The Dallas Zoo!

We decided to buy a family pass to the zoo this year, which is looking to be a lot of fun! We've been twice this month (well, in May), and it is so nice to be able to go for just the morning (especially as we get into the hot summer) and not feel like we have to cram everything into one exhausting day. The kids' favorite areas seem to be the big African animals (elephants, giraffes, etc.) and the fun children's area on the other side of the zoo. We forgot to take pictures of the children's area, but there's a fun wading stream with rocks and other things to climb on that Evelyn and Edison love. When we went a few weeks ago we caught most of a cool bird show, complete with birds who would swoop down and pick up dollar bills if you held them out and a bird that sang "Old MacDonald."

Here are a few pictures from our zoo adventures.

Riding the train there and back is half the fun for Evelyn and Edison (or at least for the first few minutes of the 50-minute ride).

Carousel! (It's quite sneaky that they put it right by the main entrance to the zoo, so we see it every time we walk in....)

For $5, you can feed the giraffes. We haven't coughed up the money yet, but it's fun to watch other people do it so you can see the giraffes' long black tongues.

Evelyn and Edison both love the elephants.

Grant mostly likes eating snacks and chilling in the stroller (except when it's naptime).

I literally had to carry Edison away from this group of elephant statues, which were a lot more interesting to him than the real elephants.

You can't quite see them, but there are African penguins in and around that water. Did you know there are penguins that live in warm weather? I didn't, until I first went to the zoo.

April adventures

It's hard to believe that April is about over. We are ready for the rain and storms to be through, but not quite ready for the heat. But, I guess that all comes with living in Texas. We've taken quite a few pictures over the past month, so I'll just let them tell you about what we've been up to.

We took a trip to the local LDS bookstore and let the kids each pick out a picture of a temple to hang up in their room. Edison was determined to find a green temple (his favorite color), but he settled for a picture of the San Antonio temple, while Evelyn was excited to find a pretty picture of the Mount Timpanogos temple, which is where David and I were married. On our way home we stopped by the Dallas temple.

Where's Moroni?

Grant, who is now 7 months (!), is such a good, happy baby. He loves watching his brother and sister, putting anything and everything into his mouth, and is generally just a happy, content little boy. Sometimes he will laugh hysterically at the simplest things, like when Edison walked toward him the other day. He's very wiggly and rolls a lot (not all over the place yet, but it's not too far off). Here's our happy boy!

For those of you who take little kids to the grocery store, here's a tip I once saw a young mom do: she made a "balloon" out of a produce bag for her toddler. What a great idea! The kids like entertaining themselves with it, and the other day it got a whole lot of laughs from Grant as he watched Edison throw it up in the air and catch it. So we often do it when we're at the grocery store. Well, with all of the windy, windy days we've had, we decided to turn them into "kites." Evelyn and Edison had a lot of fun running around outside with them.

A month or so ago David and I had a fun date night where we went up to one of the city parks and used a public grill to cook some dinner and just enjoy being outside. Well, since then David has done a similar thing with Evelyn for a Daddy-daughter date and then with Edison for a Father-son outing. No pictures were taken with Evelyn, but here's our happy camper Edison.

When Evelyn and I went to pick up David and Edison after their "campout," we noticed a group of people beginning to set up a hot air balloon in the big field. I can't remember ever being so close to a hot air balloon. It was really neat to see the whole process, and the kids (especially Evelyn) were quite intrigued and excited.

Easter! We joined Katie (sister-in-law) and her kids the day before Easter at her ward's Easter party. Evelyn was super excited about the egg hunt, and she uncharacteristically ran out on her own as soon as her age group was announced. Edison had no interest in the egg hunt but was happily and busily eating a little bag of candy he had won from a game. I finally convinced him to go outside with me after all of the other kids had gone out. We had a harder time finding eggs, since all of the easy ones were gone, but Edison didn't care.

And here are a few pictures with the kids in their new Sunday Easter outfits. (Thank you Mom and Dad!)


And last, but not least, this past Wednesday was 31 cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins. And, well, you can guess how excited the kids were to go out for ice cream.

What we hadn't expected, though, were a fire truck, a fire ambulance, and the fire fighters who were there because the proceeds of the night were going to benefit some sort of fire fighter foundation. It was a pretty exciting night. :)

So that, in a nutshell (or at least a lot of pictures), sums up our April. Now on to May!

Pictures!

I love spring! We have been trying to take advantage of some nice weather over the past few weeks with trips to the park, playing in the backyard, and just getting outside. I'm also enjoying being able to take pictures again. So, here are a bunch of recent pics!

Evelyn is learning how to ride a bike. This was taken on her first (or second) bike ride. (Don't worry, now she wears a helmet and has training wheels.)

Edison enjoying sidewalk chalk

This was actually taken a couple of months ago, but here's our happy guy!

proudly walking on a stepping stone path

catapulting a tennis ball into the air

Evelyn, remembering some turkeys we made around Thanksgiving using snack foods, asked if we could do something fun like that for snack the other day. I came up with this little flower. Evelyn wasn't that impressed, but I was pleased with the result. :)

A few months ago David stumbled upon a free kids workshop that Home Depot does on the first Saturday of each month. So far the kids have made a picture frame, heart shelf with a coat hook, racecar, and now a planter box. They absolutely love it! The past couple of months David has just gone by Home Depot, picked up the projects, and done them at home with the kids, since we've had busy days and couldn't do it at Home Depot. But this morning he took Evelyn and Edison up to Home Depot and they had a blast. Evelyn was very proud of how well she used their child-sized hammers.

Then we bought two sample-sized cans of paint (which was a good size, since Edison accidentally knocked one over, spilling half of its contents onto the newspaper--thank goodness for doing the project outside) and let the kids paint them. The pictures may not show it very well, but the kids were so excited to get to paint the boxes by themselves.

Ta-da! I can paint more than just a planter box!

Back in business

Not having a camera for a few months makes writing blog posts less enticing (or at least that's my excuse). But we got a new camera on Saturday, so we're back in business! Grant is now 6 months old, and he had his first taste of solid food (baby oatmeal) Saturday afternoon. His reaction was somewhat passive: not disgusted by it, but not in love with it either. He did really like the spoon, though. And at least the oatmeal isn't the nasty amoxicillin Mommy keeps trying to get down him (with limited success). Yep, when I took him in for his 6 month check-up, everything was looking great until the doctor looked in Grant's right ear. Apparently it was "flaming red," according to the doctor. Hmm. That's news to me. Grant hasn't been acting overly fussy or pulling on his ear. Hopefully he'll be this easygoing about teething. (fingers crossed)

Family Photo

Here's our family! Why don't we take photos like this more often?

Birth story

For anyone interested in details of our birth experience with Grant, David has written a "Going Natural" post on his blog, Strange Ideas, at www.davidhinckley.com.

Good pictures

I still want to do a post about Evelyn's birthday party a few weeks ago, but here are some other recent pictures.

Edison had a lot of fun yesterday "helping" David work on the car.

What handsome boys!