good day for a trip to the zoo

We had an almost perfect trip to the zoo. As we walked in the entrance the seals were barking, so we ran to watch that. Then we went to see the sharks and had many swim close enough to touch (you're allowed to touch their sides, but DO NOT touch their fins or a zoo worker will let you hear about it, I know from experience :P).The polar bear was swimming laps in front of the viewing window, as were the enormous walruses (didn't get their picture though). Sad note, the polar bear died of old age shortly after our visit.
A penguin swam right up to the glass in front of us.
We walked by as an elephant show ended, and we snuck in and touched the elephant! Very cool and really strange feeling.
Also, as we walked by the giraffes they were letting people buy food to hand feed the giraffes. We didn't buy the food, but the giraffes were so close we could have reached up and touched their weird long blue tongues. All in all it was a good zoo trip, especially because we got to go with Eric's mom, little brother and sister-in-law. Brian and Kelli have a video on their blog of the polar bear swimming. Abby liked to imitate the bear's paddling with his feet.

abby is 2!

Abby is officially a toddler now, no more babies in this house! Eric's sister Laura literally brought a party to our house, bringing a pinata (Madilyn called it a pree-esta), balloons, and presents. I can't believe this girl is already 2!Abby got a ladybug cake, which was very popular.

Although the girls loved the cake, I don't think black icing is the best idea. Madilyn chose to eat the ladybug's head.

sweeping

Abby LOVES to clean. Which is great because it's nice to have at least one other person in this house cleaning (JUST KIDDING ERIC). But is not so great because she often makes more of a mess than she started out with. I'll just have to wait until her skills ripen and then harness her amazing cleaning potential.

4th of July wedding

Eric's nephew got married on the 4th of July in the Nauvoo temple. It's such a beautiful temple.Eric recorded all the wedding highlights and I was on kid duty, so I have some really random pictures. Also, it rained the whole time they were taking pictures so the girls were trapped on the porch of the temple and did pretty well, considering how long it took.

Madilyn found someone's umbrella and used it to entertain herself.

The happy couple with the groom's parents. I managed not to get a single picture of just the bride and groom, and somehow didn't get the group shot of entire family either.

driving to nauvoo ...we love technology!

We drove to Nauvoo for Eric's nephew's wedding over the 4th of July weekend. On the ride there Madilyn and Abby each enjoyed their own personal screen to the DVD player to watch movies.
I played games on Laura's (Eric sister) ipod touch until the battery ran out.Eric played games or worked on his laptop.While Laura navigated the drive on her Tom Tom GPS.It sure made for a much easier drive!

spice girl

Abby has become very adept at pushing chairs around to reach things that would otherwise be off limits. After changing her into her pajamas for the night, I went to help Madilyn change and came back to find this:
She had pushed a chair up to the kitchen counter top, pulled out as many spices as she could reach on my spice rack, and poured my freshly made potato soup over the lids of the spices in between helping herself to the soup.
I guess it's time for me to rename this blog All My Kids Messes.