Zoo

Friday we met some friends at the zoo. Korrigan and Emily went to school together two years ago. We haven't seen them since Korrigan's birthday in February so it was great to spend the day with them.
We got to see the tiger really close this time. Emily called out W@r Eagle to him when he walked by : )
Abigail and I finished up lunch while the rest of the crew went to see the Panda:
Pierce and Abigail hung out in their strollers while Emily and Korrigan played on the playground:
Thanks for a fun day together!

Labor Day

This weekend we went to visit Joe's family.
Emily found some trinkets that Joe's mom had on her coffee table and gave them each a bowl of cereal to eat from:
Check out John's arm . . . as you can see Emily enjoyed passing out stickers to everyone:
We also helped Leslie celebrate her birthday at our favorite Mexican restaurant. Can you tell how happy she is that her brother told them it was her birthday:
Emily thought it was fun:
On Monday we visited our pool. I think this will be the last time we go this season because we froze in the water. We spent alot of our time there sitting in the sun eating our lunch:
That evening we cooked out and it was pleasant enough to eat outside:
Our air conditioner is having some issues so it was actually cooler to eat outside than inside. We found out this morning we have a big fat leak and now have to decide how to fix it : ( At least the service guy got it limping along to cool off our house until we can decide how to proceed.

Park

Yesterday we went back to the same park we visited Saturday and met Emily's friend Julia and her mom and sister. It was such a nice day! We enjoyed lunch and visiting with friends.

Julia and Emily had fun playing princess. The mean witch would lock them in the castle and then the prince would come save them:
Emily is waiting on the prince to come save her:
They also had fun taking food orders for each other:
Abigail's tummy has been bothering her the last couple of days so she wasn't feeling too good. She hasn't been eating much but isn't running a fever. Her diapers seem better today so hopefully her tummy is on the mend:

Another Chapter . . .

This baby who would NOT take a bottle her first 7 months of life:

. . . has now given up nursing all on her own. I wasn't ready for this to happen and thought I had several weeks to decide when I WAS ready to be done with this chapter of my life. But Abigail decided for me. So it's a bitter sweet time for me.

And this girl told me today that we needed to text Santa to tell him that she wanted some vegetables that you can cut up and some babies and their play clothes and a bed with covers and a mobile:
We went to a friend's house today and her daughter had lots of fun toys to play with. On the way home Emily told me she wanted to get some of those toys so I told her those would be good things she could ask Santa for when it got closer to Christmas. That's when she had the great idea to just send him a text message instead : )

Emily has also been obsessing lately about making sure she gives each person a hug and a kiss before they go anywhere or go to bed. She even woke us up at 1:00 a.m. the other night crying in our bed that she wanted to give Abigail a hug and a kiss. I don't mean a little whimpering . . . it was a full blown cry. She was half awake and half asleep and was obviously dreaming. She doesn't even remember that she did it. I convinced her that she had in fact kissed Abigail good night and that it was still night time and she needed to sleep some more. So what's up with that? She obviously is having some anxiety in this department since it's coming out in her dreams.

And this is random . . . but I french braided her hair for the first time today:

Picnic

Saturday night we met the Lydas at the park. We were supposed to eat dinner with them at the park and then play . . . but I had to pick up my things at the consignment sale that didn't sell. When we got there to pick up our stuff they were still sorting and not done! So Joe kept driving around the parking lot to keep the natives . . . I mean the kids from getting too restless. Abigail fell asleep and had a good nap so that was good. The consignment sale was a big bust for me. I only sold a few things : ( So I signed up tonight for another sale in a couple of weeks to see if I have better luck there.

Anyway, after we crammed our things in the trunk we hit the road to meet the Lydas at the park. Emily ate her dinner in the car so we could have more play time when we got there. The girls had fun. We ended the night having fun running in the rain to the car!
The guys enjoyed throwing the football. Jason found out how much of a girl I am when he threw the football to me. It hit my hands and went flying : )
April and the girls had fun kicking the soccer ball:
Abigail wanted to get on the ground and follow Emily and Riley:

Big Time Girl

Emily has finally started enjoying her swimming lessons! Over the last few weeks she hasn't cried during her lesson . . . and check this out . . . she has started swimming a little bit:
Abigail and I enjoy it more because we only have to stand the sweltering heat once a week instead of twice a week. This is what Abigail does during the lesson:
And speaking of Abigail . . . this girl scooped a spider up in her hands last week and popped him in her mouth! I guess she needed some extra protein. Emily screamed for me to come get it out and I swooped my finger thru her mouth and sure enough . . . a very slobbery spider was sitting on her tongue!

She has also gotten very opinionated this week. There has been several times that she has gotten her feelings VERY hurt by me taking something away from her that she can't have. It's been pretty comical because you can tell by the way she is crying that she is mad and not just a regular ol' baby cry.

I guess I need to document for the record that Abigail's first official word is bye-bye. She definitely says bye-bye and waves at you. She has also made the sign for "more" a couple of times when eating but it's hit or miss.

I also worked at my first consignment sale this week and turned in items to sell. So I got to go to my first preview sale last night and got lots of good things! Hopefully I'll also get a big fat check from my sales too : )

Saturday

On Saturday we decided to try to go to the zoo in spite of the heat . . . we haven't gone all summer because it's BEEN SO HOT! I'm so ready for fall weather. Anyway, we were sweating . . . but the zoo was so nice because of the light crowds. The last 2 times we've gone it's been too crowded for my taste so this was a nice visit.

They have a baby giraffe that was born last month but she was with her mother in the barn so we didn't get to see her. But because of the new baby they have the zebras separated from the giraffes . . . so we got to see the zebras close up in a different section of the zoo:

They also have a new bear and tiger exhibit. I caught a picture of the tiger . . . but we only caught a small glimpse of the new bear and I couldn't get a good picture of him.
We hung out in the reptile area for a long while and ate snacks because it was air conditioned : )

They also had a gecko exhibit that was inside a children's play area. It was also air conditioned so we hung out there a good bit too while Emily played with the puppet show and blocks.
And like always we ended our trip by riding the train:
When we got home I fed the kids and gave baths while Joe picked up a couple of things we needed at the store. So when he got home we put the kids to bed and had an impromptu date night. Joe grilled some steaks, we dug around the pantry and found a bottle of wine we bought over a year ago and had never opened, and voila . . . a nice . . . .quiet . . . enjoyable dinner:
We didn't eat dinner until 8:30 but it was so nice to just have the two of us at the table with no noise and we could eat as slowly as we want and linger at the dinner table and talk.