Backyard Fun

Brother Love

Beautiful Weather

Cal's been cheesing it up for me lately.

Isaac knows how to scale this wall all by himself and then he goes down that twirly colorful tube slide (in the background) sometimes head-first.

Happy Birthday, Jess!

We can hardly believe that Jess turned 29 today. Sigh.

Sammy and Freddie stayed with us for the morning while Jess got some much needed me-time at the mall. Cal still doesn't understand why she wanted to spend her birthday alone. Ha.

We finger painted for a total of 17 minutes and then played outside for about two hours. It was finally sunny and semi-warm! Here's some photos of us arting (and one of Freddie eating- because he's so dang cute).

In order to get this shot of Sammy and to get the next one of Cal, I had to give them a little speech on how saying "cheese" doesn't cover it. They have to look at the camera and smile, too. It worked. I should totally work at JC Penny Portraits.



Isaac was less than thrilled with this experience.

The Minnesota Zoo again

In honor of Mado's birthday, we went to the Minnesota Zoo with Laura, Mado and Elias (her babysittee) and Sarah, Atticus and Dietrich. All these photos were taken by either Sarah or Laura since I am a forgetful lady.

I do not understand this picture. Cal doesn't do this face. But it's hilarious.

This is a kimodo dragon. I was just telling Laura what I was reading about them, "They bite their prey and inject poison into it so they eventually die. The kimodo dragon sniffs it out with their tongue and finds it." While I was reading this, the KD was flicking it's tongue in and out. Then Laura yelled, "Look, Leah" as it was chomping down on a bird and swallowed it whole. Ewwwwww.
Sarah's photography skills:
The older kids liked riding in the wagon. Laura hauled them around.
Birthday Girl
We got to watch a dolphin training and everyone loved it. Even tired Isaac, who will never sit still, settled down once he saw the dolphins.
I've taken other moms' advice by dressing my boys in matching obnoxious colors. :) Thanks for the t-shirts, Mom!

The boys

Not the greatest picture- they climbed in here together and this is how we found them. They love eachother so much.

Minnesota Zoo/ Ergo Carrier

We went to the Minnesota Zoo today because of the amazing weather. This zoo is sort of unique- it doesn't have a lot of exotic animals like giraffes and elephants. But it's really amazing- lots of space for the animals. They have a Farm Babies exibit right now and we spent most of our time there. You will see a lot of fake animals in these pictures. I'm not sure how that happened.

Here we are going through the cow area. I had Isaac strapped to the front of me with this Ergo carrier, which I got a couple weeks ago. I love it!


Isaac and Cal loved the tractors.
So did Eric.

Calvin climbed up into the fake chicken coop and stuck his head out of this hole. He didn't know that there was a painted chicken on the other side until we looked at the pictures on the way home. He was pretty amazed.
More fake chickens...

Isaac crashed as we were walking back to the indoor tropical area. We strapped this hood onto him to hold his head in place. Isn't this thing awesome? Eric kept saying "Poor little dude." But I was sort of jealous of him.