My mom & I took my kids to the zoo today. The weather was perfect! It was about 75 degrees, overcast and breezy. The animals were out. The big cats were lazy, but visible, which is always nice. When it’s hot, they hide. The big orangutan was really cute today. He kept putting his hand out, wanting his audience to throw him something. Food, I assume. His hands were very long. Creepy long. But he was funny.

Ella was an angel. She rode in her stroller most of the time. I carried her around for a little bit, but not too much. She’s quite a load. I think she liked being outside, but she couldn’t have cared less about the animals.

This week off of school has flown by. I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday already. NOT fair! I am so ready for the summer to be here. We have planned a vacation to Pigeon Forge, Tennessee in April, so I have that to look forward to. We rented a cabin in the mountains for the week of David’s birthday. It will be our first family vacation since Disney in ‘06. Much needed, believe me. We are all excited about it!

As big & chunky as Ella is, she doesn’t really enjoy eating food. Here is her first encounter with rice cereal (mixed with mommy milk) on a spoon.

In goes the food:

Not too sure about that:

Another bite:

Eh… it’s ok, I guess:

It took me forever to feed her just a few spoonfuls. She just kept spitting it out. I talked with the dr. and she said it’s no big deal if she doesn’t want to eat yet. SO we gave up on cereal for now. But I thought the pictures were so cute!!

This morning David & I took the kids to Piccadilly for a breakfast buffet. It was the first time we’d ever tried it and we were impressed. It’s really hard to find a good place to eat breakfast in our area, so we are excited to have found one. After that, we drove to Academy, David’s single most favorite place to shop. And then we made a quick stop at PetSmart. The kids love going in there and looking at the pets up for adoption. Then we went to Target and the girls tried on a bunch of bathing suits. Taking them shopping for clothes is always enjoyable. I love to watch them shop. It is so funny. And them in the dressing room is hysterical. So prissy and girly. After that we headed home. Now we are just hanging out at home, enjoying having nothing to do. I wish we had more days like this.

David is off of work today, so I have been able to spend the whole day so far with him. So nice. Just me, him, and the baby. I have been putting off going to the grocery since earlier in the week, so that’s what we decided to do today. Yeah, I know… what a nice way to spend the day… Walmart, lovely. We got everything we need for 2 weeks worth of dinners and lunches as well as bread and meat for sandwiches with his parents today. We were just finishing up lunch with them when David received a call on his cell phone. It was the kids’ school. They told David that Jacob had a hurt foot because some kid was throwing chunks of concrete and one hit Jacob on the foot. They said he was limping and asked if we could come take a look.
Of course, I get to the school as quickly as possible because I think he might actually have some sort of injury. Well, I can tell with one quick glance that there is absolutely nothing wrong with his foot. The chunk of concrete hit him on the big toe, which was, of course, inside his tennis shoe (and the “chunk” must have been more like a small piece). No mark, no redness, no swelling, nothing. His limping also turned out to be a dramatic performance. He swore up and down that his foot really did hurt, and I suppose it might have, but not anywhere near anything I needed to come down to the school to look at. While I was there, I went ahead and picked all three of the kids up. It was just about an hour before I would have normally left to pick them up and I just didn’t feel like going back. I told Jacob that the next time he called me to come and inspect an injury there better be a real injury. There needs to be a big bump, bruise, knot or blood to merit a call home.

Some of my recent entries are missing because my brother, who hosts this site for me, switched providers. The other company he used made some of our data (my recent entries) disappear. Whether or not they’ll come back, I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I doubt it though.

Last night, Jacob received his orange belt in karate. He’s moving right along. He did a great job on his form and techniques.

His orange belt is placed in front of him and he takes off the old belt.

New belt on!

All the instructors with all the students who got new belts. Jacob is the 4th in from the left in the orange belt.