Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Spontaneous Trip to San Diego

Jake came home around noon on Friday with a crazy idea to get out of town. He has been working very, extremely hard for months and months and needed to get away. So, we very quickly planned some rooms in Vegas and San Diego and packed up and were out of town by 6:00 pm. (If you know us, you know we are not the spontaneous trip-taking kind, so we are very proud of ourselves that we were able to let go and...go). We drove to Vegas Friday night and stayed the night there. Then got up that morning and took off for San Diego. We spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday in the San Diego area and drove all the way home Tuesday (good driving Jake and good job kids for putting up with carseats and seatbelts all day long!!)

This is us at the San Diego Zoo Wild Animal Park.

This is Jake trying to convince Zach to reach out and touch the sting rays at Sea World. I think the word STING rays probably doesn't help. With my future kids, I'll call them ray fish...

This is me and the boys after the shark exhibit. There is Zach doing his best shark mouth. Luckily for all of us, he doesn't have as many teeth as the guy behind us.

Cute Cade on Dad's shoulder.

Most of his time, however, was actually spent right here in the stroller. I don't think he minded too much.

Zach makes a good orangutan baby, huh?

Elephants are always the animal Zach wants to see first when we go to the zoo.

The polar bear exhibit at the San Diego Zoo is really cool. Zach loved climbing on the silver statues. He was the only kid that got to the top of the tall one (thanks Dad!)

He liked the polar bears so much that the souvenir he chose is a little polar bear named Arca. She is his "very best friend." See how nicely he carries her and takes care of her? He always tucks her into her own bed before he goes to bed.

On the way to San Diego Zach watched The Lion King 2 or 3 times, so the whole trip he was looking for animals from the show. He found Pumba many times, Timon, Zazoo, and hyenas. We never saw a baboon, which disappointed him, but when he saw this lion, he called him Simba. We almost met the whole cast...

And this is Cade's impression of a pouncing lion...

And, of course, we played at the beach.

We all got our feet wet, even Cade, who cried when the cold water hit his feet. Poor guy!

Sand castles and "lakes"

Zach had a blast playing in the sand and water!

While we were all down at the water, I left the diaper bag open sitting back with our stuff and a seagull pulled everything out of it and stole our snacks! Sneaky thief!

On the way home, we asked Zach what he liked best about the trip. He said the park, which might mean the Wild Animal Park, but probably means the park in St. George we stopped at for lunch on the way home. Then we asked him what else he liked and he said, "toilets." We did use a lot of different toilets... Glad we could go create good memories of toilets as a family.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Dressed for Work

2 days in a row Zach went and got himself dressed for work. The first day he just added the belt, hat and tie to his outfit. The second day he changed out of PJs into a swimsuit (no shirt), flip flops, hat, belt, and was trying to figure out how to put the clip-on tie on his bare chest. I suggested he put on a shirt so the tie would stay on.

Thank you,

Thank you very much!

(He's bowing, if you can't tell)

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

It's Time to Build a Word, Let's Build it, Let's Build it Now!

Zach likes to watch a TV show on PBS called Word World. Everything in Word World is shaped like the letters that make up their word. They put letters together to make a word and it turns into that object. They call it "building words." Even the characters are shaped with the letters that make them up. See the following link for a video clip by YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWx8AlvEAB4&feature=PlayList&p=4C7F6891BEDED834&playnext=1&index=12



So, he found this alphabet floor puzzle the other day and pulled it out. He pulled all the letters out and lined them up. He said he was building a word. After a while he asked me to build a word, specifically "rope." So, I got the letters together and told him they spell "ROPE" but he wasn't satisfied. He said, "No, Mom, build it." I said, "I did, Zach, that's how you spell ROPE." And he looked disappointed. I think he thought that there was a small chance that the letters would magically turn into a rope. And his unsuspecting mother crushed that hope. How sad!

Yeah, We Just Built a Word, We Built it, We Built it!!

My First Tooth

Today I noticed that Cade has cut his first tooth: his bottom front left! I was wondering why he started crying yesterday with a toy in his mouth. I guess I know now. Bring on the biting!


A little more about Cade at 6 months old:
He rolls like crazy. He prefers laying on the floor to being in his exer-saucer because he likes to roll back and forth and back and forth. It's really cute. Maybe he'll crawl someday... He weighs about 22 pounds and has now moved into 18 month sized clothing. He's a big boy. He still doesn't want to eat solids, just breast milk for this boy. He LOVES his big brother. He laughs more at Zach than anyone. And he is a screamer. His preferred method of communication is shrieking. It's cute and very loud! We love you, Cade!