Our Home Away From Home

Ahhh... The zoo! As comfortable as an old pair of slippers. Getting an annual membership was the best thing we did this year. By the end of April we had already gotten our money worth. And Emily has a crazy affection for animals of all varieties. I know by now everyone is getting sick of seeing pictures from the zoo, but too bad! These are from our latest visit. We always start off near the barnyard animals. Emily loves getting up close and personal with the sheep, horses, and ducks. Duck was actually her 4th word ever. Dada, Mama, Dog, then duck last summer.

And some sweet kisses for our feathered friends.

Not sure where she gets her love of snakes, but it is certainly not from her mother! Before she came around I would skip this exhibit all together. But she LOVES the "nakes."

Now that we are zoo experts we have the schedule down to a science. The newest area, Teton Trek, has a large picnic area out front with a large Geyser. We eat lunch here, then at 1pm they feed the grizzly bears. At 1:30pm is the sea lion show next door and then they feed the polar bears at 2pm. Then we go home. Perfecto!

This trip however we stayed a little longer. May through July the zoo has a special exhibit called "Birds & Bees." It is an open air cage where you can go in and feed the birds. The only animal I like less than snakes is birds, but I sucked it up and took Emily to feed the birds. They give you this stick with bird feed attached and the birds will come and land on your stick and nibble. I still contend the stick should be much longer than 8 inches, but alas. Thank goodness that this is a still picture so you can't tell how bad my hand was shaking. Did I mention I hate birds!

Emily was underwhelmed, especially for the amount of courage it took on my part.

But she did love to swing the sticks around. Needless to say no birds landed on her sticks.

And after 4 hours at the zoo it was a very quiet ride home.

Post afternoon nap we went to see our favorite animals, the 3 horses in our neighborhood.

And that's the life of a stay-at-home mom!

Father's Day minus Dave

Ok, Ok, so I know it's not ideal, but last weekend I took Emily to Montevallo to see Pop and MeMaw without Dave. Boo! :( Dave had just hired some new people at work and was out of town this week for three days at a conference for work. So he decided he needed to spend a few hours Friday night and Saturday at the office. Since Emily hadn't seen Aunt Leslie, Hayden, Natalie or Ellie since January we thought at least her and I should go. The Wolfe clan lives in LaGrange, GA and it's about 7 hours from Memphis. So we only see them when we meet in Montevallo. We left early Friday to make it down in time for afternoon swim. We had a blast! Late Friday night Aunt Leigh, Uncle Dill Pill (AKA Dillon) and Baby Rowan arrived. All the other kids were already asleep so Ro-Ro got a lot of attention!

Saturday morning we decided if we were going to go to the park we ought to do it early before it got too hot. Well, no such thing in the south in the summer time. But we braved the heat anyway for an hour or so before we hit the pool.

Hayden may be the best big brother in the world and he's a pretty good big cousin too! He will turn 6 next week! I can't believe it.

Here's a group shot of everyone watching these crazy teens use a rope swing to splash in 3 feet of water. Emily kept running down towards the bank and I had to keep heading her off.
Emily posing for mommy on the bridge.
My little day-dreamer!

Pop with his girl on the swings. This lasted about 5 minutes because the seats were SO hot!

When we got back we quickly jumped in the pool and literally as soon as we hit the water the thunder rolled. Hmmm... we waited it out for about 10 minutes but then retreated to the a/c for nap time to let the storm pass. After an entire house nap, the three oldest kiddos helped MeMaw make a cake for Pop. Too cute!

One thing I noticed more and more this trip was the middle child syndrome. It was kind of a tough spot because Emily is over 2 years younger than Natalie and 4 years younger than Hayden. But she is 9 very critical months older than Ellie and 1 year older than Rowan. Since she is walking, and talking she tended to get lumped in with the big kids during meal time even though we are still very much still in a booster seat at home strapped in. She didn't want to be held like the babies, but she wasn't safe to roam the house like the big kids. For instance, while I was in the shower the other bathroom door was left open. When I came out I found Emily sitting in the bathroom sink, 3 feet off the ground with both faucets running. With 5 other adults in the house she managed to sneak away and use the step stool to climb up. But she enjoys all her cousins, big or little. Here she is playing with Ellie.

And here is Ellie stealing apples from Emily's tray.

After everyone was well rested and the storm had passed we managed to get in the pool. It was a BLAST! Below is my fav pic from the weekend. I caught Pop throwing Hayden mid arch!

Here is some video of my baby girl jumping off the side of the pool!

Aunt Leigh with Em and Ro-Ro.

The little love bugs, Rowan (left) and Ellie (right).

Natalie posing for the camera. She's good at that!

I managed to get a pic with my girl too!

Tickle! Tickle!

Rowan and Ellie playing together. Looks like Ellie is going to have curly hair like her big sis.

Look out Angelina Jolie! Check out these lips! And maybe a little snot. :)

Dillon with his little girl and big cousin Natalie.

But never fear... I was a good wife. Saturday night around bedtime I decided to drive home while Emily was asleep so her Daddy could kiss her first thing on Father's Day morning. Since I had a nap that day I was feeling fine. Emily was out after the first hour and I listened to podcast sermons from my church all the way home. We arrived home safely at 12:30am Sunday morning with big kisses from Daddy and spent all day Sunday as a family! Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there!

Horses, Swings, and Popsicles!

This weekend was the Germantown Charity Horse Show. Emily stinking LOVES horses and normally we just stalk our neighbor's horses, walking very slowly past their front yard several times a week. So when Dave mentioned this opportunity we couldn't pass it up even though it was a stifling 95 degrees Saturday. We went between major events so there was no crowd and not really much going on which turned out to be perfect for our little bit, also free! We got to sit up close as the juniors jumped in the south ring. Like mere feet away from her.

After watching a few of the junior events we wandered over to the stables to see if we could pet the horses. Oh boy! Did we ever! The few people in the stables were eager to let us pet their horses. Some even offered to take them out of the stable for us. Dave said this is because most people are trying to sell a horse or five at these events. So he cautioned me about even joking about wanting to take one home. It was mighty tempting because these horses were some of the most beautiful I've ever seen!

After some coaxing Emily even pet one herself!

Then before we could leave we had to stop at the playground for a few minutes. Emily loves to swing. Some older boys next to her were shocked she could swing by herself. Oh ya, I told them, she's a big girl! PS. That's who she's glancing over at in the picture. Oh Lord!

After 2 hours in the blazing sun we were anxious to get home and in the pool. Well, unfortunately our fancy smanshy Wal-Mart pool had been sitting out a little too long and was a nice shade of green with lots of little floaties in it. So we ran around in the hose out front. Just when you thought we couldn't get any more redneck...we did! But she had a blast and a Popsicle!

When the popsicle ran out she was a tad disappointed.

Oh, PUUUHlease Dad! What a face!

And Now it's Nap time!

Another great weekend at home with our little family. We are really enjoying our time together and are so thankful for these opportunities. Emily is growing up so fast, hence the 8,000 pictures. These memories are so precious to us. Thank you for allowing us to share with you!

The Marvolous Mundane

Here are a few pointless updates and some pics of everyday around our house. A big development for us that might seem small to  most people is that we have graduated from the highchair and are now using a booster seat at the big table. Emily is growing up so fast!

One of our favorite things to do is walk up to the square and have lunch at the silver caboose. And every week (at least most weeks) we get together with my friend Courtney who I use to work with. Last Friday her mom brought her baby girl Melora to join us for lunch at our fav spot. Melora just turned one April 27 and her and Emily are good friends.

Forecast for Memphis: HOT! It has pretty much been 89-94 degrees for the past 2 weeks here in Memphis so we splurged for the big pool at Wal-Mart. So here is how our Saturday went...

Then we played on the swing.

So that was our weekend. Non pictured events include Saturday date night with daddy. We went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Bama play baseball and then Sunday was church, naptime, and small group at our house.