Camera swiper caught!

In the aftermath of Katy's birthday cake, I caught Stephen doing this... with my camera. Yes, he is a master of buttons and can turn it on and take a picture in about 2 seconds.





This is him starting a tantrum when I took the camera away...



He picked up the nearest object- Hannah's slipper...



He proceeded to put it in his mouth. Not just by his mouth, but in it!



And appeared mystified when I said "Ewww!"



Which he decided was hilarious, and forgot to throw a tantrum (or the slipper)...



The boy is back to normal again.

Zoo awesomeness...

This is the horse dress I made for Hannah... she picked out the material herself!



A boy and his komodo dragon are not soon parted...



The girls love these eggs... they ask to go in them every time...



These got out of order thanks to blogger, but you get the gist if you start 2 pictures down... the ostrich was very interested in me, got closer, and then... well, you can see why the girls have their hands away in this picture! But don't you love those long eyelashes???







You can see Katy saying "really? we can pet him?" with her hands to her mouth... she couldn't believe it!

I thought it was cute that they were cuddling, and then we noticed that it wasn't just cuddling... so we had to explain a few things to the inquisitive ones... (blushing)


This is the zoo's new lion and lioness... aren't they beautiful? They are on the other side of a glass wall, too- like the hyenas below.



It's very bizarre to have a hyena less than a foot away from your children with only sheets of glass between them... very cool, but scary for me (they took it in stride, of course!).


We took advantage of the zoo being open an hour earlier to zoo members this month, and boy was it worth it! The animals were alert and hungry- we saw alot of them being fed... and the girls, Stephen and I even got to pet the biggest giraffe- Jelani- for over 5 minutes without anyone else (besides the zookeeper) even there. It was awesome! She was feeding him romaine lettuce, and he just let us all pet him while he ate (she said he loves it).

Katydid's birthday!

Our little Katy is now 8 years old... and for her birthday she chose to have her first official sleepover. She invited Laura, one of her very best friends to spend the night. We had a church meal at the Pals on Sunday, and the kids were in the pool almost the entire time (only a quick bite to eat, and they were back in again!). We took Laura home with us and the girls played, we sang to Katy and ate cake (her choice was cherry cheesecake again this year), played some more (her veterinarian set was a hit), and then the little girls and Stephen went to bed and Katy, Laura and I stayed up for some board games... Twister (I spun the wheel- it's out of my league at this point in the pregnancy!), Sorry, and Pretty Pretty Princess. We had a lot of fun, and the girls went to bed while reading to each other. The next day Nate treated us to breakfast out and a walk on the Greenway. Katy really enjoyed having her first sleepover and already is making plans for her next one!
By the way, she also read over 25 books in 3 weeks for the summer reading program... each one was 150-300 pages long! She is very into books right now, needless to say. Katy continues to love drawing and nature, too... she's collected over 20 snails that currently live in a terrarium in her bedroom, and she feeds them Queen Anne's Lace and dandelions (their favorites) every morning very diligently. She also just released a swallowtail butterfly that she found and raised as a caterpillar, and she's getting a pet frog after we get back from Traverse later this month (she got the kit as a bday present). I think that's all the Katy news for now... Happy birthday again, sweet Katydid!