Thursday, July 9, 2009

a trip to the toledo zoo

every summer the boys and i take a trip to the detroit zoo with the wood family and any others that want to come along. and almost every year that i tell people we are going to the zoo i am asked "have you been to the toledo zoo? it is SO much better!" so after last year i decided that this year we would head to ohio for our annual zoo trip.
this year we not only went with the woods (minus andrew) but jenn and rainah, and nancy and isaac gregg were able to join us as well.
as much as we don't like ohio, we sure did love one of their zoo's! their exhibits were so much better than the detroit zoo. it seemed like we were much closer to the animals and they even had elephants! something we've been missing for years at the detroit zoo.
we spent the whole day there and wrapped it up with a train ride and then a ride on the carousal. the kids all seemed to have a great time and were worn out by the time we got back in the cars. all of them fell asleep pretty quickly once we started driving. all except isaac and cordelia who apparently wanted to keep the party going.
once we got back home, we ate some dinner and then mom and dad came over to celebrate my birthday before we started packing for our weekend in....ohio. i'm spending far too much time in that state.
for those wanting to take a trip to the zoo, i highly suggest you drive a little further and visit the toledo zoo. we'll most likely be doing it again next year.



the first of many impossible photo ops:
watching the sleeping polar bear:






talan, hayden, ellanore, rainah and henry doing some monkey watching:





how much they weigh in monkey:



talan tried to tickle the gorilla:
another impossible photo op:
cordelia, talan, henry, hayden, ellanore, rainah and isaac:
rainah did not care that the baby monkey was sitting on it's mama's lap. she was going to sit there as well:

nancy and isaac:
the gang:
beautiful butterflies:
i believe hayden is making antenna:




giant crabs:
more giant crabs. how fitting:
as soon as hayden saw the sharks he ran over and said "mom! this is your BEST birthday EVER!!":

jellyfish:

this giant bee was after talan:
hayden and talan both looked a lot, but would never actually stick their heads in for a picture:


the hippo exhibit is SO much better than detroit's:
elephants at a zoo?! wha?!:




cordelia and talan:
he wore about 4 different pairs of sunglasses throughout the day. almost all went on upside down:
hayden stopped breathing for a bit and ellanore tried to help:


eventually henry came over to see what he could do:
rainah, henry, talan, hayden and ella:


hayden wanted to make us stay until the penguins jumped in the water, but we eventually persuaded him that they would not be swimming for awhile as they had just eaten:

takin' a much needed water break:
train ride through africa:





the carousal:



talan, myself and hayden:
nancy and isaac gregg:
cordelia, heather, henry and ellanore wood:
rainah and jenn:
after a long and exhausting day, hayden somehow got henry to scratch his back for a bit. don't know how i didn't get in on that action:


Wednesday, July 8, 2009

putt-putting fun

to wrap up the 4th of july weekend, we decided to take the boys out to play a round of putt-putt golf on sunday evening. hayden LOVES to putt-putt and we decided to even let talan have a try. turns out, he loves it too.
dave, of course, ended up winning. and hayden, of course, tried fighting it saying that HE should have won since he had the HIGHEST score. (we obviously didn't keep track of the thousands of strokes talan took.)
either way, we all still enjoyed ourselves.


















white trash 4th of july

this year we had a pretty lame 4th of july weekend. mom and dad were away and jenn's watching rainah, justica was gone as usual, and our good friend tina left town to hang out on a boat.
the thing i've found with the 4th of july is that most places do their fireworks before or after the actual 4th. so come the 4th, there really aren't any firework displays to go see.
thankfully we live in redford. home of the do-it-yourself-firework-display. something that happens not just on the 4th of july, but pretty much all year round.
after a long day of yard work we were still burning wood from the trees dave had trimmed. so that evening, we brought out all of the s'more making ingredients, pulled out some sparklers and pop-it's that i've had sitting around for years and hung out in our backyard.
talan missed out on the fun as i put him to bed before any of the events got started. but hayden was quite excited to roast marshmallows. he loves to roast 'em but doesn't much care for eating them. he does love to eat the chocolate, graham crackers and cookies though.
it finally started getting dark and we showed hayden what sparklers are all about. eventually every other neighbor within a 3 mile radius started their firework shows and hayden was more then happy to hang out in the back yard watching them all.
we were able to burn all of the wood, eat some s'mores, let hayden play with fire and even watch some fireworks. what a 4th of july!

roasting some marshmallows in the VERY hot fire:


the lazy man's s'more. i think it's so much better then a real one:
this was the only bite he took. "it's too sticky":


hayden has recently mastered the art of crossing his eyes. awesome:
time to play with fire!: