Feeding giraffes and the right shoes

We went to the zoo today. Brian got to come with us. We fed giraffes. It was Ethan's special request. I let them do one thing that costs extra each time. Ethan was so funny, he would reach his hand out to the giraffe, but lean super far back into me at the same time.
Then we went to lunch and noticed that our Marshalls was having a moving sale, everything was 25% off. We went in and found some cool stuff. The best find was this:
Now you know Stephen LOVES yellow right? AND Mickey mouse, and ever sense I got my red Crocs they both want their own. Well we found these. They are real Crocs and the Disney ones. And they are YELLOW. AND they are his size, even a smidge big so he should be in them for a little bit yet. We had to get them, they were only about $10. Unfortunately none in Ethan's size. It's too bad, Ethan doesn't have any comfortable shoes. He has weird feet. I mean his sneakers are ok, no comfy sandals. So he just wears sneakers all the time.
This next photo of Stephen was taken by Ethan!
And that's what we did today. Well that and we went in the pool for a super long time, and we played a knights game with a fake sword and "quests" that Brian would set up for the boys to go on and look for different items, "An orange cat; A cow that sells ice cream; An elephant puzzle piece" We also ate popsicles. Then after the boys went to bed Brian went up to Jaguars Training Camp and I rearranged furniture such that I now have a sewing table in my craft room! I've been sewing a lot lately. I even ordered expensive Japanese fabric online! Fancy, Fancy! Now I'm gonna cook some cupcakes, we have company coming tomorrow and people seem to think I will provide cupcakes at all events. *wink*

Happy Donalds

Some shots of the boys playing at the playground at McDonalds. Today they played there for an hour. It's really not much more than a tunnel and a slide, but somehow it entertained my kids for a really long time. I brought a magazine and my camera, so I was down for whatever.
This is actually a really bad pic. Ethan has taken up shoving, hair pulling and hitting. So he's shoving Stephen in this pic.


And that's that.

Macro Ethan

Just some shots with the macro and no flash. These always come out great if my subject stays still. Mine rarely do, so share my joy that I got these great pics!

As promised, Zoo video

here are some videos from the zoo, they are all short, but I hope you enjoy them:

SnowCone Party!

Stephen and I had been planning this Snow Cone Party for months. It started when I saw the cutest snow cone accessories at Target. I really love Target, almost as much as Costco. Anyhow I asked Stephen if we should have a pool party with snow cones and he instantly fixed on the idea. He invited everyone he saw, even some complete strangers. Well today was the day. Our weather last night was horrid, really tons of rain and storms. But for just this morning we had perfect pool weather.

So I shaved up a pile of ice and the party was on. Only two families came, but sense we are Mormon that was plenty of people! haha, little Mormon joke thrown in there. And here are the photos:

Zoo and Baseball.

First I want to say I took VIDEO of the zoo too and hope to upload that soon. It takes forever, but I'll try to get it up today. Different post though.

So yesterday we went to the zoo AND a baseball game. How's that for a super Tuesday?

At the Zoo I showed Stephen the magic of squished pennies! He loves them. He wants to collect them. He did a bird one. *loves birds*

These are the friends we went with. Right to left here, Ethan, Stephen, Nathan, Dean. They are super great friends of ours. We are even going to plan a sleepover for them. SHEESH.
At our zoo there is a water play ground. This is the first time we have had our acts together to go in it. You have to have swim diapers and such.
It took Ethan a while to warm up to it, by the end though he didn't want to leave.
Merry-G0-Round as usual. Ethan on a tiger, because Ethan LOVES tigers. Stephen on an aligator because that's what he likes. Stephen makes me stand with him though so I couldn't get far enough away to take a great pic of it.
We rode the train too. Here is Stephen with Nathan.
And here is cute Ethie.
And here the older boys are having a bit of a scuffle.
So after all that we came home and the boys took naps. Then we got ready for Baseball! Tuesdays the special is "50cent Family Feast" all hot dogs, ice cream snacks and peanuts are 50cents. Course, no peanuts for us. But we had a feast anyhow.

See this ball Stephen has? It was the giveaway. We have FOUR of them now. But Brian is giving one to a friend of his and keeping one, so it's really just two, one for each of our boys.

Ethan's not totally sure how to use a bat.

More cute Ethan
They wanted so much to play with these big boys, but these kids were so older and "cool" that they didn't want to play, they just lounged for a bit, being lazy and such.
Here's Brian taking the boys for a walk to look for mascots.

In other news: Blankie is back. It was a pain, but it's done. :)

just some fun hopping

Here's the boys hopping like frogs

Sea World

We went to Sea World on Friday. It was stinking awesome! It was actually super hot and really humid and muggy, but we had a great time anyhow. The first thing we did was see the sting rays. Stephen is obsessed with them. We bought a tray of food and fed them, getting them to come over and touching their weird skin.

Dolphins had a HUGE line, so we didn't go up to where we could touch them on Friday. Brian and the boys went back on Saturday though, while I was at a stamp convention, and they bought fish and fed the fish to the dolphins.

We saw everything. They loved everything. It was so fun to see all those animals through the eyes of our children.

Ethan is terrified of sea lions! I think it's because they were constantly barking at us, they are loud ya know. Here's pics of that:

I loved this bird, there were lots like him, but he was the fluffiest one.
I was worried he was gonna fall out! I guess he knows what he's doing.

We saw sharks and that was great. Ethan said the sharks were "friendly, happy" I think because from under them in that shark tube you can go in it sorta looks like they are smiling. In any event I found it funny that he was afraid of sea lions but friendly about sharks. In with the sharks they have tons of fish too. Also it's cool in there. One thing about Sea World is it's cool in most of the exhibits so that is nice.

We saw penguins and puffins. Stephen calls puffins, "puffy penguins". It's really cold in there with those.

Then we looked at the killer whale. There was a show, but this is us at the little side viewing thing where you can go up to the glass. The boys were AMAZED with the whale. This particular whale is Tilly.

There is a section called Shamu's Happy Harbor. We spent a lot of time there. It's a lot of kiddy rides. Here is Ethan on the Merry-Go-Round.
And here are the guys on a spinning type ride.
Stephen on the Shamu rollercoaster. Super fun! Ethan wasn't tall enough for it though.
Here we are on some tilting back and forth boat type ride.
After we were leaving that area this girl came up. She was about 12. She had won in the carnival area two killer whales. She gave one to Stephen. He almost cried he was so happy. Ethan fell in love with it and Stephen gave it to Ethan. He does still refer to it as "My Killer Whale" but he lets Ethan hold it all the time.

At the Shamu show shortly after Ethan used his new killer whale to act out the tricks the big whales did.

We had some excitement in our show. A whale would not do it's tricks. It also would not leave the main tank! So they paused for a few minutes, but still no luck getting that whale out. So they said, "listen, this animal weighs 9,000 lbs. We can't make her do anything she doesn't want to do, show's over, come back later to the next show" And so we had to leave! haha.

Me and the kids did go back to the night show. Brian took that time to ride lots of rides while the lines were short. EVERYONE goes to the night Shamu show. I got totally lost getting back to where Brian was because it was almost time for fireworks and they close some of the paths off. It took me an hour to get to him! SHEESH.

So like I mentioned they went again on Saturday. Apparently they had an awesome time. I was at a rubber stamp convention meeting friends and stamping celebrities. After my stamp show Brian and the boys picked me up. We went to dinner with a friend of Brian's. After dinner the friend brought the boys this:

Can you see how big that killer whale is? It's HUGE. They love it to bits. Every morning Stephen gets up and goes potty in our bathroom. He brings his puppies *you know puppies right, go everywhere with us two of them, one pink one blue*. Well Sunday morning I wake up to him grunting. I look up and he's dragging this HUGE killer whale into the bathroom! HAHA.

One bad thing though. I left Ethan's blankie in the hotel! We actually really liked our hotel. It was nice and clean and in a good area and quiet and that's all we really ask of a hotel. So we were very pleased. Not so much anymore. It's TOTALLY my fault I left the blankie. They are not helping me get it back at all though. They won't ship it and charge us, they won't fill out UPS or FEDEX forms for me if I arrange to have UPS or FEDEX come to pick it up. Oh and UPS and FEDEX were total butts about that, apparently "go get my blanket and bring it to me, charge me whatever you want" is a service they only offer business customers. Sigh. SO I'm mailing an empty priority mail box to the hotel. Inside the box is a return label I printed off paypal that has our stuff to ship it back. I talked to the post office and this should work. The hotel "guesses" they can be bothered to tape the box back for me, as I can't mail an open box. SHEESH. I'll let you all know if/when we get blankie back. Meanwhile Ethan is crying himself to sleep for almost an hour a night. It is very sad.