Our 1rst Grader!!!

Lily is officially starting her first grade year! She carefully selected her outfit, hairstyle, lunch, and snack. She thoughtfully packed, and repacked her backpack. She gave me specific instructions on where to meet her at the bus stop. Our girl was ready! She left this morning with a little bit of nerves, but no tears (those tend to come for her a little later). We chatted happily during breakfast about how many kids she knows in her big, big, big first grade (she's in a team teaching situation with 2 teachers and 30+ kids). She admitted that she's going to miss me. Little does she know how much I'm going to miss her. I'm so excited for her and yet I'm a little sad that the time has ended where she spends most of her time with me. Everyone was right. It does go by too fast!

Back to the Zoo

With summer winding down, we decided to take advantage of the "cooler" weather and headed off to the zoo. It was well attended, but the crowd wasn't too bad. The kids really loved exploring the new polar/artic exhibit. I think our favorite animal was the artic fox who posed rather nicely for this picture.

Lily and Andrew had a fun playing in the inside ice exhibit. I found it very funny to see all these little kids pop up out of the play ice like little prarie dogs.

We stopped at a shady spot and enjoyed a picnic that was Canada goose free. For those who haven't visited the zoo lately, the geese are very fond of all the folks eating and aren't shy about getting really close. This tends to make both kids nervous and they were happy to be geese free today.

Next to the sharks, Andrew loved the manatees the best. I didn't know they currently were hosting 4 baby manatees. We were excited to see them but the "babies" were not particularily tiny weighing in at 500-600 pounds. Then both kids had fun climbing on the alligator statue.


It was a great day and I must admit with a little sadness that I realize Lily won't be able to do our typical fall zoo visits as she'll be in school full time. Where does the time go???

Hanging out with a few friends....

It's so nice that our kids have so many kids in the neighborhood to hang out with!

Our week in review

We've had a nice week with little goings on. Some highlights included going out and celebrating my parents 47th Anniversary with them.



We rescued a baby bird that got blown out of it's nest in those crazy storms.

I'm happy to report we got the baby bird safely back into the nest without touching it with our hands and the momma bird was sitting on the nest 20 minutes later.

Finally, we went down to the state house and had a early birthday picnic with Bill. The kids loved it, the weather was perfect and we enjoyed a concert on the lawn.