St. Louis Zoo

I was off Friday, so I recruited Kirsten and Kirk to go to the St. Louis Zoo with Brady and me (Quentin has to work...ahhhh the joys of being gainfully employed).  I think Kirk was pleasantly surprised with the quality of our free zoo. He seemed skeptical at first.  I mean how can it be so good when it's free?  Brady loved it, of course.  He did not want to leave one animal to go to the next.  

 I was very grateful to Kirsten and Kirk for taking their turn carting this boy around and pushing the stroller.  I was worn out by the end of the day even with their help, so I can't imagine how I would have made it without them.  Brady is getting too big to carry around all day!

 We were so excited to see the new baby elephant.  It was so (relatively) small and cute and reminded us of the elephant from Jungle Book because it had a little tuft of hair on her head.  You can see it hiding behind the log. Kind of.

 It's a pretty big zoo, and it was hot, and we did a lot of walking.  As you can see, I was not the only one worn out.  You can see he is starting to get sleepy here.

 And much to my surprise, Brady fell asleep...on Kirk's shoulder!  It was past naptime, but generally Brady does not sleep anywhere besides his bed.  But he even stayed asleep when we moved him to the stroller.  And then through the train tooting its horn right next to us...three times!  Unfortunately he also missed the new sea lion exhibit, which I think he would have loved.  It's a little tunnel that you walk through and they swim all around.  Way cool.

 And then there was the sloth bear, which is a bear that looks like it needs a haircut.  Pretty cute.  Plus I decided Kirsten and Kirk needed their picture together.  Thanks for being my helpers for the day!

Mini Golf Fun

Saturday the weather was perfect so we decided to go golfing...well, mini golfing.  Brady was so excited to "golf like Richard,"which is what he call Jared Houseman for some reason.  He thought it was great and he had fun picking up our balls and handing them to us (which was so helpful!) I think Brady probably won...unless you take into consideration that he would put his ball right next to the hole and just taaaap it in. (Happy Gilmore quote for the folks out there who think I don't know how to spell tap).  He was so proud every time he got it in the hole.

Our Big Boy!

Our Baby Brady is, well, not really a baby anymore.  Although I still call him that.  And I can because I'm his momma :)  Anyway, we are going through a big transition time for this big boy and I am so proud of how well he has handled everything.  (And let's be honest, how well I have handled it too!)  About a week ago we started potty training.  He caught on to peeing in the potty almost immediately, with only a few accidents the first morning and only one or two pee accidents since.  Pooping has been more difficult, especially since he seems to hold it forever.  We talked about how the doctor says he needs to poop in the potty every day because if he holds it in he will get sick.  I'm not sure that registered though because ten minutes later I asked "Brady, what did the doctor say?" To which he responded "No more monkeys jumping on the bed?" And yes, the doctor did say that too, so I can't really refute that. He did, however, finally have two successes in that department yesterday.  Hopefully that is a step in the right direction.  He got to go pick out a toy and was pretty excited about that.  As you can see, he is VERY proud of his big boy underwear.  

 And we pretty much went pants-less the entire potty training weekend.  Here he is with his "bowtie" made of balloons that he got with his daddy at the Honda dealership.

The other big transition was turning his crib into a toddler bed.  I was pretty nervous about this one too because it's so nice to have your kid contained at night.  Contained equals safe.  But he did great with this one too!  He is more resistant to bedtime, but I think that has less to do with the bed and more to do with wanting to play.  He does eventually fall asleep though...and look dang cute doing it!  This is a relatively normal position, but he sometimes ends up sideways or in other strange positions.  

He likes to be able to climb in and out of his bed during the day, and loves to climb in at night.  He doesn't seem to realize that he can climb out by himself in the morning yet.  He still cries for us to come get him.  He is growing so fast and I love to hear the funny things he says.  He is so sweet (for the most part) and I sure do love him.

GRADUATION!!

After what has seemed like forever, Quentin finally graduated!  Yahoo!!  He has spent a lot of money and time (and money) and hard work (and money) and we are so glad to be done!  He has been in school the whole time we've been married, which is almost 5 years. School has not always been easy for him, and I'm so proud of him for sticking it out and finishing.  Not only will it help provide for our family, it will provide a good example for our children someday and I'm grateful for that.  I am also grateful to have such a supportive family.  Quentin's whole family (minus John...we missed you buddy) came to celebrate with us.  It was so much fun having everyone here and it was nice to have some guests stay at our house, even though we only have a twin bed and air mattress to offer up.

 I couldn't resist getting this picture...Preston was out cold for a big part of the graduation ceremony.  Can't say that I blame him, but he looked so uncomfortable and still managed to stay asleep through all the noise.

 Brady got to try on the hat.  Hard to believe that some day in the very distant future, he'll be in the cap and gown.

 With my parents, who have always been great support.  Even on the days where I just needed someone to listen while I complained about how much life sucks when your husband is in school and you never see each other, etc, etc.

I'll have to put up the group shot of the Bell side when Kendall emails it to me.  He graduated last Friday, and we had his party on Saturday.  My wonderful event planner/sister-in-law, Cassie, planned the whole thing and delegated the jobs.  We did a BBQ at a local park and the Housemans and the Lambs joined our crazy crew for the fun.  The food was yummy, the kids had a blast (especially when they discovered they could play in the water from the drinking fountain), and it really couldn't have been more perfect.  Thanks Cassie.  And I got to present Quentin with a much anticipated surprise...an ipad!  He has been wanting one pretty much since they first came out.  So I started saving months and months before to surprise him with one.  That's a huge chunk of change to stash up, and I had to be pretty sneaky!  Lori was my partner in crime when it came time to order it.  She let me use her Target card(so I could get the 5% discount of course! without Quentin knowing) and ship it to her house.  Thanks Lori.  He loves it.  A lot.  Maybe more than he loves me.  Just kidding!  But he has spent lots of time on it and it seems to be everything he always dreamed of, so I guess the last 4 or 5 years of school were worth it :)

Tons of Trucks

Columbia has an activity every year called "Tons of Trucks."  They just have a whole bunch of, you guessed it, trucks all parked in a big parking lot and the kids can go around and sit in them and honk the horns.  Basically every little boy's dream come true!  They have fire trucks, police cars, garbage trucks, plows, tractors, buses, ambulances, mail trucks, and a helicopter this year.  Pretty much anything you could imagine.  Brady was in heaven...until the cement truck honked its horn while we were standing right in front of it.  I'd be lying if I said it didn't startle me, but it scared Brady half to death.

Grandma Hendrickson's 80th Birthday

One of the main reasons we went on our trip was to attend Grandma Hendrickson's 80th birthday party!  We are so glad we got to go celebrate this special day with almost the entire Hendrickson side of the family.  We sure do miss her and I'm glad that Brady could see her and that she could see how cute Brady is in person.  Although he is pretty cute in his pictures, they don't even come close to doing him justice :)  Also it's cute to hear Brady say "Grandma Hendrickson."  It's a long name, but boy does he try his best!

 We also got to see my cousin, Malea's, baby.  She is close to Caleb's age and she sure is a cutie!  Brady obviously agrees and was not shy about giving her loves.  I'm not sure she shared his enthusiasm.

Brady was also a big fan of the party hats.

 As you can see, he also enjoyed his time with Caleb.  And Caleb was a pretty good sport.  Actually, he was a good sport the whole week and hardly fussed at all, which is pretty amazing considering we just carted him around everywhere and he was cutting two teeth! What a trooper!

 And what birthday party would be complete without some cake?  Brady is a sugar addict and enjoyed every last bite of his.  Too bad he missed all the frosting that ended up on his face :)

We are so glad we were able to go on this trip and are grateful to my parents for making it happen.  It was a much needed vacation for us all and it's always nice to see the family.  Happy Birthday, Grandma Hendrickson!

Happy Easter!

Since we were traveling most of Easter day, we had a few different celebration days on our vacation.  We dyed eggs at Megan's, and we all had a lot of fun with that.

 When we got to St. George, we got to join in with Aunt Karen's annual easter egg hunt!  I had heard about this from Megan since she has had the pleasure of joining in several times before, and Brady absolutely loved it!  He wanted to open each egg as soon as he picked it up, but I tried to teach him to just grab them and then look later.  Mostly, I think he wanted to eat all the candy right away.  Not sure where he gets that sweet tooth...

 

 The Easter bunny came and left Brady's basket at the condo for him to find Saturday morning.  Brady mostly cared about the candy (imagine that), but also like this little puppet.  He got a little Elmo and Count too that he loves and some other fun things as well.  Happy Easter!