Day at the Zoo



watching the rhinos



 We spent a great afternoon at the Seneca Park Zoo on Sunday, July 29th.  Brynn loves the animals, and she got to spend time with her cousins at the same time.  Kathy is here from the Netherlands with Mink and Nola, and the kids don't get to spend a lot of time together, so when they're here, we try to get them together as much as possible.  This was our first trip to the zoo since the new African exhibit opened this spring.  The lions were sleeping right up against the glass, so Brynn got a close-up view of them.  We got to see the rhinos, elephants, snakes (ewww!), and a bunch more animals.  I think the kids ended up having more fun wading in the stream than actually seeing the animals, but as long as they have a good time, that's all that matters!



Mink, Nola, and Brynn checking out a big lizard



lion sleeping right by the glass



on the statue outside the African exhibit











wading in the stream



Today-All About Brynn

Age:  Turned 3 in May

Hair:  Blonde

Eyes:  Most days, hazel-ish

Height/Weight:  35", 25 lbs. 

Favorite Foods:  Pasta, strawberries, goldfish crackers.  This child could eat pasta for every meal, every day, if I let her!

Favorite Color:  Pink!  Everything must be pink lately!  One day, she even asked me if I thought the construction workers would paint the Bay Bridge pink. 

Favorite Movie:  Winnie the Pooh, with Tangled a very close second

Random Things:  Loves to draw and color, especially on a dry erase board while sitting at the coffee table.  Has an unbelievable memory.  Puts puzzles together so quickly, she's up to 48 pieces right now.  Likes to talk to everyone on the phone, especially all 3 sets of grandparents.  Loves to color in everyone's birthday and holiday cards before we mail them. 

This little girl makes my heart happy, so I just had to share a few tidbits about her :-)  Thanks for reading and allowing me to share!

Breathless

So this is my first official completion of a GBE2 blog challenge, let’s see how this goes…

This week’s challenge…”Breathless.”

I wasn’t sure how to address this topic when I first saw it, but decided it would probably be easiest to hit on a few key things, rather than write a long diatribe about a single thing. 

• My daughter saying “I so love you, Mommy” or “Mama, I love you really much.”  Side note…for some reason, instead of the word “very,” Brynn says “really.”  For the longest time, I wasn’t sure I would ever hear those words from a child of mine, so now, no matter how many times a day she says them, or how much she’s trying to use those words to get out of trouble, they still leave me breathless
• Hearing my unborn child’s heartbeat, seeing her on the ultrasound, and hearing the very first cry of my newborn baby, and so many little things between that day and now…see above reason!
• Getting a call in the middle of the afternoon and seeing my parent’s phone number on the caller ID in March.  My parent’s NEVER call in the middle of the day unless something is wrong, so that’s something that always makes me catch my breath.  Just hearing my dad’s voice on the other end of the line confirmed my initial thoughts that it wasn’t good news.  “Your mom’s in the hospital” was the news.  Just writing this now still brings me to tears, even though things are looking up.
• A beautiful sunrise or sunset
• Driving on icy roads in the winter…yes, I grew up in NY and have lived in the western part of the state for nearly 20 years, but I still don’t like the winter weather and will likely never get used to it.
• Weddings…the beauty of a bride walking down the aisle and the pure joy on her face are priceless.

Write

I want to write, really, I do!  Just seems like I never have the time.  As you can see, my best intentions of writing with the prompts from my 31 Things class hasn't gone so well.  Oh, I write daily...in my head!  I can't tell you the number of blog posts that have been started in my head.  Bits and pieces of my daily life, things about Brynn, things about work.  But all those bits and pieces seem to add up to a crazy life, with little to no time to sit at the computer and actually post.  A friend recently suggested that I join a daily blog challenge for the month of July (thanks for the suggestion, Amy!).  My reaction...ha!  How can I post daily when I can barely seem to post monthly?  Now that I think about it, I feel bad complaining about how little time I have to post, when this lady manages to juggle 2 children with special needs as well as write insightful posts every day. 

I'm going to try to be better about writing on a regular basis.  Right now, I'm going to shoot for 3 times a week.  We'll see how it goes....  In the meantime, I'm giving up the idea of using 31 Things as inspiration.  I think there are things in my daily life that will make for better posts, whether people actually read and/or comment or not.  At least writing will make me feel like I've accomplished something, and documented a little bit of my life for posterity sake.