Libraries & Fountains

Todays plan started out a little open-ended, with tenative plans to go to the fountains and tenative plans to go to the library.... We ended up getting to do both!

During storytime, B-Bee was really.....overwhelmed? He had the deer in the headlights look, wouldn't participate in the songs & dancing and kept wanting to sit in my lap. He did sit and listen to the stories well though. It was a rather rambuncious group of kids today. When it came to craft time though, he worked hard and intently making Daddy a Father's Day present.

We ran into a friend and her daughter at storytime, so I was able to sneak out to the kids' desk while Nellie slept and B-Bee was listening to a story. I finally registered the kids for the summer reading program. Thanks so much, Jaq! B-Bee is already 9 books into his first set of 12. After playing trains and checking out books, we went to spend 10 minutes on the playground. The fountains were going on and off, so we played some in them. Nellie really liked the doggie fountain that you can see here.

Ran home quick to pick up a towel and extra clothes - Daddy had taken the car with the wagon & summer bag in it. Then we were off again to meet up with some friends at the other library fountains. Have I mentioned that little girls just love Nellie? Think it's a baby thing.

The boys inspected the sidewalk drain. Must have been making sure there were no alligators growing in there.

Have you seen the monkey crawl? She CAN walk, she just doesn't know it yet...and will plop to the ground if noone's hanging onto her.

 

B-Bee & his buds....getting soaked and racing their cars.

And how do you get 8 kids to leave all the fun? A choo-choo train to the ice cream shoppe! There was a red, white & blue pig statue outside the shop that we tried to get the kids to pose with. This is the only shot that I got where you can see all our buds.

We ended our day out to dinner with Oma & Papa (Daddy's parents) and Great G'Pa. They drove from MN to celebrate Nellie's 1st birthday!



Flag Day Fun

Didn't take many pictures today, since Daddy had the camera today. He's going to traffic court tomorrow morning (stupid, petty PMSing ticket) and started his day off taking pictures of the intersection where he was apparantly off-roading to make a right turn. However, looking at the pictures he took, I don't see how he ever fit all 4 wheels of our SUV between the white line and stop sign.

The kids and I had planned on going to the train museum this morning, but I thought the playdate was at 10am or 10:30am. Just as I was going to log on to confirm the time we had to be there, my friend texted me asking if I was still going.... "Yeah." Then I saw that we were supposed to be there at 9am and it was already 9:20am by then.

So we went to the mall instead. I gave B-Bee the choice between the mall with the train & horse rides or the mall with the dinosauers & sandbox. It was a different answer each time I asked. So I chose the dinosauers & sandbox - Old Navy there is right by the food court, dinosauers & sandbox. It just made sense. To boot, they had a train running there as well - as we found out when we were walking in. A Polar Express Train, as B-Bee put it.

Called my friend that works up that way to see if she could meet us for lunch and what great timing! She had taken the day off work to bring her daughter, Bre to an appointment. ...meaning we got to see her AND her 2 y/o sweetie. All the kids were pretty well behaved, right up to the end when B-Bee trainwrecked we started heading out.

After shopping returning stuff, our picnic lunch, and running around on the dinosauers...we went out side for Sand Castles 101. I can't believe it has taken me nearly 4 years to show B-Bee for the first time how to make a sand castle. Not that we have a lot of beaches around here to do it at - the mall has a sand pit / area stocked with trucks and sand toys. First step was to create some mud. Mommy had to go wading in the "pool" fountain that you're not supposed to swim or wade in to throw buckets of water onto the sand. I know, bad Mommy. Nellie was quite concerned with this rebellious behavior. Second step was to sit down and get muddy digging. Next fill bucket, pack down, flip upside down on the ground....and wah-lah! Last step, Bre had down: crash the tower!

We had to take a ride on the train before we left, since I had promised and promised B-Bee trains today. It was actually roomy enough for me to sit comfortably with both kids (and possibly another adult?) in a coach car. Believe me, this isn't always quite a simple task. Getting out a barrel train is down right comical, but this one was no problem. We ventured over the road and past more stores, another playground AND an outdoor rollerskating rink! Nextime we are SO bringing B-Bee's skates! This may just be my very favorite mall. Being that I used to live within 30 minutes of the Mall of America, I've seen some cool mallage.

I must thank my Facebook friends for reminding me that today was Flag Day! Some days I'm lucky to remember what day of the week it is, nonetheless what holiday. To think I just about bought a flag & pole to hang on our front porch the other day - product placement almost worked this impulsive shopper. We do need to get a flag though, not only would it look great on our front porch, but what veteran doesn't fly a flag? Eek, this one. Don't get me wrong, I have several American flags. But they're special flags that we flew over Iraq during our aeromed missions. Anyways, I'm proud of our nation and proud to have served and will be a proud flag-displaying American very soon.

In the spirit, I worked on Nellie's 4th of July tutu tonight. It's almost done; ran out of tulle. Her 1 year old photoshoot will be in a couple weeks and I'm planning to have her wear her her birthday tutu for some shots and then the 4th of July one for the rest - including a 4th of July themed family picture.

Nanas To Silverware

What's for breakfast, Mommy? Or ratherly *more**more**more eat* signs and "Bah-bah, bah-bah". Nellie's has realized that (for awhile now) that her words mean things and get responses. She's now begun to generalize. So "bah-bah" and *more eat* means "hungry", "food", "bottle", "boobies" or sometimes even "phone" or "toy". This is the eating a banana look.

"Shopping" for more breakfast while she models new headbands. Hmmmm... oatmeal? onions? noodles? crackers? What would make a mess? What would work best to tease the dogs?



Near Perfect Day.

Between the 3 mommies at our playdate today, we had a total of 11 kids! What fun! What chaos! ...no, really it wasn't too bad as lond as we weren't in pedestrial transit from one part of the park to another. Here are about half of the kids waiting for the train to go and come back. Kudos to you if you recognize where we are! You've found an awesome place to spend a summer day.

Who's the ring leader of trouble? Pick a side. The Thomas fanatic in the middle goes with the flow. For most of the train ride, they were "choo-choo" - ing.

 We're serious about some watermelon; it's quickly beome a favorite - a messy favorite.

Wading & playing in the creek.

Watching the train go by one last time before we head home for naps. B-Bee & Nellie fell asleep so hard on the way home that they did the car-to-bed transfer. Ahhhh....

During this blissful nap - until B-Bee woke up crying because he wanted Annie's chocolate bunnies - I got some plants put in the garden, the pool set up and filled, and a few flowers (for headbands) pinned together. So after nap, while waiting for Daddy to get home, we played in the pool. It was a little too cold for Nellie and she freaked out whenever I put her in. So she was content to watch from the side, eating chocolate bunnies and feeding the dogs. At one point I put each of the dogs in for a short swim. Neither one would come back over after that. *sigh* Landlubber dogs.

A near perfect day.



YoYos & Pupus

Our morning started off with some headband modeling, since I had finished some new ones the night before. Here you can see the giant pink peonie / gardenia. I love this one, but it must come with the warning label of "massive". It's lightweight and looks oh so darling, but it is 6" in diameter and that is a lot when you're talking about a head circumference of only 14" or so. Definitely a special occassions headband and it photographs really well.

Our morning agenda was to go see yoyo tricks at the Perl Mack. It was cool to see, but I think my kids were a little bit young to fully appreciate it. Nellie was squirmy and just wanted to beeline to the exit, the emergency exit. And B-Bee was right there with her crawling on the floor encouraging her and being Wild Man....and he would have opened that door for her. That girl just loves to be outside and loves to go. Overall, B-Bee behaved fairly well. I just had my hands kind of full with Nellie.

Found something a little more age-appropriate....the playground outside! There were a couple older kids playing and a summer camp group came over to eat lunch, and all the kids were well behaved. (After the YMCA kids incident on a playground last year, it's nice to see a big kids summer camp group behaving.) Nellie stood around the bottom of the slide, watching and laughing at the big kids. B-Bee was intent on learning how to do the monkey bars. He was good at swinging on them, but hasn't the strength yet to actually go across them. I can relate to his frustrations.

We need to go grocery shopping in a major, major way.... so to avoid the McD's we found ourselves a pupu platter for lunch. B-Bee enjoyed attempting to blow out our little fire. The harder we blowed, the more it burned. Don't know what crystals were in there as fuel, but we had to just let them burn out. The waitress was amused when I pulled out my little baggie of crayons and colored the animals on the placemat with B-Bee.



Nellie woke up from carseat-nap in time for dessert. Usually this chinese restaurant brings out these delicious cut oranges, cold & juicy. Today they had watermelon slices, which the kids happily ate up.

Learning the Mishaps of T-Ball

B-Bee had his first T-Ball practice today. Think there may have been more parents on the field than kids, Daddy said there weren't many helicoptor-y parents though. Right off the bat B-Bee had his first collision while doing runs back and forth across the field. He ran head on into a little girl. They both fell down. She got up and kept running. He didn't know what to think and, nicely put, he was a little more sensitive. While getting bedtime kisses tonight he was sad and kept talking about how he didn't run. Told him it's okay and that we would try running again next time.

It was a lot for B-Bee to take in, on top of being tired already, and he had a hard time focusing and following directions. Then, he being our very literal child.... Well, when he was on 3rd base they told him to "run home". So he took off for the Exit. I'm sure that's a story he hopes I forget before he gets married someday.

Nellie watched her big brother with me from the sidelines, behind the plexiglass - decked out in her Twins onesie (B-Bee got to choose between Rockies or Twins, so Nellie matched him) and tutu. The cutest thing was the baseball on the butt of her onesie, especially since she does the "monkey crawl" all the time now. (She's SO close to walking!)

Summer Is HERE!

B-Bee's last day of school was yesterday, so we're off to start our summer fun today with the Children's Museum. This picture is from a year ago....only B-Bee because I was 39 weeks pregnant with Nellie. She'll turn 1 in 3 weeks.