.  I turned the big 2-5.  I'm a quarter of a century, and luckily I have wonderful friends and family who made it a special weekend for me.

My cute friends who also happen to be in my ward took me to dinner at Panera.  It was a good time with lots of good conversation, and not a kid in sight. :) (Although I do adore my kids.)

Saturday Ben took me out for a night on the town to Olive Garden and then to the Grove City fireworks where we were able to people watch before the show.  They were all white trash people, and they all had itches in real awkward places, so it wasn't pretty.  But we had a good time playing games on our blanket eating our red vines.

Sunday was my actual big day.  See how excited I am?

Ben made it such a special day.  He made and handed out 25+ (in case he didn't get some back) cards on Saturday to my family, friends, and neighbors and they all found me throughout the day on Sunday.  Everyone wrote the sweetest notes and I felt so loved.  Ben was so clever to put a different fact from the year I was born at the top of each card and then he found a flower punch in my scrapbooking stuff and punched out a flower for each card and taped a quarter in the middle (because I'm a quarter of a century).  It was so thoughtful!

Then he surprised me with a huge present.  He got me a Canon DSLR camera.  I love it to pieces.  I don't really know what I'm doing, and I am not going to become a self-proclaimed wedding photographer or anything because that kind of drives me crazy when people do that, but I sure am going to have fun taking pictures of my kids and maybe some food so I can update my food blog and not have it look like a cheap Mexican restaurant menu.  I've still got lots to figure out on it, but we had fun messing around with it.

A typical E smile--not looking at the camera.

A typical pretty Sammi smile--underbite and all.

The cake.  It's the Better Homes and Gardens cookie cake.  Make it, and you will die and go to heaven.

25-year-old me.

Smiling proudly at E for singing "happy birthday" so well.

Thank you to everyone for making my birthday so special!  It's probably the best adult birthday I can recall.

A Dress for Sammikins

One of the things I love about having a girl is that there are so many fun things to make for her.  I loved this dress when I saw it and was so excited to make it a 4th of July one.  Tutorial found here.

Can't wait to put that cute little bod into it!

Guido

 We had some pasta salad with our dinner the other night, and E promptly picked out all the olives, laughingly calling them tires, and then proceeded to stack them and say "Look Mommy!  I stack the tires just like Guido!"  (In case you live under a rock, Guido is the little Italian forklift guy from Cars.)

And, just for fun...

Don't you just love bathtime?  It makes me smile too.

Bike Parade

My friend plans a bike parade every year for the kiddos in our ward, and E finally had a bike this year to decorate and participate with.  He was SO excited, especially when I pulled out the red, yellow, and black ribbon to match his "Lightning McQueen bike" as he calls it.

Right when we got to the park he went zooming down a monstrous hill, well...monstrous to him anyway and promptly crashed into a big rock, bonking is helmeted noggin and destroying his little bell that he is so proud of.  That then caused the chain to come off his bike so we got off to a rough start.

He saw the gaggle of big kids behind him and insisted on "just walking my bike" for the first little while off to the side until the big kids got up ahead.  After that he decided he could climb on and pedal as long as I was walking right beside him.

We ended the parade with otter pops and then both my kids started crying and it was time to go!  I think they inherited my intolerance for heat and humidity because there were SERIOUS freak-outs that came out of nowhere.  But it was fun for awhile. :)

Just a side note, I love the age of 3 for a lot of reasons, but I'm having a hard time with the question "Why?" that he has just discovered.  I decided that if I could eliminate one word from his vocabulary right now, it would be the word "why".

However, he does say lots of cute things and comes up with funny scenarios.  Here are a few:

He got up one morning and saw my exercise video paused and said "Mommy, were you exercising?  How wonderful!"  (Can you tell how often I actually exercise?)

He was going potty one morning and brought Bear in with him and then decided it wasn't a good idea.  He explained "I might go wet on him and then he wouldn't be all fluffy anymore."

We had some medical school friends over this weekend to celebrate the end of 3rd year (Hip, Hip, Hooray!) and one of the med students' wives is a dental student and she was wearing her scrubs after a long day at school.  E was being kind of crabby about going to bed so I told him he could brush his teeth really well so he could show Hannah because she is a dentist.  He got a shy little smile and scrambled upstairs to do a good job.  He showed off his teeth to her and she was so cute to praise his shiny teeth.  The next day, he said "Mommy, what was that gril's name?"  (He really says girl like gril) 
So I named all his friends that are girls.
"No, the blue gril."
"Huh?  The blue girl?"
"The dentist."
"Oh!  Hannah?"
"Yes, Hannah.  Is she still at my house?"
Just a cute example of how good he is at remembering details about things and I love that he does a pretty good job of explaining them to me.

11 Months

Sammi is 11 months old today!  I have no idea what her stats are, but we sure are getting a good idea of what her silly little personality is.

-Little Silly has 7 teeth and she wields them with authority.
-She loves to read books even though she likes to make it difficult by closing the cover.  She will sit very still on your lap while you are reading.
-She loves cheese and is happy as a clam when we cut some up on her highchair tray for her.
-She is crawling like a maniac and threatening to walk.
-She will put up with just about anything.  She seriously hardly ever gets crabby.
-She loves loves loves to splash in the bath and cries when she is taken out.
-She's been kind of a stinker about her naps.  I think she'll be transitioning to one soon because she has a hard time doing 2 1/2 hours for both of her naps like she used to.  Plus, let's face it, she's the second child so it's a little harder to make life revolve around the morning nap, but I do try.  This messed up sleep resulted in this the other day at dinnertime:

-She does this silly little trick on one knee and loves to show it off to new people.  One day she'll surprise everyone, including herself, when she pops up onto her feet and is standing.

-She discovered how to do this when she was "helping" me exercise with my exercise video.  I seriously love watching my kids try to do the exercises.  One of the funniest/cutest things ever.  They probably think the same thing about me.

-She has stranger anxiety right now which we didn't discover until we were in Utah two weeks ago.  She is so good to smile at people from my arms.
-She absolutely loves balls.  She loves to suck on them and then she loved trying to roll the ball to Mom yesterday.  She exploded in a fit of giggles when I rolled it back.
-She is very content to sit on my lap.  I'm sure this will change, but she loves it much more than her brother did at the same age.
-She is scared/intrigued by the vacuum.
-She has discovered how to toss things off her tray and this also translates to tossing things over her shoulder that she doesn't want.
-She currently hates her crib and prefers the pack 'n' play...not sure why.  I think it may have something to do with her standing up in her crib and having a hard time sitting down.  Maybe the netting on the pack 'n' play makes for a softer backward landing?  I don't know.
-She will immediately start clapping if you say "yay!" or "good job!" to anyone in the room.

Anyway, we love her if you couldn't tell. :)

Utar

We had what felt like a whirlwind trip to Utah to see Ben's sister Jenny get married.  But before all that...

I almost missed my flight going out to Utah because my ride forgot to pick me up! But thanks to my good friend who came to the rescue we made it to the airport 20 minutes before takeoff and still made the flight!  Stressful, I tell you!

We had quite the adventure getting home too.  Almost missed THAT flight too and sat next to a crazy Japanese lady who only spoke enough English to scold all three of us for doing things that displeased her and tried to feed me and my daughter mysterious Japanese food.  I discovered the barfy morsel she offered me was actually codfish jerky and promptly hid it in my napkin.  Luckily I avoided what appeared to be jellied chicken livers.  She was out of her mind and so was I by the end of that flight.  The kids were wonderful on the plane, but boy were we glad to get to our own little house!  But first...

There was a graduation of this uncle (my brother Brad):  (Sammi had a bit of stranger anxiety when we were in Utah so that's why she's bursting into tears.)

While he was taking pictures with friends n' stuff, we hung out on the grass and passed the time by taking pictures of this cutie:

 And this guy ran up and down the hill:

Then we met up with our cousins at Wheeler Farm and tried to feed the horses before the dust storm caused us to flee.

I also got to be there when my brother Brad received his endowment at the Draper temple.  Awesome.

We had a sibling sleepover in the front room and E came upstairs the next morning for a snuggle with Uncle B.

 We had lots of wedding-related events which included staying up until 2:00 a.m. several nights designing and putting together the fabric flowers and hairbows for the niece bridesmaids, going to dinner with my sisters-in-law to celebrate the bride-to-be, attending the wedding dinner in Midway, and the actual big day!  We were glad Ben was able to come out for just over 2 days for the weddin'.
So happy to see this cute couple get married:

 Mr. and Mrs. Troy and Jenny Kohler

These three cousins were born in July, September, and October.  It was fun watching them try to claw out each other's eyes and crawl over each other.

 Tanner, Sammi, Carson

 E just couldn't resist tackling her.  I know exactly how she feels since I have a big brother too. :)

 I also had just enough time to hang out with my friend McCall, go to my cousin's daughter's 1st birthday party, go to Ben's family's cabin, and see my family off on their graduation cruise (jealous).  It was quite the jam-packed busy trip, so we were glad to be there, but also glad to get home.  Thanks family for watching my kids so much so I could go to all the different events, and thanks Christensens for flying us out!