Some more fun PA pics

Dada was a hit reading to Maddie and Nora


we took a nature walk with Grandma Mag and found this turtle





M has a slight obsession with hats at the moment... it is her favorite word

PA and Maddie's FIRST BIRTHDAY!!

For Maddie's 1st Birthday, Jeff parents (Nana and Pap Pap) flew us out to stay with them in beautiful Reedsville, PA for a week. We had a nice party on Memorial Day with my mom, Maddie's great grandma, Uncle Luke and Aunt Kim and cousin Nora. It was practically the only day we had nice weather and it was much appreciated!

The Zoo

We spent last week in PA, but the week before we left we had some lovely, lovely weather. I decided to get out of The Woodlands and drive into Houston to visit the Zoo. Maddie was teething and slightly miserable. Her favorite experience was playing in the mulch. (ugh) I did manage to get her to make some animal noises and I think she enjoyed the experience overall.

yay for meerkats!!


the petting zoo was really quite nice


rrrraaaaaarrrrr


...and I leave you with Maddie's favorite part of the zoo

Landry's Update

It pays to complain! After writing Landry's a nasty note, we received a $50 gift certificate to any Landry's Inc. restaurant! Luckily that encompasses a steak house. I'm just not sure I want to go to their seafood place again. Too greasy. But kudos to them for taking me seriously!

Pictures from the Landry's disaster

Family pictures before we left... clearly we're very excited to be going out to a nice restaurant! I even fit back into a pre-pregnancy dress for the occasion!

doesn't it look like we stole some blonde-haired blue-eyed child for a mother's day prank?



Here we are waiting to be seated... and waiting... and waiting...

..and this is what "the lion says"! RAAAAARRRRR!!!



And we end with a very tired bebe... resting on the table. Note lack of food.

By the way, I don't know how long I can maintain this level of blogging lavishness, so enjoy it while it's here.

UPDATE to Blah blah blah

My mom was equally intrigued by what's pooping in my back yard and decided to write a note to the people at the Texas Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. Posing as me, she wrote a note simply stating that something was defecating in my back yard and it's dog sized poo and she (I) was wondering what it could be. The director, Ms Roslyn Even, promptly wrote me back to inform me that it's raccoon poo. Apparently healthy raccoons have some really healthy poo. Good to know! Our suspicions were confirmed when I noticed yesterday morning that a raccoon(s) had drug a 5lb bag of bird seed about 10 feet across my deck, ripped it open, and consumed part of its contents.

Since Ms Even was so helpful in the raccoon debacle, I decided to ask about the things in my trees. I described it as a chirping (although it's not really a chirping, per se, more like a squeaking) and said they're in my trees and it sounds like bats. She responds: "Bats don't live in trees and they don't chirp." I'm quite sure she thinks I'm a complete idiot and I'm partly inclined to write her back and ask her where this 'tude came from. She also suggested that I try to look for the chirpers with binoculars. Maybe she thinks I have night vision goggles? Anyway, in her brief and terse response she also said that tree frogs make a peculiar sound. So maybe it's tree frogs. Anyone have any night vision goggles I can borrow??

I just checked out the site: http://www.twrc-houston.org/staff.html Ms Even looks like Cruella DeVille. She's probably not rehabilitating the animals, she's breeding them to make coats! Mom, next time email the sweet looking woman from the Education department! :)

Blah blah blah

I have a few things on my mind. First, we went to Landry's tonight as an early mother's day dinner thing (plus we had a $25 gift card, thanks ExxonMobil!). We waited for over an hour for our food, finally had to get it to go because Maddie was wiped, and when we got it home it was greasy and disgusting. Good times. I'm hoping we can cure all ills tomorrow with some banana sour cream pancakes for breakfast.

OK, next. We were weeding today and found some very large, strange poop in our back yard. It's the part of the yard we have fenced off from the dogs. Hmmmm... what could possibly be making dog-sized poop in a totally fenced dog-free zone?? Can any Texans offer any light into this?? Whatever it is, it must be able to climb fences.

Lastly, I have more questions for you Texans. What is relentlessly chirping in my trees at all hours of the night? It sounds like bats. It's definitely NOT birds. But I haven't seen anything flitting around the way bats do, gobbling up insects. (And we have plenty to be gobbled!) Help. So. Confused. I've heard that tree frogs chirp, but I'm not sure I'd buy that either...

Ahh, the south.