When you give a boy some water . . .

When I gave a Elijah a pail of water did I know that he would play in the water and "wash his hands"?
Well, yes I did. What else is there to do with a big pail of water?

When I gave Elijah a pail of water did I know that he would then proceed to get his whole body wet from the neck down?
Well, I should have considering this is what always happens no matter how much water he is given. But hey, that is why we are outside. If only I would remember to take his clothes off BEFORE this happens!

When I gave Elijah a pail of water did I know that he would get down and drink the water with his hands and also by sticking his head in the bucket?
Well sure, this is Elijah's trademark move when dealing with water. He has been pulling moves like this since he was old enough to sit alone in the tub.

At least this time it was nice clean water straight from the tap and not water that has been standing outside for awhile with bugs and leaf litter floating in it. That would be gross, who would ever let their child do that? Not me for sure! : )

After I gave Elijah a large pail of water and let him "wash his hands", get all his clothes wet, and drink the water did I know that he would then bend down, lap up some water with his mouth, stand up, and then go "Ooowwwwwwww" howling like a wolf (not once, not twice, but over and over again)?
No, that one I had not seen before.
Where do these kids get this stuff?

Zoo

The other day we ventured over to the Como Zoo for some warm weather animal fun. We had fun going through the conservatory too. Elijah has been into flowers lately, so he had fun learning there are more than just dandelions out there. We were also happy to find out that the Japanese Gardens was open, so we walked through that also.

Elijah was looking at all the coins in the bottom of this pond.

We were looking in the dark water for the coi fish. Every once in awhile they would jump out of the water. Elijah so kindly told me that the nymph statue was in fact "mommy". Thank you Eli for that nice compliment!

I wanted a cute picture of Elijah near the dahlias (is that right???), he was more interested in the handicap elevator. It turned out cute anyway though. :)

Elijah enjoyed the Japanese Gardens. He even showed off his balancing/giving-mommy-and-daddy-a-heart-attack skills by running off in front of us and crossing the little stone bridge all by himself, and no, it did not have a railing!

Here is Jon helping him to safely cross the other stone bridge. Phew!

Welcome Baby Kaiser!

I have a new little nephew born to my sister Kristy and her husband Drew (and big sister Lilly) yesterday.

Welcome Malachi Andrew Kaiser!

We were so excited to meet him. Elijah and Evan love getting new cousins (hint, hint)!

Thank you God . . .

For all of you who were trying to guess the mystery foods in the previous post the answer is:

GREEN BEANS & PEACHES!

Congratulations to those of you who knew the answer, you have won the satisfaction of knowing your baby food!

So, for the last week our so we have been asking Elijah if he wants to thank God for anything special at bedtime to go along with the normal bedtime prayer. This has become what he calls "Specials". Usually it ends up as a recap of all the highlights of the day. Thank you God for the park, playing with friends, riding in Daddy's car, for eating lunch, etc. Tonight's prayer went something like this:

"Thank you God for playing in the nursery. Thank you for dinner. Thank you for cheese. Thank you for BOOGERS."

Yes folks, that's my son.

Color Me Full

We are truck'n away on our solid foods. Evan has definately taken a liking to many of the new flavors. Guess what yummy foods he ate that gave him the green and orange smile.

Oh the weather outside is frightful, but a few weeks ago it was so delightful . . .

So even though the weather has been a little crummy this last week, believe it or not it was fairly nice a few weeks ago, even downright hot. Do you remember these days? Think way back . . .

We were busy having fun in the great outdoors.

One day we took a walk around Normandale Lake:





Another day we went to a park here in Jordan:







So we are anxiously looking forward to the next day that we will be able to have some family fun outside!

Landscape Arboretum

Last Thursday the boys and I went with Grandma and Papa Rickabaugh and Kristy and Lilly to the Landscape Arboretum. It was a free day so we took advantage of it. I was happy to find out that they had quite a bit of things for kids to do. We first went to the kids building were they had a few displays for the kids to play with and a "Please Touch" greenhouse.


Here is Elijah in the greenhouse with an orange - though actually green (there were orange ones further up the tree).


Here is cousin Lilly hamming it up for the camera.


Evan decided he wanted a go at picking an orange.

Outside they had a natural play area. They had little "stations" made of natural materials where the kids could pretend to do different things.


Here is Papa making some "lunch" for Elijah and Lilly.

Grandma, Evan, and Lilly are playing with the pine cone dollhouse/tree house.

We then drove along the 3 Mile Drive to the Maze. This was a lot of fun. They had a smaller kids maze in the front that connected to the bigger maze. Elijah and I went in together and actually got turned around a few times. We ended up having to cut through some of the bushes to get back to the front entrance.

All in all we had a lot of fun and Elijah was pretty wiped out by the time we got home!