Catching up

An update on some of our fun the last couple weeks... at least the fun that I remembered to take pictures of!

Our local library hosted a "meet and greet" with some reptiles a few weeks

ago. We met our friends Wendy, Chris, and Vincent there, where Vincent provided some fantastic reactions to the critters (the picture below isn't a great photo, but I love the look on his face!) Both boys loved the snakes and turtles, but like us, weren't so thrilled with the enormous cockroaches. Yuck. Afterwards we treated ourselves to some treat at Dairy Queen... check out Vincent's method for eating an ice cream cone!

We often get together with our friends the Bergums on Friday nights, and it's been fun to see how our boys are becoming pals. They are really starting to play well together... unfortunately, just in time for the Bergums to move away!

We've finally had all sorts of rain the last couple weeks, including some wicked daytime storms. Zach was pretty intrigued by the ice falling out of the sky, so we saved one of the bigger ones in the freezer to show Scott when he got home. :)

Last weekend we finally got to a place I've been meaning to check out all summer - the Lake Elmo Park Preserve. It's an enormous county park about 4 miles from our house, complete with campgrounds (feel free to bring your horse), Lake Elmo itself, walking trails, and our new favorites - a man-made "lake" with cleaned and filtered water, and the biggest playground we've ever seen. The lake, which is the size of a large pond, was absolutely perfect for Zach - he loved playing in the sand, both in and out of the water. And as you can see - dunking and splashing his dad was a highlight for him too. We brought along a little picnic and spent some time at the playground too. Basically a great way to spend the day; I wish we'd found this place earlier this summer!