Our Week

Alyssa and Ashley just adore their Daddy. Well this week, Daddy went out to Utah for Uncle Brian's graduation from BYU Law School. He was gone for three days and I was worried about how we would all survive without those precious moments of Daddy playtime each day. Well, we did and this is how we did it:

1. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate Alyssa finally filling up her Do Good Chart again.

2. We had a couple of different play dates with kids that I didn't have a chance to get pictures of.

3. We went for nice long walks every day with time to play at the park afterwards.

4. Alyssa flew her first kite. I didn't get a picture of that either because I was concentrating on keeping the kite in Alyssa's hands, away from Ashley, and keeping Ashley somewhat close to us.

5. We had lots of talks with Daddy on the phone.

6. We had summer-like weather and spent a lot of time in the backyard with Casey and in the front yard drawing with chalk.

7. We took a trip to the Saint Louis Zoo. Admission to the Zoo here is free, but you have to pay to do a few of the things inside. However, some of those things are free for the first hour that the Zoo is open each day. So we arrived right at opening, managed to find a parking spot on the street to save us the $11 parking fee to park in their lot, and we did all of the free things first. The two that I was interested in were the Merry-Go-Round and an enclosed area called the Children's Zoo. Here are my favorite pictures from the excursion.

This jeep was inside of the Childrens Zoo. It didn't move, but the kids could climb in it and pretend to drive.

Ashley was excited to be able to get out of the stroller and run around on her own in this area.

I love this picture because Alyssa looks like she is a child model posing for a photo shoot. In reality she is trying not to slide down the back of this giant bug so I can get a picture of her.

Here is the only snake in the zoo that Alyssa wanted to be anywhere near. She was actually afraid of quite a few of the animals. I had to reassure her many times that the animals couldn't get to us because of the different barriers. She was still scared of them.

I had to include this picture because this Chimpanzee made me laugh so hard the way it was just chillin there on the ground. Alyssa was scared of him too, by the way.

It was almost a perfect day to be at the Zoo. It got to be a little too hot by the time we left and way to crowded. The first hour was perfect though. The girls were beat by the time we left. Ashley fell asleep in my arms as we were leaving and Alyssa took her first nap in who knows how long that afternoon after we got home. We all had a lot of fun.

This last picture was too cute not to include. Yesterday, Danny BBQed dinner for us and in order to keep the girls inside, we put on Dora for them. We looked at them a few minutes later and this is how we found them enjoying the show together. It is so nice to see them get a long occasionally.

The girls are both so happy to have Daddy home again and to have all the prizes that he brought from Gawbie and Great Gawbie, as we call them (Danny's mom and Grandma). We congratulate Brian on his graduation once more and are glad that Danny got to be there for it. But we are also very glad to have him home with us again.

We love you Daddy!