Critters

During my sister's vacation, we took the four kiddos to see some critters. It is actually a really neat place where you ride around on a bus and see animals that you normally would not see at least not around our home. Some of them even come right up to the bus. It is a couple of hours away; but, it was worth the trip to spend some quality time with Aunt Janet. Granted after having spending over 4 hours in the car with my children without any form of electronics, I think my sister has resigned herself to never having children. Ha, ha! :) (That is a nervous laugh if you cannot tell. I really would like some nieces and nephews on my side...when the time is right of course.) I had taken our Ipad with us; but, I decided to show them that they could do a car trip without having to use electronics. Wow, how did our parents do it?! I should mention here, in all fairness, we were not in our van. We ended up driving Ron's car since the van was in the shop. So, the kids did not have all their magazines, books, etc. that they keep in the van. We just did not think about it. Poor Janet having to be there during my experiment! The funny thing was that the youngest two did much better than the older two. Max and Sydney were sooooooooo loud. I am not sure why it worked out that way. Anyways, here are some pictures of the wild animals...the ones we took with us and the ones we saw there. :)

Max and Emerson were excited to see the animals.

The girls are ready to spend a fun day with Aunt Janet and Mommy. Look how close those cool camels are!!!!
Sydney made a friend. This wild horse was actually trying to get in the door.

The kids enjoyed feeding these huge catfish (the black blobs) and the swans. The catfish grossed me out. I am not a water person and do not care for most things that are in the water. Then, there is my sister who wanted to take one home as a pet. Ick!

I LOVED seeing the giraffes. They are so strange looking yet so beautiful!

It was a great...yet exhausting...day. It was a nice little day trip. Thanks for the great idea Janet and thanks for putting up with us! :)

Off to the restroom...

Really, the title of this would have been "Off to the Races" had I not spent more time here...

than actually watching cars speed around the track. I guess that is what you get when you have one potty training 3 1/2 year old and two girls in the family. Oh, well. Either way, we had a great time. We got to relax. Oh, how I love that word..."relax". :) It was great to hang out with our friends whom we seldom see and watch our children hang out together too. Such fun!
This is rare; so, I had to capture a picture of Ron taking it easy.

I was probably the only person in the whole place who was freezing that morning. I am glad I took my sweatshirt! :)

Max had a great time setting up battle scenes with his army men.

Sydney started out like the above picture and ended up like the one below. Ha, ha!

Emerson had fun playing with trucks in the grass.

The track had lots of fun stuff to do when not watching the cars on track. Max's favorite thing was seeing all the military stuff on display. He really enjoyed climbing in this tank.

Look at this...Max, Emerson, and I ended up on stage. So not my thing!!!! How did we end up there you are wondering?! Our family jumped into a game along with many others. We decided to divide and conquer. We figured we would have a better chance of winning. Ron and the girls got weeded out which left the boys and myself. It got narrowed down to us and some other "lucky" folks who ended up on the stage at this point. We had to play a game of "Simon Says". I am an early childhood teacher by trade. I should have had this one in the bag! Unfortunately, we were the last ones to be eliminated. We almost won...bummer! We did get red sunglasses as consolation prizes. You can see Veronica modeling a pair below.

These remote control trucks were a blast! Although I am sure the guy in charge of removing them from their stuck positions were not as fond of them. :) The oldest three gave it a whirl; but, I ended up taking over Veronica's. They were super hard to control. I kept running mine and Veronica's into the wall and flipping it over. Max had the red one in the picture above. Sydney's is the one behind it. Veronica's was a dog one. It had ears and everything. That was the perfect one for our child that pretends to be a dog any chance she gets. :)

The day ended with several hours of waiting for the traffic to clear. Then, it started to sprinkle. We thought for sure we were going to get slammed with a storm. It looked like it and sounded like it; but, we lucked out for sure. When we finally escaped the infield and headed home, we stopped for ice cream. Well, some of us did. Emerson was out. He was so tired. Poor little man! It was a GREAT day...other than the gazillion trips to the track restroom. :)

Water, Ice Cream and Parks, Oh my!

Wow...summer is quickly...too quickly...coming to an end. The kiddos and I are really not ready for it to end so soon. Every year at the beginning of summer we talk about the things that we want to be sure to do during the summer. On their list, they had visit the splash pad. So, we did AND ate ice cream AND played at a park that we found right by where we got the ice cream.

Both Veronica and Emerson were hesitant on getting wet. In the above picture, "the bigs" were trying to convince Veronica to go through the water tunnel which is on the other side of the splash pad. Instead of walking around all the other spraying things, they took her through the center. Let's just say, she never did make it through the tunnel. She came running back my way before too long. :)
As you can see, Emerson finally did get a tad wet.

I love this picture of Max preparing to run through the water tunnel.

Veronica had mint chocolate chip.

Emerson had cotton candy ice cream. Sydney and I shared a banana split.

Max enjoyed his blue moon ice until he realized his entire mouth turned blue.

This little park was in walking distance of the ice cream shop. So, we sat at a picnic table in the shelter house and then went out to play. The picnic table was actually a children's size and I had to be careful every time someone moved. I thought for sure I was going to tip the thing over. Maybe I should have stopped eating the ice cream. Maybe it was a sign. I ignored it. :)

It was a great day! We will have to look back at these pictures when the ground is covered in snow and the temperature is below zero. Yikes!!!!

Mommy and Veronica Day

Veronica and I spent the day together on July 16. We started with brunch at Bob Evan's.

She and Ta-ta (her teddy) waited patiently for the food. I think Ta-ta even took a little nap.
She cracked me up as she flipped through each page of the dessert menu saying "Mmm, that looks good."

That is such a big meal for such a little girl. She was not quite able to finish it. Cannot blame her as she knew popcorn was next on the agenda. Off to the movies...

As a special treat, she got a frozen drink at the movie theater.

We had been waiting all summer for the Winnie the Pooh movie to come out. We knew that was the one we would go see together on our special day. I loved holding her during the movie! It was so cute because she had even wrapped her feet around the back of my legs. It was very sweet cuddling with her. She was soooooooo tired by the time the movie was finished! I was hoping to find one of those big cardboard displays that they sometimes have of the movies. All they had for Pooh was this poster. You should have seen me trying to convince sleepy head to get a picture in front of the poster. (In hindsight, I wish I had thought to have asked someone to take a picture of us together. I could have held her then.) I finally convinced her by telling her she could have her eyes closed. It worked. :)

I love the time that we got to spend together. I treasured every minute I had on each of the special days with the kiddos. Memories to be treasured always.

Happy Gotcha Day! (yesterday, actually)

One year ago yesterday (July 26), one scared little boy was placed in our arms. I am not going to reflect on it all too much here as it will probably make me start crying. :) In honor of the day, we had Chinese for dinner and watched the videos from China. Wow, Emerson has totally changed in a year. Amazing! Please go here... http://lilbubbamakesfour.blogspot.com/2010/07/gotcha-day.html if you want to read about our Gotcha Day.

Gotcha Day- July 26, 2010

Paperwork Day- July 27, 2010

Many, Many Posts

Hi, All! Just wanted to let you know that I went blog crazy the past few days. I am finally getting close to being caught up with our summer thus far. I may still post a few pictures from the past...if time allows. Anyways, I just wanted to give you a heads up to keep reading and reading (if you so desire) until you finally bump into a post that you have read before. :)

Puppy Chow

Have you ever made puppy chow for humans? It is a delicious little treat. I have not made it in years because it has peanut butter in it and for many years now we have had children too young to have peanut butter. Now, that everyone is old enough, we made a batch. The kids had fun helping. In the following picture, the kids are jumping up and down which is why it is blurry. They have bags of melted chocolate and peanut butter covered cereal that they were coating with powdered sugar. (Remember, I never said it was a low calorie treat!)