who needs the zoo?

our big plan for this week was to spend a day at the zoo, but the weather just didn't cooperate with us.

instead, we dodged the raindrops and went to penn cinemas to see up, the disney pixar movie - in 3D. andrew slept through all but the very beginning, while we munched on buttery popcorn and junior mints (mmmmm).



we had our own little wildlife show here at home!

a blue jay hatchling fell from the nest and spent three days in our yard before figuring out how to work his wings.

what was so interesting was watching the mom and dad jay (a bird which i usually am not fond of), watching over him the whole time. i got to see them chasing the neighbor's feral cats out of the yard - what a riot! big, hungry cats running like the wind from an angry bird.






yet another unsuccessful attempt at capturing andrew's smile... he looks like a little wild child, doesn't he?

wrapping up the month of May

so here we are. it's june 5th. and i'm still sorting out pictures from may. well, ok, let's get started!


i've been trying for weeks to catch andrew's sweet smile on film...er, pixels, that is. no such luck! but evyn did capture this squeal/smile combo:





evyn was bummed that we weren't feeling up to dragging out and blowing up her pool. so, i gave her a plastic bin, some blue food coloring, and told her it was the ocean for her polly pockets to play in. kept her busy the whole afternoon!



every summer evyn has liked to chase behind me as i mow the lawn. three years ago i started mowing lines - which means skipping every other pass with the mower. i'll leave them up for a few hours and we'll race back & forth through the grassy valleys. (scott hates when i do this.... why do men take mowing so seriously???)

this time i thought i'd have a little fun and mow one continuous path through the front yard. i circled 'round the outside, spiraling inward and ending at the crabapple tree in the middle. then i shut off the mower, and we followed the green grass road!

it really looked much cooler in person.

it was surprisingly quite a long path. we trekked it three times before cooling off with popsicles, then mowing it flat.






the peas that scott & evyn planted in march are producing nicely. evyn likes to pick & eat them right in the garden :)
(sorry for the bad picture quality)

poppies

i've always loved poppies, but not the plant - the flowers last a week, sometimes two, and the rest of the year you have a scruffy-looking plant that takes up a significant amount of space.

i planted red poppies in a corner of our yard when i was pregnant with evyn. the site worked out well - sandwiched between other plantings, so when the flowers are spent, it's not particularly visible.

when evyn was 2 years old, she saw the poppies blooming and went nuts for them. she would run out into the yard every day to count the blooms.

every year since, it's kind of been "our thing" to see how many poppy flowers appeared. this year's count: 18. almost double that of last year.

memorial day

memorial day at grandma & grandpa's on mill creek. evyn stayed home (with her daddy) with a belly ache. andrew got to hang out with his cousins, aunt lori & uncle larry, aunt lani & uncle ryan, great-grandpa b, and of course, grandma and grandpa.