A morning at the park

It's been pretty windy over the last week so we haven't been outside much. With no wind and temps in the high 60's, today was the perfect day to get outside!
Every trip to the park starts with the swings. I think your foot getting stuck in the foot holes is a sure fire sign your too big for the baby swings:

Trying to decide which slide:
This one looks great!
Creative sliding is always more fun:

Mackenzie found a few friends at the park, so I was banished to the bench while she trailed after them. There was a little girl that Mack really wanted to play with. After several attempts to engage her in play, the little girls brother told Mackenzie that his little sister only speaks Spanish. Mackenzie thought hard for a second before she asked the girl " Hola! Tienes hambre?" ( Hi! Are you hungry?) The little girl shook her head and off they ran together! Thank goodness for "High Five" magazine and their spanish conversation section. My four years of high school spanish seem distant but it's fun to relearn what I've forgotten with Mackenzie.

" No dogs!"

Mackenzie can't decide whether to love or like Ellie. On one hand, she can't stand chasing Ellie around, trying to retrieve her favorite toy from her puppy grip. On the other hand, she is fun to lay on and cuddle with and is a reasonably good fetch partner. What's a girl to do? But for the most part, the older Ellie gets, the better they get along. In fact, 9 times out of 10, when asked who her best friend is, Mack answers " Ellie!"

That's why it caught us by surprised the other day when Mike and I were talking about how we thought one of those wooden decorative signs would fit well in our living room. When we began talking about what the sign would say, Mackenzie piped in from the other room " No dogs!" This was funny timing since she'd spent fifteen minutes that morning pretend driving Ellie back to the shelter....

Bump watch 2011/2012

I have had several requests for a picture of my " baby bump" . I am pretty shy about showing it off since I don't consider my " bump" to be the cute " can't resist touching it" kinda belly but , because I love you, here it is:
16 weeks:


Everyone said that, after the first baby, you grow so much faster with those that follow. I'd say so! I feel so much more pregnant than I really am. Thankfully, not much weight has really accompanied this belly yet. Our little bean continues to jump and flip around happily. Just 15 more days before our " BIG" 18 week ultra sound !

Catching up- the Denver zoo

We visited the Denver Zoo a few weeks ago ( just before we got hit with a big snow storm!) and since I took the pictures on my phone, I forgot about them until now! Here's a glimpse at our day:

We didn't plan on going to the zoo "this day" ( as Mackenzie says) but our other plans to visit the Cars characters at the Children's Museum fell through when the line for the event stretched for at least a half mile outside of the museum. We improvised and ended up spending a beautiful fall day at the zoo! Mack had been waiting to go and was so happy to be there. The Denver zoo is HUGE and we had planned on just doing half of it since we had plans later in the day . We didn't know that Mackenzie would go at top speeds through the whole zoo, not wanting to miss a thing! I, in my first trimester exhaustion/nausea, lagged behind a few exhibits.Even still, what a fun day!
Mack and Mike were both impressed looking at the jaguars up close:
The Denver Zoo has tons of peacocks that have free rein of the entire place. Mack really wanted to feed them her pine cone but you can only get so close to these pretty birds before they take off in the other direction:
" The top of the world!" Mack exercising her climbing legs at the kids play area:
With all the mature trees dressed in their fall colors, I was so sad to have left my big camera at home. Next year I'll be sure to remember it.

Caught ya!

Ellie isn't very good at hiding when she's gotten into the trash. The first clue would be the mess she leaves behind , the second would be this:
Come on, Ellie! The first rule of " trash removal" is to EAT the evidence. Leaving it hanging out of your mouth seems a bit cocky. At least she looks acceptably guilty in the mugshot.

When education backfires

Ok so, a little background. For the last year, Mack has been really wanting to read. So we've been sounding out words and playing I-spy with words when were out or reading together. She's gotten really good and can read a crazy amount of words. So it wasn't long before she started wanting to write the words herself in thank you cards and those types of things. She'd tell me what she wanted to say and I'd spell it out as she wrote. Now she likes to sound out the words and write them herself. Usually, this consists of " I love you" or writing the persons name or random words.

Fast forward to yesterday. Mack decides she wants to make a card for papa . She knows how to write papa and I assumed she was going to write " I love you, Papa" or " I (heart) U , Papa" and sign her name. So I hand her a pen and a few minutes later, she returns to me, card in hand and laughing hysterically. This is what I read:
Yes, indeed, that does say " I love you, Poop-o " . She was just so proud and tickled by her own cleverness that I ALMOST didn't give her the talk about how calling someone, esp your grandfather " poop-o" might hurt their feelings. Even still, I couldn't contain my amusement, especially when she laughed until she couldn't catch her breath.

Something I'm even more proud of :
Mack has mastered sequencing:
For this one,we sounded out the words together the first time and then she did this page all alone:
We are really loving the Mead brand preschool books. We'll be on the hunt for more since this one is almost done!

Simply exhausted......