Zoo Adventures

Last Friday, Adalynn got to spend the day at the zoo with her sweet older cousin!

Kelly and I are zoo freaks. We love zoos. Any vacation we go on, we always try to make it to a zoo nearby. Our favorite so far has been the Omaha zoo.

We decided that Adalynn couldn't go her first year of life without visiting the zoo. I was a little bit bummed imagining hat she might not be able to actually see the animals or know what she was looking at, but was I pleasantly surprised!

We chose to go to John Ball Zoo, which is on the small side as far as zoos go, but it was the perfect zoo for her age. All of the animals were so close that there was no mistaking, she knew exactly what she was looking at. It was so neat to watch her watching them.

Close to the entrance is the aquarium, so the first exhibit we saw were the penguins. We rolled her stroller right up to the glass and the penguins were swimming just a couple feet in front of her face.

She did not like it. And it was hilarious. She looked at them...looked at me...looked back at them with a look of terror, then started crying.

No, I didn't just keep laughing (okay, maybe for a second), instead just grabbed her out of the stroller and she was much more content to watch them from my lap. Now her cousin on the other hand, he was loving them!

And tigers have the biggest heads I've ever seen. I would like to cuddle a tiger. You know, like a toothless one that's been declawed.

Here are a few pictures from the day...

A Day at Mackinac

Last week, we decided on a whim to head up north. Kelly's brother lives about an hour away from Mackinac, so we stayed at his house in a cute little tourist town. 

Here are some pictures from our weekend, if you'd like to see...

At the Blueberry Patch

Sunday, we went blueberry picking. One of Kelly's old coworkers has a blueberry patch, so we took a little trip over there and picked some for ourselves. 

Here are a few pictures, if you'd like to see! 

Silver Lake { #3 }

We had the best, and I mean the best, vacation over the Fourth of July weekend. 

Adalynn was such a sweet, sweet angel for our whole four day camping trip! We think we're going to plan another one before summer is over. 

Here are a few more pictures, if you'd like to see...

Gingerbread Houses

I slept like a rock last night...actually, I'm pretty sure it was a sugar-induced coma.

 

The culprits? A couple teenage girls and gingerbread houses.

 

Kelly's sisters came over and we watched movies, ate popcorn, and got crafty. We built the houses using chocolate graham crackers and hot glue, which Honey was very upset about because, "How am I going to eat them if you hot glue them together?!"

 

We watched a few different movies, but my favorite was Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas. Kelly's mom has been talking about it we were finally all able to watch it together, it was hilarious. Madea is one funny lady.

Nicole made hers have a barn roof- and how cute is that little flower box?

 
And Allison's (yes, another Allison- we go by Thing 1 and Thing 2) gumdrop roof and necco walkway- adorable!

His grandma had been at his mom's house helping to make candles and when they were finished, they came over to visit.

You can't see Kelly, but he is sprawled out on the couch next to his mother. See, he likes to gripe and complain about the chaos- having to hook up the DVD player for us, moving the kitchen table into the dining room, us making a mess with all of the sprinkles, the dog's stinky breath while he's begging to be pet, his mother and grandma stopping over when all he wants is peace and quiet... but really, it's all pretend. He loves it. He had big manly plans to be out working in the pole barn, or upstairs wrapping presents, but where do you think he was all night? On that couch, watching movies and hanging out with us girls.  He gets all of the attention from all of the ladies in his life. He gets to pick on all of us and in return, we pamper him. And we just laugh because we've got his number.

When I took the girls home on my way to work the next morning, his mom sent me with a warm, fresh baked loaf of beer bread and homemade jam to share with the office. I tell you, between three of us we had that loaf gone before the end of the morning. Isn't that horrible? It was so yummy.