We spent last week pretending

Pretending it was warmer than it really was.  But we were going to play outside, darn it, it's spring!

Alternative use for spring window clings

More naps, rocks and minerals and homeward bound

Saturday I was so tired, that adventure day on friday had taken it right out of me! Mom was tired too. It was a fun day but a long one.
Maya officially had a cold by saturday also.
I had noticed a small ad for a local rock and mineral show a few days earlier so Dad, Alex and I went to check it out. Alex scored a few freebies, as he always seems to at these shows - the vendors just seem so excited to see a small child so interested in all the minerals they usually have a little stash of goodies to give away. We also found some nice malachite polished into egg shapes and Dad bought us a handful to put in the birds nest we had found earlier in the week and some marbles made of rocks/minerals to round out Alex's new marble set.
On the way home we noticed a ton of freshwater pelicans near the DePere bridge. So later in the day Mom, Dad and Alex went back to the rock and mineral show and stopped to get pictures of the pelicans.
Maya and I went over to the Goodwill book deptartment for one last look! Then we relaxed and started getting things together to go home on sunday.
Our drive sunday went very well.
We stopped in Escanaba for lunch and it ended up being a bit of a cultural experience.
Maya slept all the way from Escanaba until just before the bridge so that helped make it an easy trip.
We hit home around supper time and were glad to be here!

Animal adventure part 3 - Milwaukee zoo

We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory - yum. It was a bit more of a challenge then it should have been due to the tiredness of the kids. The food was worth the hassle though and we brought home a variety of cheesecake to share when we got back.
After lunch we went down the street to the zoo. There was only a handful of other people there (probably due to the fact that again we were pretending it was warmer out than it really was!) which made it nice to move through the buildings and really get to see everything. We hit feeding time for the Ourangatangs, including a very young one, which was really fun to watch.
The grizzly bears were playing a lot and wrestling with eachother too.

Friday 4/3 - Big adventure day!

Friday was our day to go to Milwaukee. We went to Discovery World on the lakefront first. Alex and Maya had a lot of fun. The aquarium portion was a big hit along with the pirate ship. I would love to go hang out there myself for a while! There were tons of big kid/adult things that looked pretty fun.
Maya's squeaky shoes really came in handy here. It wasn't crowded but there were a few big school groups moving through the building and they could fill up certain areas pretty quickly and we could always hear right where Maya was even if a group of kids ended up in front of us.

Good friends

Thursday night I snuck out to have dinner with Joy and Ann. Joy, Ann and I worked together in Green Bay for several years and us, our husbands and a few other couples hung out together outside of work quite a bit as well. We had such a nice time and a great leisurely dinner. The restaurant where we ate is on the Fox River and part of their decor is a set of rowing oars from La Baie Verte rowing club hanging from the ceiling. I spent quite a bit of time when I was younger pulling those oars!

"souvenieres"

Rain boots and swim goggles. I finally found toddler size rain boots in a store for Maya and didn't have to order them online. And they were only $10. She was beyond thrilled. And Alex wanted swim goggles for swim class. I was smart enough to buy 2 thank goodness.
Those purchases resulted in some great play and photo opportunities.

NEW Zoo - Animal adventures part 2

Thursday (4/2) morning I bundled up the kids and pretended it was warmer than it really was and went to the zoo.
We made it just in time to feed the giraffes which is Alex's favorite thing to do! They also have 3 lion cubs this year - they were really fun to watch.
Another favorite this time was watching the male turkey try to attract some attention with all of his tail feathers spread. We see wild turkeys quite often around here but we've not seen one with their feathers all spread. Unfortunately for the tom he kept trying to get the attention of a female peacock instead of the female turkey...........she looked confused and a bit annoyed!
Continuing her assertion that "ME BIG", Maya had to go up and down the slide on her own. It was all going well until she got creative and decided to go down on her belly (and no Alex did not show her that, it was all on her own). Unfortunately I was taking a picture of her at the time and as soon as she flipped over I dropped my camera and ran over to catch her but didn't get there in time and she smacked her chin on the bottom of the slide as she came off the end. So she ended the trip with her first playground roadrash on her face.

"ME BIG!!"

After lunch it was time for "Monkey Joe's" the bouncy place in Appleton. Alex was really looking forward to this. We use to have a bouncy place in TC but it closed last year and we had only been there once.
They had a separate area for kids under 3 with slightly smaller scale slides and bounce houses for the littler kids. Maya did like one of the slides there but once she realized where Alex was that was all she wanted to do. She followed him up in one of the big bouncers and I ended up having to go in after her because she was trying to follow him up a 6 foot climbing wall and there were other big kids getting really crazy in there. She did not seem to care that they were knocking her over and was not ready to give up climbing that wall and I ended up dragging her out of there with her screaming "ME BIG, ME BIG.....MY BIG!!!"

Wednesday (April 1st) big adventure!

After sleeping literally ALL day on tuesday, Maya woke up wednesday without a fever and seeming pretty normal. Mom had taken off work so we decided to go south and go to the museum in Oshkosh, have lunch and check out the bouncy place for kids in Appleton on the way home.
Mom has 5 quilts on display in the Oshkosh public museum right now in an exhibit called "This is not your grandmother's quilt". We wanted to see that plus they have a great selection of marbles in their gift shop and Alex and I had been talking about getting marbles for a while now.
The museum was fun! They have a small area specifically for kids, a lot of local artifacts which Alex was quite interested in and an amazing cuckoo clock. The quilts were spread over a couple different rooms and hung very nicely. I didn't take pictures of the quilts as they just didn't come out very well.