Happy Mother's Day!

This morning after getting ready to go we headed out to Summer's Past for Mother's Day but not before I got my Mother's Day present. Charlotte painted me a beautiful flower pot and was so cute carrying the bag into me. She said in her little voice "Here you go, Mama"! We finally headed out and brought lunch with us. We of course met Lisa there! Charlotte went over to the bunnies right away!
The kids were in all different directions as always!
Charlotte enjoyed playing on the stairs by the barn, but actually didn't go inside!
We managed to get a few pictures of me and my baby girl!


I can't really manage to get a good smile on demand, it is usually this fake smile, then I tell her to do a real smile and she scrunches her face up even more!
Daddy tried to get her to laugh... he was somewhat successful but she wasn't happy walking around in the dirt without her shoes on (which she wanted to take off!)
She snuggled with her other Mama too!
Part of the reason we went out there was because they had a dessert buffet for Mother's Day! Charlotte sure did enjoy that!
Chris had fun goofing off with the kids. Charlotte was very concerned when he wrapped Joli up in Markus' blanket.
In between roughhousing, Chris leaned back into his cheesecake. He didn't even realize until he heard Lisa and I snickering at him!
Charlotte was in a good mood for most of the time!

Chris felt the need to show off his strength!
I went to get some soap and brought the girls back little scraps. Charlotte took it upon herself to wash her belly right then and there... no water necessary! While I was gone, Charlotte apparently wanted her blanket and asked Lisa for it. Lisa told her it was in the car, so Charlotte went into my bag, got out the car keys and handed them to Lisa! Makes me wonder when I tell her to pick up her toys and she looks at me like I have seventeen heads that she is really just playing with me!
She fell asleep on the way home and when she got up Corey was here visiting! She of course wanted to have a tea party with him! He happily played along and then told Charlotte instead of putting the sugar cubes into her tea, she could put them right into her mouth!
It was a wonderful Mother's Day!

The Zoo!

Well, I have about 5 catch up posts to put up, but I am going to start with most recent, and then fill you in later. Yesterday we met Kim and Dan at the Zoo. They came over from Las Vegas for the day with Dan's family to visit his sister! It was a nice surprise visit and we were so excited to see them! Charlotte of course was very shy at first... but that only lasted about 5 minutes before she was crawling on the ground showing off. She woke up yesterday morning at 10, so that meant no nap for her, which was perfect since we met them around 2. Of course, being a two year old, you don't want to sit in the stroller, unless it is your idea, and you would much rather run through the zoo. Which was fine with me, until I ended up holding her because her legs were tired. She hung on every bar she could find... and if we got too far in front of her she would yell "WAIT ME! WAIT ME!".
She kept looking up into the sun and then yelling "EYES" in distress. So I dug out her sunglasses which she happily wore for about 3 minutes.

We spent a while watching the elephants. We have a new "photo pose". It is the same silly scrunchy smile, but she now adds in a head tilt. I think she got that from Joli.

Charlotte was very entertaining. Kim kept encouraging her "pole dancing". Thanks Kim...

We went to see the Jaguar but he was asleep, so Charlotte rode on one, then chased the baby ducks!
Poor Gia kept getting taken by the hand and led all over the place!
Then there was my awesome husband, who thought it would be fun to sit in Charlotte's stroller and go down the super big hill in it. And Grandma wonders why he doesn't want a desk job!
I was waiting for him to eat it.. I mean, I was waiting for him to end safely at the bottom, but he bailed halfway through when he decided his shoes were going to get a hole burned through them from using them as brakes. I have a feeling the next time we go he is going to bring a better contraption to sled down the concrete hill in front of a bunch of kids with!
Charlotte thought he was hilarious though and ran with Dan down the hill to catch Daddy!
The boys had a chuckle over Chris' stint, and Charlotte took the opportunity to hold both hands and get some swinging action in!
We stopped at the new polar bear exhibit. We were "melting" fast though and didn't stay for too long.
After a potty stop in the middle of the zebras... we made it to the bottom of the hill. I think everyone was glad I knew where I was going because we ever so conveniently avoided going up any hills! Charlotte decided Gia and Judy were her new best friends!
We watched the monkeys and otters for a while, Charlotte didn't understand why she couldn't go in and play too! She was laughing a ton a the little otters!
We went to see the Hippos, and there was a baby hippo! They were so cute!
We finally found something to eat! Charlotte enjoyed her Pirates Booty with Dan's dad while we escalated up the hills to the monkeys!
We finally reached the beginning and took a few pictures before heading out!


Daddy taught Charlotte how to do "Up high, down low, in the middle... too slow!" for high fives... Dan thought it was very funny!

Charlotte loves to watch Kipper on TV in the mornings. There is one episode where one of the characters has a stuffed owl, and they take it camping and go "Is just an owl". Charlotte started saying "owl, owl owl" about a week ago and thinks its hilarious. So of course, we went into the Zoo Store on the way out and let Charlotte pick out an owl. She was the happiest two year old I know... She proceeded to play with "owl" until we left, and then had lots of fun throwing Owl to Dan's dad!
We had such a fun day!

Botanical Gardens

Last Thursday while Grammy and Babo (as Charlotte says) were here, we spent the day at the Botanical Gardens. Charlotte loved anything with water!She wasn't too pleased with the ivy statues...they creeped her out a bit!
We had lots of fun playing in the mirror...

We spent most of our time at the Children's Garden. Charlotte had a blast sailing boats down the stream!

It was hard convincing her not to drink the water...

We spent a while playing in the treehouse, playing hide and seek! It is one of Charlotte's new favorite games. She hides around the corner and then jumps out and yells!
She also spent quite a while playing with the blocks.

And doing downward dog...

We started to make our way to the exit but got distracted by Charlotte having a "foof" break and we sat down on the grass and played.

One of Charlotte's favorite things to do is rub "lipstick" all over her face...They had a little snack stand so we cooled off with a cold treat!Then we danced in the gazebo.
Charlotte wasn't happy when we stopped dancing.

After some playtime with Daddy on the grass we made our way to the car.

Then we found another Children's garden... complete with a playhouse, so we spent some time there too! Finally we made it home and Chris and I went on a date!!! Wahoo. Thanks Grammy and Babo for watching Charlotte. We were gone for exactly 2 hours... we didn't know what else to do with ourselves...