Cole said this to me a couple of weeks ago when we were dropping Lucy off at school. He had a toy in his hand and wanted to know what letter it started with.
SO we have been working on teaching Cole his letters. I have felt pretty bad about not working with him more, but honestly up to this point he hasn't had any interest in it.
I'm excited he is eager to learn!! I'm trying to go along with his strengths. So we do a painting/craft activity, then sing our letter song. After that we watch some videos about animals that begin with whatever letter we are working on. Then I make an effort to point out that letter in the books we read. It has been a lot of fun so far and I really hope we can keep up the enthusiasm.
Our good friends the scheives invited us to join them for a day at the zoo. This zoo is enormous. We came here once last year and didn't get trough the whole thing. This time the children were determined to see every single one on the map :)
6 hours later with five very tired children we left the zoo having seen almost every animal.
These kiddos are so stinkin cute!!!
If there was a theme to this zoo day it would have to be,
"Measure Me."
The penguins!
Our kids liked this display a little too much :)
They ran to every animal they could reach and ask for a picture!
I thought this was pretty great, the kids loved this alligator and I thought their poses were hilarious!
We were going to bypass the penguins and just go home but the kids were determined to be good so we indulged them and went to see.
I'm not going to lie I was happy we saw them. They are beautiful animals, so graceful and playful in the water.
This is the best I could get of the seals.
And even with the flash on, here are the troopers!
Celecta, Ryan and Celecta Rose came to visit!! In case you wondered if Lucy's love for Ryan has waned with their separation have a gander-
On several occasions Lucy asked Celecta to scoot over so Lucy could sit by him :)
We watched the BYU game and the kids got to see what a sports fanatic is!
They learned who Mitch Matthews #10 was and spotted him the whole time.
They loved cheering for the touch downs and kept a close eye on Ryan to see how he was reacting so they could act in kind.
The youngest two enjoyed the good food and playing with the adults.
Here is our party!!
Celecta Rose playing the drums.
These two enjoyed reading books together, this is just the beginning of their mischief.
The kids and fathers went hiking while moms stayed home and made some AMAZING fried chicken....We may never eat fried chicken at a restaurant again.
Here are the little ones enjoying some soda!
We had been letting the grass grow so that it could kill off some of the clover. Some silly rabbit decided to make its nest in middle of our yard. Poor Ryan was pushing the kids around on a tricycle when his foot discovered the nest!! We found the babies and while Devin moved the nest we distracted the kids by having them pick grass to make it a soft bed.
After the rabbit fiasco Ryan taught Cole how to play baseball!
Cole had SO much fun, and his so many balls.
He even tried his hand at pitching and did a pretty good job of it. He would rather throw a ball then kick one.
Playing in the backyard.
It was warm enough to swim in the back too!
We pulled out the sprinkler and let the kids run through and splash around in our tiny pool (our big one got some holes we haven't found yet).
Everyone loving on the rabbits and playing with dinosaurs.
With the unpredictable weather, we chanced a visit to Boggio's and were pleasantly pleased! They didn't have all the fall attractions out yet, but I'm kind of glad. It was just us running around the place and we didn't have to worry about crowds of people.
They have a huge silo full of corn, Sadie and Celecta Rose didn't enjoy how much they sunk down so they got out pretty fast. But Lucy and Cole loved it and were covered in white corn powder when they got out.
They have this huge tree house, all the kids loved playing peek-a-boo through the holes
They had a petting zoo which the kids LOVED!
While they were careful to steer clear of the Donkey's mouth,
we all jumped back when the camel came around. He didn't seem very nice and we didn't want to get spat at!
The goats and sheep had lots of babies, we were surprised they had such new ones so close to winter.
They were adorable and the kids wanted so badly to touch them but we have learned mothers are not very kind when they have wee ones.
Celecta Rose showed us her independent streak while at the farm, she decided she was going on a walk. Said, "goodbye!" and took off.
Sadie followed, of course.
Then everyone had to go catch them! I don't think the girls would have stopped if they hadn't.
Boggio's has the best apple cider doughnuts I have ever tasted. We had to try them, and they had the most amazing peaches! They were huge and delicious!
Here is Sadie smelling the flowers outside of the shop.
The last two days Sadie and Celecta Rose got into a lot more trouble.
I found them by our bed pulling all the books off and looking through them together. They were there for a good 20 minutes before I decided to grab the camera.
I can't remember where everyone was when I caught these two at it by themselves again.
It was so much fun to have them here!
Here are the kids responses to the departure of the Gee's:
Cole, "But I wanted them to stay for 2 years!"
Lucy, "We need to buy a bigger house so we can all live together like we did in Provo."
