Little A-merrick-a and the beach!

On Sunday, Dan & I took Kate to Little A-merrick-a, a fun, old-style amusement park in Marshall, about 20 minutes from our house. It of course brought back tons of memories from my childhood, since my grandpa took Austin and me there every summer. Kate absolutely loved it! It was La Movida Day, which meant there was all this live Mexican music, so Kate was of course dancing up a storm as we waited in line for the rides. She loved the rides, too; we did the ferris wheel, the carousel, the bumper boats, the train (and the round-trip ride is over two miles long, which is pretty neat, and she loved seeing all the animals. There were horses, ducks, geese, an emu, and even zebras--which she thought was just amazing!) and then of course all the little kid rides (a roller coaster, cars, boats, planes, helicopters, etc.) We had so much fun on our little family outing; such a fun Sunday afternoon!

Then yesterday, it was very warm, so I took Kate to Olbrich Beach. She has a book called "Corduroy Goes to the Beach" so I was telling her, "We're going to go to the beach like Corduroy!" and of course she got so excited for that. The beach was pretty fun; I don't know if we'll go to that same one again, because the water seemed very congested with plants, etc. but we sure had fun playing in the sand and trying to build sand castles! It was so cute; as soon as I mentioned the beach, she knew to bring her wagon with sand toys that my aunt Chris got her for her first birthday. We had a blast! And luckily there are tons of other beaches in this area, too, so even though this one wasn't the best, we have plenty of others to try!

 Ready for the rides!

 Have you ever seen such a beautiful baby?

 Ready for the beach!

 Giving me her silly smile

 Taking a break from sand castle building to eat some pretzels

Such a big girl to pull her toys back to the car!

More Summer Fun

Do you ever have one of those days that just is a really, really perfect day? It might not even be that you do anything exciting or out of the ordinary, but it's just one of those days where you feel happy. We had one of those last Thursday. It was a beautiful day; sunny and warm, but not oppressively hot. We decided to meet Meghan and Adelaide downtown to walk along the lakeshore path and get ice cream at Babcock. So Kate and I drove downtown, and as we were driving to the Lake Street parking ramp, I pointed out various buildings.

• "That's where Daddy and I lived when we first moved in together, before you were born."
• "That's the dorm where Mama lived when she first came to college, and Daddy would come visit. So that was many years before you were born!"
• "That's where Daddy and I used to go see hockey games before you were born."

After several of those narratives, I looked in the rearview mirror, and I could see Kate was looking very serious. After a moment, as if to expel any doubt that things were different now, she said, "But I born now." Ha! Yes you are, and we couldn't be more thrilled!

After meeting up with Meghan and Adelaide on State Street, we walked along the lakeshore path, which brought back so many amazing college memories (I always say that sophomore year was, hands down, my favorite year of college. Dan had moved up to Madison, which was awesome, I had a beautiful dorm right on the lake, I loved my classes, and I was starting to make friends. All of college was fun, but sophomore year was the best).

We then went to lunch at Babcock Hall, and of course the girls loved getting ice cream there! Afterward, we walked back along the lake and then sat and talked on Library Mall for a bit. We thought the girls were sleeping (well, Adelaide actually was; Kate was apparently just pretending!) so we thought we'd let them sleep for a bit. That didn't last long, though, and pretty soon they were up and playing together. They really get along so well, which is nice.

Then that night, we went to the family music night at Sun Prairie Music Academy, and Kate was thrilled that Daddy could come to "mik class" too, and Dan of course loved seeing Kate play the instruments, dance, etc. since he obviously isn't usually with us.  Afterward we took advantage of the nice weather by sitting outside and eating dinner at the nearby Cannery Grill. All in all, it was one of those absolutely perfect summer days.

 Silly girls trying on each others' hats

Summer Fun

When we got back to Madison, Kate & I both had bad food poisoning/stomach flu/something that caused us to be sick for a few days; not fun! So we spent Monday & Tuesday pretty much lounging around and recovering. On Wednesday I took her to the zoo, and we had a lot of fun, but we could only stay a couple hours because we still weren't feeling 100%. But we still had a good time; the bears were so active, I was thinking to myself, "I hope they really can't jump across this ravine, because it looks like they want to!" So that was fun to see.

On Thursday Meghan and Adelaide came over; it was so fun to see them again; it'd been almost a month! We went to the park by our house, and the girls really enjoyed that. On Saturday, we went to an early Father's Day breakfast with the Hines and my grandparents, and then we saw Rori march in the parade with the Monona Grove dance team.

Sunday we had a fun Father's Day; we went to Outback with the Hines and then went to the park in Sun Prairie as a family. All in all we've just been enjoying our summer, and with the hot weather, Kate and I have been spending a lot of time in our pool. She's such a little fish; she always jumps at the chance to go swimming.

 Just relaxing at the zoo!

 One of Kate's favorite animals; the tiger

 On the edge of her seat

 Achoo!

 At the parade

 "Here mom, I got this candy for you"

Our Utah trip

After getting back from London, I sure didn't have much time in Madison before hopping back on a plane! On Tuesday, June 5, my mom, Kate & I took an early flight back to SLC. My dad and Austin picked us up from the airport and we went to the Spaghetti Factory (where else?) for lunch. Nancy came over that night; Kate had so much fun seeing her Aunt Nan.

On Wednesday, my mom, Austin, Kate & I went to the Bistro 258, always one of my favorite spots. Thursday, my mom, Kate & I headed to Hogle Zoo; we had so much fun! Kate loved seeing the mama and baby elephant, and the new polar bear area was really cool! The tigers were really active, and of course Kate loved riding the carousel and train. That night, we went to Spaghetti Factory (yes, again) and met up with Nancy there before heading back to see her apartment (she lives in downtown SLC; very cool!)

Friday, Kate & I went with Angie & Brooklyn to the Treehouse Museum. I love that place, and Kate & Brooklyn did too! Their favorite thing seemed to be having a tea party in the Great Britain house. That night, my dad took Kate & me up to the new splash pad in the park; Kate loved it! Then we went with my family to the Taste of Ogden, which was really good. It's different than the Taste of Madison, where you just go to the individual booths and buy what you'd like. Here, you buy a ticket for $10 and then everyone gets a sample from the different restaurants (there were 8 of them, I believe). There was some excellent lasagne, a soft pretzel with beer cheese fondue, teriyaki chicken, bread pudding, a nutella cheesecake with sriacha (not sure how to spell that) sauce; it sounds weird, but it was good!

Saturday we had Austin's graduation party, which of course was a lot of fun. Then on Sunday we just hung out as a family before having an awesome sauerbraten and spaetzel dinner; so good! Monday morning we were up bright and early to get on the plane back to Madison, and we were back by 11:30 and greeted by an excited Dan at the airport (I really don't think he liked being away from Kate for almost two weeks, when you combine our London trip with my SLC trip!)

In her new Hogle Zoo hat; she really was having fun at the zoo, even though she doesn't look like it. I promise!

 Silly girl with the funny face!

 In her Texas A&M jersey, ready for the party!

London: Day Eight

On our last full day in London, we kind of just winged it. Of course there was still tons of stuff to see, but since we knew we couldn't fit everything in, we decided to just wait and see what we felt like doing that morning. We decided to go to Kew Gardens and Kew Palace (which was home of George III and his family), and that ended up being so much fun. The gardens are gorgeous (I think they're something like 300+ acres, so we definitely didn't see everything!), and the palace was so interesting. There was this tour guide there who was so knowledgeable and friendly; we sat and picked his brain for probably 45 minutes (luckily it seemed like he liked it!)

Afterward, we went to the National Portrait Gallery, which was also very interesting (although I'm STILL irritated that the portrait of Anne Boleyn I wanted to see was undergoing conservation; agh!) But other than that, it was a lot of fun. Then we went to a nearby Indian restaurant (which, unfortunately, was nowhere near as good as the one we went to after the science museum on Wednesday!) and headed back to our hotel for our last night in London. I was sad as we packed our suitcases, since we had had so much fun and still didn't even get to everything we wanted to see, but yet I was so excited to see Kate again!

Seeing Kate when we got back to the Snouffers' house on Saturday was amazing. I don't think I've ever been that excited to see someone! :) We had a great time that night at Katrina and Matthew's graduation party, and it was so fun to see the family (including our California group, Janet and Karen!) On Sunday we had breakfast at Walker Brothers' Pancake House, and then we headed back to the Snouffers' to watch Katrina and Matthew open cards and gifts. That night, we drove back to Madison, and it was so cute; every five minutes, Kate would say, "Mama?" (I was driving) like she was checking I was there. And I'd say, "Hi, sweetie!" and she would look so happy and content. That lasted probably all the way to Madison, ha! I had a great time in London, but I was even happier to be back home with my little girl

 We loved the waterlily house; very cool!

 You can't really tell here, but these are the Olympic rings in a flower bed

 Dan really liked this tree (it's called the Monkey Puzzler) so of course we had to take a picture!