Milwaukee Zoo

Memorial Day weekend wasn't only about working through the to-do list. Drew and I met Grandma Karen and Da at the Milwaukee Zoo. WOW! That's what you get when you have a zoo you pay for! It was great and we didn't even get to everything. We did manage to ride the train and the merry go round (guess what animal Drew picked...) and see lots of other cool stuff.

Here we are on the train!

Then we went on the carousel and Drew chose to ride the jackrabbit!
Then we went to the farmyard and pet the goats afterwhich Drew promptly said "I wanna go wash my hands now."
Then we had lunch...
Then we played more on the playground.

Finally, we wandered around a bit more. We talked to peacocks and went "shopping." I thought we were near breakdown city when this picture was taken. Luckily for everyone, Drew put them all back and thanked the man for getting to test them all.

Of course, in between all of this we looked at animals (duh). The coolest thing I saw that day was a mandril. The coolest thing Drew saw was a garbage can in the aviary. Yes, $40 and the kid was facinated by a garbage can. He did say in the end he was equally impressed with the tree frog.

Super!

Playing one against the other...

This was Memorial Day weekend so the to-do list was very long. On top of the list was washing and waxing my car so we went to Grandma Di's house for that. Something very special at Grandma Di's house are "treats." Treats are those packets of "fruit" flavored gummy things that come in all sorts of lovable character shapes like Diego and Nemo. They are not my favorite thing to give to Drew since I believe that the high fructose corn syrup combined with corn syrup and then sugar lead to uncontrolled behavior. But whatever, it's a special treat. And, I have worked very hard with Grandma Di to limit these treats so we do ok. So this is the conversation I overheard.

Drew: I all done; I want more please
Grandma Di: OK Drew, you can have one more because we can only have two treats.
Drew: Grandma Karen lets me have three

Hmm, does this mean I need to negotiate limits with Grandma Karen? Busted!

Bobcat fun!

So, we're doing some landscaping. As part of this complete reconstruction of the entire surrounding yard, there have been bobcats and digger trucks parked at our house for some time. The bobcat was easy to climb in when it was unsupervised by the owners.

Then, a couple of weeks ago Terry offered to take Drew for a bobcat ride down the street! Wow!

Mom's Busted!

Grandma came home from Florida this past weekend and we got to drive with her to pick up dinner. Here's how the conversation went:

Grandma Di: Drew, do you like riding in the car?
Drew: Yes, mama drives daddy's car too.
DG: How does mama drive daddy's car?
D: SUPERFAST!
*laughing*
DG: How does daddy drive daddy's car?
D: Slower.
*more laughing*

William and Zach come to visit

Our friends the Thains came to visit from Indiana. We got to meet Zach for the first time. Drew and William had a great time together although Drew continued to question William's interest in a particular toy. Overall, they did well - they shared and ate a crap load of watermelon. At the end of the party, and in good form, and almost right on queue, Drew even got to demonstrate the toddler barf that William's daddy talked all about.

More Zoo

On a semi nice day we went to the zoo with Ava!
Yes, we rode the carousel again and yes, Drew rode on the otter again.

Chuck E Cheese

Drew was invited to his first ever birthday party at Chuck E Cheese on May 4th. Happy birthday to Zoey who turned 4!

We weren't sure how this would go over since I was expecting games and activities for older kids. Well oh well. There was plenty for a 2 year old! There were a couple of video games he could play (only required one button), there was a toddler size wack a mole, a Clifford "car" and pizza. The whole combination of which was a dream come true for all the children who attended.

And for me there was Ski Ball!!!!! I was lured in by the lights and the tickets...must...play......more....Ski Ball!!! I pretty much abandoned Drew with another parent to fulfill my own destiny on that machine. And then Erik got in the game too with a tet-a-tet Mario.

We all had super fun and in the end Drew said he wanted to have his birthday there too. We'll see...