Aunt Ericka comes to visit

Aunt Ericka was here Monday and Tuesday and we had a SUPER time! Monday was girls day and we worked out, went for a fancy lunch and then pedicures and manicures. Tuesday we pulled Drew out of daycare for fun in the sun. Here we are at Play Park!

After nap, we went to the very special movie theater to see Kung Fu Panda. This was Drew's first ever movie in a theater and probably the adults could have made a better decision. I would say that this movie is not really recommended for 3 year olds... We didn't make it to the end. Drew ended up in my lap about 20 minutes in and was shaking a little bit. I think the largess of the screen was intimidating enough. Then to have mixed in some kung foo fighting and a dark and powerful (read "scary") enemy... At least no bad dreams last night probably the master work of the adults who recreated all the funny parts of the movie once we got home and kept only talking about the parts we liked the best. (We're so shifty!) If you ask Drew, the best part of the movie was the trailer to Madagascar II.

Throw back

So, I'm looking through other photos seeing if there was some significant event I forgot to catalog. Well, I came across the 7 month portraits and just have to post one of those. Sort of a "look how far we've come along" homage. Having an almost 3 year old is very different from what we were doing when this photo was taken. We have gone from loving breastmilk to loving chocolate and pancakes (and sometimes veggies), from crying to negotiation and from peeing in a diaper to peeing in a diaper...ok not everything has changed. Hint: currently accepting advice on potty training.

More Visitors

Our friends the Peepers were here in early June. As usual, we ate lots of food, talked about our jobs and watched the kids. Here are Drew and Lily eating cookies and baby Grady.

Aunt Joan comes to visit

Lots of visitors lately and we're so happy to see them all and catch up. Aunt Joan came around to town and brought a special book and an ice cream treat. I would love to say that Drew loved the book more.

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!