Kudos to anyone who actually reads this entire post! I thought my previous record of 30-some pictures was impressive, if not a bit overboard, but hey...we DID treat this week like an actual family vacation so 40+ pictures seems reasonable. Brian snapped over 80 pictures at the zoo alone! I edited as much as I could :)

The past 10 days have been FANTASTIC! We started last weekend with the rock band party (as per my previous post). Monday began our true family time. We could not have asked for a more beautiful week. Until today (Monday, Memorial Day) we had no rain and very nice temps. We started with a trip to the zoo. Tuesday was a project day for Brian. He and his dad fixed our sinking back porch steps by re-leveling them. On Wednesday, we went back to the Arboretum. Thursday, another project day...our garage is finally dry-walled - go daddy! On Friday, we attended the re-opening of the Aquarium "Ocean-arium" and new children's area before heading home, cooking up some steak sandwiches and hosting our weekly TGIF party. Saturday and Sunday were hang-around the house days. Brian cooked for us on the grill Saturday night and then we had a BBQ with the backyard bunch (three of the 7 TGIF families) on Sunday. Today, we barely left our couch!! Everyone was a bit on the cranky side from having so much fun and because we're losing daddy tomorrow. The excellent news is that the NYC project is probably over so Bri will be home for, or shortly after, dinner every night this week. YEAH! This past weekend also included lots of fire-side hang outs after the kids went to bed...it's not even "summer" yet, but it feels like we're in full swing!

Pictures from our week:

Brady in the stroller at the Zoo on Monday (5/18). I inherited this hat from my sister in law. It says "mom rules"
The most interesting animal thing we saw was this camel playing soccer with a giant ball. I don't think I took pictures, but the Dinosaur exhibit was AWESOME. They have something like 15 life-sized, remote-controlled dinosaurs in a special display right now and it's sooo cool!
Gotta love a toddler who just strikes out on his own! Look at him go - doesn't even care that we're not behind him! :)

Every time we go on a family outing, I feel like I get all these adorable "daddy and sons" photo ops. Aren't they sweet?! (despite the large group outing in front of them wearing the searing yellow shirts...as you can see....we went green on our boys for the zoo).

The boys check out the penguins

We bought tickets to go to the Hamill Family Play Zoo...this awesome house-enclosed area just for kids. We had never been in there before and it was SO much fun!!! We started with some face painting (you have to do it yourself). I made Aiden a Leopard (I meant to do lion, but he insisted he was a leopard when I was done) and Logan a Cheetah (again...I did a lion...and then he had me add spots).

You can dress up like a zoo keeper and clean the lemur area (the actual lemurs are behind a glass wall....but...

There was a Brady-sized lemur wandering around the play area!

Thankfully, daddy caught the Brady-lemur and gave it some hugs!

Don't feed the animals....oops...too late!

The boys played with puppets...

...watered plants in the green house with spray bottles (a dream come true for my trio of spray-bottle lovers!)

...and then went outside for an interactive story

Then we (me, Logan & Aiden) rode on the carousel while Brian procured snow cones - their first ever - HUGE hit!

They usually don't let you take animals home with you, but these ones seemed unwilling to stay in the zoo-provided cages...and they're real cute so we let them come with us.

Brady thought a nap was in order...Aiden didn't think that looked like very much fun and tried to wake him up (unsuccessfully)

This picture is out of order and is actually from Thursday. We did several days of "wild, wacky water world" in our back yard. On Tuesday, the boys & their friends tested out EVERY single water toy we own...and broke the good slip-n-slide (I have to go on record here to say that it wasn't actually one of my kids who broke the slip-n-slide, but I was totally not angry...just happy that it was someone else's child for a change!) :) THIS picture is from when I decided to make Connor and Logan play "old school" and put out the ACTUAL sprinkler. It brought back happy memories from my own childhood when we didn't own a gazillion water toys. Also in this picture: the not-so-good slip 'n slide that sprays everywhere except ON the plastic sliding part

Back to Tuesday. While I lounged on the porch with my friends, and while our kids played in the water, Brian and his dad re-leveled the steps out to our back porch. They look great now!

Logan is a PRO at sliding this year. I got several action shots of him. I was surprised considering that, last year, he had no CLUE as to how to dive and slide all the way to the end. This WAS Tuesday....and that WAS the good slip 'n slide (daddy found a cheap replacement at Walmart later in the week....oh phew!)

Some of the neighborhood crew. I think Aiden was sleeping at this point. When I went to wake him up, I picked him up out of bed, walked to the windows, opened the blinds to the back yard and said "you wanna go do that?" Of course he nodded yes!

Wednesday was Arboretum day. Anne and her kids just happened to have plans to go there as well so we met up. They introduced us to another new place we had never been...the tadpole pool! There were HUNDREDS of them. One of the workers there showed the boys how to catch and release them.

This whole part, plus another big area of water, is filled with tadpoles! (the arboretum was red shirt day....just like the last time we went)

Logan catches one.

Another awesome daddy and son picture!

This time we had our picnic at the top of the tree house.

Our last stop, as always, was the creek area for some splashing around.

That day, we brought boats with us to race down the water

Update to the birds in the window: the babies hatched about 2 weeks ago and we watch the mommy bird feeding them worms all the time. They seemed to be crowding the nest a bit by the end of last week. I even saw mama bird bringing some more nest material, although I'm not sure what she did with it. On Sunday, the birds left the nest and we saw them in the back yard, practicing their flying & looking for food while the daddy bird (according to Brian) watched them from a short distance. This is Logan on daddy's shoulders checking out the babies:

Our 4 robin babies (picture below) They are brown with white spots and actually quite large when we saw them out of the nest. They grew SO fast!! Every time we had rain and the worms came out on to the driveway, I thought of the birds and how nice it would be for mommy to just swoop down and grab some grub from the sidewalks and the drive. At times, I would look up in the window and the babies would just be sitting in the nest, still as could be with their little mouths open....that was always sort of a creepy picture. I wanted them to move so they looked alive!

Friday was a busy and fun day. We dressed the boys in orange and headed downtown to the aquarium. They re-opened the dolphins, whales and penguin areas with some great new additions. We had some parking issues (no one would take debit and we had no cash), but we managed to sort that out and start our adventure at 9:30! I found it quite impressive for the members of the 554 to be 40+ miles away from home with full bellies, clean cloths, brushed teeth, a parked car and already starting our activity by 9:30 in the morning! I sometimes have a hard time getting Logan to school 300 yards from our house by 9! Go us!!

And now... another cute daddy & sons pic!

This was one of the coolest new additions: a penguin play area! It was a rock climbing structure with "ice" slides where the kids could put on penguin costumes, climb around, feed baby penguins and explore some tunnels. This is Logan penguin:

Bear on the slide with a daddy-assist

Logan gathers fish for the babies while Aiden and Brady check out the nest of eggs (some were cracked and had stuffed penquins inside...who supposedly ate the fish). It looks like Aiden was feeding the babies in this picture.

I'm sorry...but Brady was the CUTEST penquin there! Brian had him dressed and brought him to me before I even saw the whole penquin play area and I just busted up laughing. He was adorable!

This was Logan's favorite thing: a submarine! It was pretty cool!!

So many buttons! Some many dials!! So much stuff to turn and poke and look through and talk into! Everything actually "worked" too (ie: every button made a noise or changed a dial or something else cool...I'm surprised we were ever allowed to leave!)

After we finished up at the aquarium, we drove home to get ready for our TGIF. Brian planned steak sandwhiches with blue cheese and balsamic grilled onions. OOOOH yum!!!! We also invented our drink of the week: Litchfield Lemonaid. My one wish: a really really pretty container to serve from - and we found it at Homegoods on our trip back to the house! Each week's host is supposed to make a drink. I wanted ours to be really light and not taste like a ton of sugar so we made: blackberry iced tea with light lemonaid and blueberry vodka. yummers! It's only pink because Brian put frozen blueberries and fresh blackberries in the container. The actual color looks more like plain iced tea.

The Sunday before Memorial Day, we did a small BBQ with the backyard bunch. Brian wanted to teach the boys about "real BBQ" (ie: using the smoker and slow cooking ALL day long). Here, the boys show off the plate of spiced meat ready to go in the smoker.

...and there is the smoker....baby proofed against Brady for the day! I was laughing later that night because it was a mildly hot day and so Brian, as is his custom, opened all the windows in the house to get a cross-breeze going. This particular breeze made the whole house smell like smoked meat....a good and a bad thing :)

That same day, Susan brought out her new DOUBLE slip 'n slide and we set it up between her/Pete's house and Anne/Jeff's house. Brady doesn't do much slipping....he prefers sippin!

Logan!

Aiden!

This is probably one of the only times Aiden actually slid. He and AJ mostly just RAN down and jumped over the water at the end.

Me and Brady! He and Aiden kept coming over to give me lots of love.....at least Brady wasn't soaking wet! I kept getting drenched from Aiden....but it was worth it for the hugs!

The end (really...I promise!)