No Pico!!!

Once again, it seems as though we ended up picking the most mischievous, playful kitten from the shelter. Pico is always getting into something. We must say "No Pico!!" a million times a day. We still have not broken her habits of climbing the screens, and jumping up on the kitchen counters and table. I can't imagine what she gets into when we are not home! Here she is taking a sip of water from the leaves that are supposed to be for the caterpillar! yep, on the kitchen counter.

A day at the zoo

I was originally going to take the kids to the neighborhood playgroup today, but there wasn't one! So we scheduled a trip to the zoo with Jacob & Kendall instead. I had forgotten it was a free zoo day for city residents, so it was packed! I now know why I don't go on Mondays :) It was a good time though. The kids had a lot of fun going down the slide in the new area. Here they are surprising Sydney! Note the sandals that Sydney has on - she swore up and down that they were "comfortable" sandals. Within a half hour of arriving at the zoo she complained that her feet hurt. By the time we left the zoo she had a raw spot of skin on each of her big toes! We both learned a lesson that day - 1) don't trust the kids shoe choices no matter how confident they are, and 2) always bring flip flops when in doubt!!


here are all of our cute kids! I'm sure we will have years of fun in the new kids area, they did a great job building it.

Happy July 4th!!

It was an action packed 4th of July camping weekend at Maumee Bay State Park. Grandma & Grandpa camped right next to us (much to the kids delight, they had brought cookies AND suckers along!). We took several walks by the nature center and checked out all of the critters.

Here are some of the animals we saw on our walk. The baby deer and racoons were soooo cute!

We walked up the "big hill". It was pretty darn big, and it offered a nice view of the campground and lake. For July, it was surprisingly chilly - felt like it was late September. I can't remember the last time we wore jackets and long pants for the 4th.

Alan also enjoyed watching the kites flying. Hey, is he actually napping??

Alan made us a delicious breakfast outside one morning. On another morning we had cereal - and the kids informed me that they didn't want to use their bowls anymore, because they were "baby" bowls! what?? waaaaa I guess they are growing up. :)

One of the best, most anticipated (at least in my opinion!) is the ice cream social that the park puts on. Where else can you get an enormous ice cream cone for $1? Yummy!!!

Here's the whole gang.

The park also had a bike decorating craft, and then a bike parade. Zack shows off his patriotic spirit on his decked out bike.

Sydney tells Daddy how it should be done! ;)

That night there was a concern down by the lake. The kids had fun rolling down the hill, again and again.

As it got a little later, we decided to bust out our "fireworks". We had some party poppers, which ended up being harder than we thought to fire off. But somehow Zack got his to go...

Sydney needed some help with hers.

Next came the sparklers.

And no burned hands!!

For a treat we cooked some Jiffy Pop out on the camp stove.

By the end of the night, after treats and watching fireworks, the kids were exhausted. In fact Sydney fell asleep on Daddy's lap.

By Sunday it was finally warm enough to go down to the beach.

A shrewd marketer has given all of the kids in the campground a ticket for a free ride on the slide. It was so much fun, who can go down just once? So of course we bought more tickets for the kids. They had such a great time on it.

On the day we left the campground we found this caterpillar. It will eventually be a monarch butterfly. We took him home and it him in Sydney's butterfly house. Within a day it turned into a chrysalis and we are now patiently waiting for the butterfly to emerge!