Play, play, and more play. . .

So a bittersweet start to the day. As Noah and Lydia and I were leaving for church, Jeff was heading back to Miami, hopefully not to become re infected with whatever he got last time. But despite this, we had a good day. No, I would actually say a great day! After a quick trip to Costco and Target (may I brag, not a whine was heard about toys or samples other than in jest by me....) we were back at home to jump into social activities. Lydia was met at the car door by an old friend who was across the street visiting her Grampa and Noah was off to skateboard with his friend from across the street. Two hours later, Lydia said goodbye to her friend just in time to welcome another, her friend from church and her mom (MY playdate!). They had a wonderful time. Lydia's friend suffers from a form of musculardystrophy so attention had to be paid to the pathways around our house, to be sure that her special chair could make it around. Lydia did a fantastic job both steering and looking out for obstacles. The girls were all OVER the house playing, while her mom and I compared war stories

No sooner were they off and out of the house than we recieved a call from friends down the street with a request to come over and play for a little bit, so it was back to her room with her friend and back to the kitchen table for me and mine! 

Top the evening off with some pizza (and a beer, whew this socializing is some tiring stuff!) and that makes for a pretty darn nice day! Right, Noah?

A look back

Trying to organize my pictures on my computer and ran across some of these pictures that brought back fond memories....

Lydia 2006 and 2010

Mac 2006 (he took the picture of himself, upside down).

He's a green belt now!

Below is my absolute favorite of, guess who?

YUP! SOOOOOOUPER Ben!

   And then, of course, there is Noah.....

And then my idea of a Perfect Family.....

All Zoo to Me

So we finally put to good use the family membership we received from Gramma Kathy for the Point Defiance Zoo. The weather was supposed to be nice today. How many years of living here will it take me to learn that "nice" is a relative term? Today it meant that it wasn't POURING rain, just sprinkling on and off. But it was still a fun day. We met Gary and Annette with Mac, Ben, Sammi and Gabe while we were there, long enough to eat lunch together and get an up close meeting with an owl (no pictures of course). Favorites included the Meerkats,

the sea horse (in this case, the Leafy Sea Dragon),

the aquarium inhabitants,

 and then my camera ended up in my backpack and became to big of  a pain to get out.  But we also greatly enjoyed the walrus (HUGE!) and the gibbons, who, (dang my camera) were very into the photo op, posing and re posing and in no way shy of the cameras. Even the porcupines kept in good view, guess the rain made the covered view stations a little more appealing. We even got close up to the Sumatran tigers and Asian elephants. I am always amazed at the opportunities we end up with when we go to that zoo! For me, today was like a virtual pet store, I wanted ALL of the meerkats, thought the otters would be a good addition to our little duck pond, and wished that I could take the Barn Owl home just for the beauty and entertainment factor (although the mouser option was a plus as well).

Miami

Waiting for the bus. No pansy car rentals for us (parking was a FORTUNE and apparently the lots were magnets for drug deals gone wrong that week). Gotta tell ya, though, the public transportation in Miami is not all that bad, and you meet some really interesting (read, Interesting) people.

My attempt at sand art.

Some of the funkiest seagulls. . .

Classic South Beach. Classic crappy picture by Katie.....trust me, the colors were incredible.

Nice furniture, right? All molded plastic. ONE PIECE, side tables, headboard and bed. The chair with the TV is all one piece too. You try to sit on it and you end up sliding right onto the floor....

Another fresh start

To catch you up, well, January is pretty much done and gone, in memory as well as days. February started out with our annual "business trip" to Miami. Each year I am lucky enough to be able to join Jeff at the Miami International Boat Show where his office hosts a booth to hawk their wares. We look forward to a day on the beach and everyone else looks forward to making fun of our sunburns for the rest of the week. Well the joke was on everyone this year, there was no sun! Or very little of it, and what sun there was wasn't exactly accompanied by sun tanning temperatures. Other than freezing our tookuses off, though, Jeff was able to do some really good business, I was able to keep the booth from burning down or the business from going under for the few instances that I was left alone, and we got to eat a lot of good food. Unfortunately, some of that good food may have been Jeff's undoing in the final days as he picked up some sort of intestinal disturbance which he is still recovering from. For me, the best part was coming home and hearing about how wonderful the kids were. Now, I am not fooled, I know that my kids were apparently no where to be seen, apparently picked up by some unsuspecting aliens or something, but my parents were fooled and I am not one to burst their bubble. Thank you to whoever it was that lent out their doppelgangers for the week.