Playing Catch Up

Another busy week for us here and I've got so much to blog about and so little time!! I believe we left off with Lily's birthday party.

Everyone was very cool and had a good time. My mom said it best when she said "Our family throws a good get together." Understatement for anyone who has actually been to a thanksgiving dinner in our family, btw. Lily got lots of fat loot including a blow up pool, a stuffed Simba, and an awesome art kit that she was all ecstatic about. She also acheived her orange belt on the same day! We're very proud of our little munckin!

On Saturday we headed to Brookfield Zoo, which ended up not being too bad of a drive. I was expecting things to be a lot more rushed in the morning and us to get to the zoo later than what we wanted, but we actually made it with half an hour to spare! We were actually the first car in the parking lot and got an awesome parking space right across from the gate! We decided to suck it up and pay for the all-in-one ticket, which basically let you do everything in the zoo (children's zoo, carosel, tram, dolphin show, butterflies, etc). We were planning on staying the whole day anyway, so why not?

The first animal we saw was the lion. We have a zoo in South Bend in which they have plexi-glass viewing areas where you can get as close of an experience to an animal as possible (without fear of getting eatten), but I have to say I have never been quite so intimidated as I was on Saturday with this lion. We got to the viewing area and he was right there! Pacing back and forth...and he came right up to the window!! My heart was pounding even though there was nothing to really fear. This lion was mere INCHES from us!! I snapped the picture, he BLINKED and then... R O A R!!! You could see his chest heaving as he roared! Just thinking about it my heart is jumping! For our first experience at the zoo, it was incredible!! Lily hasn't stopped talking about it since then! If you look closely, you'll notice a slight fog to the picture. Yeah, that's the plexi-glass. I'm very very happy it was there.

While there were lots of animals and I have a load of pictures I want to share with you all, I digress simply because of time constraints and wanting to share all of our weekend. So, I shall skip to the dolphin show. Lily was simply in awe of the dolphins. Before the show, we went down to the underwater viewing area and sat and watched the dolphins swim. Lily had never seen dolphins other than on the TV and I think there was an instant love for these wonderful mammals. Her exact quote: "Mommy, they're beautiful!" And then she noticed that they were playing Thievery Coorperation's song "Lebanese Blonde" over the speakers and informed us that we had that CD at home. Yes, dolphins apparentely like ambient techno. But then came the show... The wonderful dolphin show! Lily has now decided that instead of just being a zoo keeper, she wants to be a dolphin trainer.

Since I'm running short on time, I'm going to cut down to the rest of our weekend. The zoo really deserves a much longer post, but there are so many things going on right now it's ridiculous. It's my own fault, too, because Sunday, Monday and Tuesday we were all lazy and I really should have been cleaning, but I didn't. Hense, why I'm busy now.

The other big undertaking that started last week was painting. We finished the dining room. Casey was a wonderful husband and painted the trim for me (since I can't reach it). Today I'm planning on putting up the curtains in the dining room and tomorrow I'll do the living room (living room trim has to be painted yet). But, until the curtains are up, here's what the walls and trim and windows look like. The white trim really makes everything pop, but our only problem with the white is that it shows how crap the trim around everything is and needs replacing. Oh well, that will have to wait. I'm really pleased with how everything turned out. You'll have to excuse the crookedness of the picture on the wall as I just snapped this pic quickly this morning. Oh, and note the placemats on the table. The curtains will match them. I think the beige-ness gives everything an extra kind of flare.

I'm off for now. I'll post again after the big reunion weekend.