Carnival and Island View

Zach and I braved the cold (a high of 62!!!) and rain last Friday to meet our friends Wendy and Vincent at the Woodbury Coin Carnival. Zach and Vincent competed well - dominating events like the duck pond, bean bag toss, and can knock-down - and came away with fantastic prizes like stickers, kazoos, styrofoam airplanes, bracelets, and Zach's favorite - a magnifying glass.

One of the games involved throwing a ping-pong ball into floating bowls in a kiddie pool. Look how seriously Zach is competing:

Now check out the celebration when he won:

:

In other breaking news, I finished up the painting in our bedroom this weekend. Many of you are familiar with my historical struggles to get the right paint color... you'll be happy to know I'm delighted with this one - and it was the first try! It's a teensy bit blue-er than we wanted, yet we both like it. Now on to the next project!

Before (baby sh#t brown) / After (Island View)

Fun with grandparents, part II

The last few days of Alan and Teri's visit mostly looked like this:


Zach is all about playing with his animals and other stuffed friends, especially having goofy conversations. And he had great playmates in his grandparents!!

Our last days with the Willards were fairly quiet, with some trips to the park, a few shopping outings, and lots of good food. Zach was very sad to see them leave... every morning and afternoon since then he's woken up calling "mama, dada, grandma, grandpa!" And he's always disappointed when it's just me.

Fun with grandparents, part I

On Thursday, Grandma Cookie and Grandpa Grumpy (Willard) drove in from MT for a visit. Zach has been so excited for days... that afternoon I could barely get him to nap, since I had mindlessly told him that G&G would be there when he woke up. So after he was in his bed for about 5 minutes, he started calling "Grandma? Grandpa?"

We had a busy couple of days right after the Willards got here, since my college friend Mary and her daughter Kelly were also in town. So while I spent some time with them, including a girls-only dinner and drinks downtown, and Scott and Alan went to a Twins game, Teri got some good one-on-one time with Zach. I think her voice may have been hoarse after all the story-telling and imaginary play with Zach's animals. Saturday was the first of the mens' two-day outing to the 3M golf championship, where I think they ate and drank their way through two skyboxes.

Saturday night Scott and I somewhat accidentally found ourselves closer than we wanted to be to the stage at the Basillica Block Party. While we enjoyed the Counting Crows show, I have to say my personal highlight was when the opening act (Matt Nathanson) closed his set with Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." We weren't the only ones singing along at the top of our lungs, either; apparently those young twenty-somethings like 80s rock too.

Teri, Zach, and I found our way to the Como Zoo Sunday afternoon, while the guys were at the golf tournament again. While we got to see cool things like the tiger swimming in his little pond, and a butterfly taking a ride on my back pocket in the butterfly tent, the highlight for Zach was undoubtedly the ice cream and popcorn he ate for dinner... alternating between one and the other. Yummmm...

Some of you may have heard stories about Teri's love for the Mall of America. Zach can name her favorite stores, and is now informing us that while he likes to shop at the Disney store, he does not like Christopher and Banks. He even explained to Alan that girls like to shop at C&B, so that's why he doesn't like it. Scary, scary logic for a 2.5 year old! But he had a great time yesterday at the mall with G&G (I think more ice cream was involved), while I took the opportunity to finally paint some primer over the ugly brown paint in our bedroom. As Alan pointed out, I've had paint samples taped to the wall since they first visited us last November, so it was about time. Here's a "before" picture... I'll post an "after" once we finally decide what color to go with. Isn't that a lovely shade of brown???

5 Random Things

If you are a fellow Facebook-er, you've probably seen the 25 Random Things list. So while I was keeping a running list of things about Zach in my head that I wanted to capture on the blog, I decided I'd just start writing an occasional "random things" feature. 25 seems like way too much, so I'll keep it to more manageable numbers. And maybe every once in a while I'll write some random things about Scott, just to keep it interesting. :)

So here is my first list of 5 random things about Zach:

1. He is fascinated with eyebrows. He'll come up and say "can I touch your eyebrows?" He'll then run his thumbs over your eyebrows, which is a very disconcerting feeling. Earlier this week he told me he liked my right eyebrow better than my left; when I asked why, he said because it had more hair. I never knew.

2. He has favorite puzzle pieces. Not favorite puzzles (well, yes, he has those too), but actual pieces of the puzzle. He tells us most often with his Diego puzzle - he likes the pieces with both sand and water on them. He tends to just tuck those into his left arm while we're doing the puzzle - he doesn't actually want to use them, he just wants to hold them.

3. Zach spent the entire day on the 4th of July calling our hostess "Sylvia's grandma." Such as "Sylvia's grandma, do you want to run over there first and then down the hill and around there?" (I think that was an actual example.) We tried to explain that he could call her Virginia, but apparently Sylvia's grandma was easier. Sylvia's grandpa, on the other hand, he simply called Jim.

4. His favorite way to play with his grocery cart is to offer us the food. We generally get two or three choices, one of which is often a frozen cucumber. I have no idea why he thinks that particular vegetable should be served frozen, but if you want a cucumber, he only has frozen.

5. When playing "I spy", a game we regularly play in the car, Zach always spies something pink. It doesn't matter if there is nothing pink for miles, which is often the case, he'll tell you to just keep looking. Pink is no longer his favorite color (it's now a tie between red and blue), but he still thinks this is hilarious.

4th of July Celbration

No, that's not a typo. If you're not familiar with the story of how our annual 4th of July get-togethers became "celbrations", check out my July 14th post from last year. I also started out writing this post reminiscing about how much our celbrations have changed, but then I realized I did that last year! But wow, it is funny to think about how the focus has shifted in the last seven years. Here's a hint: check out all the pictures (it may not look that way, but there were adults present). Left is Kasey showing off her skills; right is Sylvia - someone get that mosquito on her forehead!

The other thing that has shifted, I think for the foreseeable future, is the location of our celbrations. We are now delighted to be invited to the Brodd family compound in Cokato, which is only about 80 miles west of the city. Besides having a great waterfront (and a jet-ski!), lots of open space for the kids to play, and wonderful hosts, the fact that it's a short drive means we have been able to expand the invitation to include other friends.

In summary, we had a wonderful day. The weather was perfect, the food was extremely over-abundant, and the drinks were plenty. Here are a few shots that I think summarize the day well.

Sylvia loving life in the lake; super-Kasey!

Team Willard v. Team Rose; Zach and Kasey "hiding"

Stuart and Zach discussing how to reassemble the tee

Zach hiding from Kasey; Sylvia fascinated by bubbles


Zach and Scott on the jet-ski; Zach's version of a thumbs-up

On top of celbrating the birth of our country, we also got to celebrate Sylvia's upcoming first birthday. She did an excellent job demolishing the cake, and the red frosting really made for an interesting look!

While this may seem like a lot of pictures, I took just a few more. If you'd like to see all 128 of them, they can be viewed on snapfish: http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1431845013/a=86576253_86576253/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

Family photos

While at our friends' cabin yesterday for the 4th, our friend Jodi agreed to take a picture of our little family. Here are the unedited results:

I don't know when we'll be able to get a picture of us all smiling and looking at the camera at the same time. But looking at these, I think that's ok.

(more 4th of July "celbration" pictures to come)

Ow

Remember when Zach had to wear a helmet? Remember how much we hated that thing and counted down the days until it came off for good? Well, we wish he'd had it on this morning, when he tripped while running down an asphalt path on a hill. We actually saw his head snap forward and knew it wasn't good...

his first real lump, complete with road rash.

We iced it when we got home, and he was very funny about it - kept telling Scott that he had an owie on his belly and his knee, so he needed to put the "boo boo bear" there too. He doesn't seem any worse for wear, but man, does it look like it hurts!