Zoo Class

Last month the kids cousin, Lily, invited Abby and Noah to attend a private zoo class at the St. Louis zoo that Lily had won. The kids were so excited. We love our zoo and spend many days there.

The class was 45 minutes long and they were able to get up clothes with many animals from the children's zoo.

This is an elephants tooth. Yep it's huge. No we didn't plan to wear the same color shirt, I came from work and Noah came with Daddy.

Noah liked the bones more than the animals. This guy travels around the zoo inside a recycling bin.

This massive bone is a femur from a baby elephant. It was much too heavy for her to hold on her own.

After class we stopped by the butterfly. It was extremely sunny outside so the butterflies were very active. Abby kept trying to get one to land on her and right before we walked out this blue morpho landed on her hat. I made her stand really still so I could fumble for my phone in the backpack, thankfully both Abby and the butterfly cooperated.

 The butterfly didn't stay still for long though and quickly flew away. I'm glad I got the pictures that I did.     Abby was so excited.

A Trampoline

A month ago we saw a trampoline at Sams.  The kids have loved trampolines when they've been on them before.  It's about 8 feet wide and we figured it would fit perfectly in the basement.  Figuring it was a seasonal item and wouldn't be there during the kids birthdays/christmas, we just went ahead and got it.

Then came the debate of when to give it to them.  We figured it would be nice to have in the hot days of summer.  So, we gave them an early birthday/christmas present.  Naturally, they don't really understand this concept, but they'll just get less for their bday/christmas presents.

The kids LOVE the trampoline.  Seriously, they would spend the majority of the day on that thing if we let them.

Summer Buzz

It was time. We finally chopped it off.

 He was nervous and asked his sister to hold his hand, she was busy "texting" her friends. No, not really, but she does pretend on an old cell phone to be texting and taking pictures.

 Chubbs before

 And Chubbs after!

Museum of Transportation

So a few months ago we bought a groupon for a deal at the Museum of Transportation, every once and awhile Dave and I would casually mention that we needed to use the deal before it expired. We finally had a free day the day before it was set to expire. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, right. It was also hot, like St. Louis 90+ degrees hot. Oh and the Musuem is almost completely outside. Ugh!

Anyway we made the best of it, getting there right when they opened. Noah and Abby love the train ride so we did that right away, the breeze was great.

 They have a lot of old trains that you can walk through. This is great, expect it tends to get very hot, the kids only lasted about an hour and a half before they were ready to go home.

 The two times we've been to this place it's been extremely hot. I would love to go when the temperatures are lower and we actually enjoy this place.

Father/Daughter Weekend

Awhile back by dad had invited me to Duluth for Grandma's Marathon weekend, an event he has been participating in since I was in high school. This year was no different, as he was running the half marathon. The drive to Duluth from Minneapolis is a straight two hour shot up 35, not us Bohlingers. We took the "back roads." See the traffic is horrific Grandma's weekend so we were going to go up through Wisconsin.... let's just say it took a little longer than we expected and the closer we got to Duluth the foggier it became.

This was a good day of fog, it was much thicker than this in Duluth and at our campsite.

Yes, I did say campsite. We decided to camp on Spirit Mountain. A good idea in theory, but let's just say its a good thing we had a good sense of humor about the whole thing. First there was the above fog to deal with at a high altitude in the mountains, second this sign at the check in building....

 Oh yeah, and it was raining, not a lot but a misty rain that never seemed to end. We set up camp right away because of the never ending rain.

We headed into town to bum around that afternoon and "see the sights" it's been five years since I had been to Duluth.

Friday night we ran the 5k together. It was a lot of fun. Not my best time, I overdressed because of the weather but we still had a lot of fun. This was at the start line. Dad even hung with me despite my slow pace.

 

 After the race and dinner, rain started moving no longer the mist we were used to but heavy rain. So we headed back to camp and attempted to get a few hours of shut eye. We didn't get much sleep that night especially since we had to be up and back downtown at 4:30am Saturday morning to drop dad off for the half marathon. Runners are bussed to the start of the race and finish downtown. I spent the morning in a coffee shop with a bunch of other families waiting out the cool rainy temps.

Dad less than two blocks from the finish line.

 Finished, this is post race after cleaning up. This Grandpa can still run a half marathon in under 2 hours. Congrats Dad!

 

Saturday after the race we headed back into Minneapolis. We were planning to camp another night but the weather was not cooperating for another night of camping. It was a pretty cool father/daughter weekend.

Top Ten Favorite Pictures!

In light of a recent picture taken of the kids, we decided to post our top five TEN (after looking, we couldn't narrow it to just five) favorite pictures of the kids.

Number 10 (August 2009).  Abby in Minnesota with a huge grin.  You can see the redness on her nose.  She rubbed it raw in her pack-n-play:

Number 9 (July 2011).  He woke up like this and was not happy!  Is it bad that I ran to get the camera before rescuing him?? :-):

Number 8 (April 2009).  Abby wasn't so sure about the new food!:

Number 7 (July 2011).  Noah:

Number 6 (September 2011):

Number 5 (June 2013)  Handsome dude.  We cut off most of that hair a short time later:

Number 4 (September 2010).  Abby at Ryan and Jackie's Wedding.  Still my favorite individual picture of Abby ever!: 

Number 3 (June 2012) Before Jane and Kevin's wedding, Abby was the flower girl:

Number 2 (August 2012):

Annnnnnnnnd, number 1 (July 2013)  Completely brings out both of their personalities:

Noah Pooped on the Potty!

Hooray!

Noah has been pee trained for about a month now.  And it's going pretty well.  As long as we remind him to go every few hours, he doesn't have accidents.  But, he's not at the point yet of telling us he has to go.

He also wears underwear for naptime now!  We started that a few weeks ago when he woke up dry a few days in a row.  He had some accidents here and there, but overall is doing very well with it.  We don't let him nap for more than an hour and a half, so that helps.  He's still in diapers overnight and wakes up pretty wet.  Although, I think a lot of that is from when he first wakes up.  Hopefully in the next few months we can do underwear overnight.

But, the big news is the poop!  Since we started this adventure, we've had a very tough time getting him to poop on the potty.  He'll typically go in the other room when we're distracted and poop right in his undies.  We always seem to find out a few seconds too late, when we hear the grunting and see the dazed look on his face.  If it wasn't so gross, it'd be pretty funny.

A few weeks ago, he had an accident.  I took him to the potty, but the poop was still stuck.  I sat him on the potty and told him to push, which he did.  Naturally, the poop fell.  I celebrated as though he pooped on the potty.  The reason was to take the fear out of it.  I did roughly the same thing when he was learning to pee on the potty.  He was super excited, even though technically it didn't count.  He even got to go to the store to get a new toy (a batman figurine!).

Fast forward about a week.  He again had an accident, but I caught him in the middle of the act.  I took him to the bathroom to get him cleaned up.  Then I put him on the potty to see if there was anything left.  He really tried, and got a tiny little turd to come out!  I was super excited, since this was the first time he really pooped on the potty (albeit with an accident first).

Fast forward a few more days.  Noah went to the bathroom upstairs with Peggy.  I heard screaming (in a good way).  He pooped on the potty without an accident first!  YAHOO!  I would call this his first real success.

We're hoping this trend continues.  I went to the dollar store yesterday to get a collection of toys for his treasure chest.  Each time he poops without an accident he'll get to pick something out.  He still only gets an M&M for pee.

Go Noah!