Another Trip to the Zoo!

I'm a little late in posting this (like 2 weeks late!) but we went to the zoo again with some of our family this time. The zoo just opened up a new exhibit called Rocky Shores. Here are some of the new zoo animals that we were able to see!

An otter...

A seal... (this first picture totally reminds me of  the time we were walking around the bay in San Diego and we saw a seal. So cool!)

A sea lion!

Some bears...

A polar bear! (I hope next time we catch him swimming!)

That's all of the new animals. Dave was in charge of the camera this time and he got a few shots that I love! Like this linx that was cuddling with another lynx.

Giraffe...

If you look closely you can see our group (minus Dave) looking at the giraffes in this picture.

We had to see how Dawson (and Drea) measured up again this time. We figured since we have zoo pass we'll take this picture of Dawson and Ashlynn each time we go to the zoo and see how they grow throughout the year.

Ashlynn didn't want to stay put so this is the best one that we got of her.

This gorilla always looks so depressed every time we see him (or her? I need to pay attention next time). We all felt bad for him though. I hope next time we go he is having fun!!

These owls are cool looking. I always hear an owl somewhere around our house and sometimes when I'm at my mom's house but I have never seen one except at the zoo. I really want to see an owl in it's natural habitat... maybe someday!

These bats were just creepy. I'll be just fine if I only ever see them at the zoo!

And same with this snake. It's a cool shot, though, so I had to share!

And lastly, a group shot!

And another one with Dave in it (but now my dad is missing) this time. :)

We had lots of fun and look forward to going again soon!! I'm thinking our next trip will be an evening trip. I think I've only been to the zoo in the morning/afternoon. It will be fun to switch it up a bit. :)

Peter Pan Movie Night

We had a Peter Pan movie night a couple of weeks ago. Before this one we hadn't done a movie night like this in a long time and I knew Dawson would enjoy it now that he's a little older. I have our next movie night planned already, I just haven't decided when we are going to do it. We are so busy right now!!

Here are our movie tickets, being held up by skull rock.

We tried to make our table look a little bit like Neverland. We had a blue table cloth that was the water, a skeleton head from our Halloween decorations that was skull rock, cupcakes made into a crocodile, and then I drew on construction paper and then covered each one in contact paper for our place mats that represented different parts of Neverland.

Here is the first place mat, a map of Neverland.

Mermaid Lagoon.

The Indian Camp.

And the Lost Boys.

Our drinks were sprinkled with pixie dust.

I went back and forth on what I wanted to make for dessert and finally decided on a cupcake crocodile and I'm so glad that I did! He turned out awesome!

For dinner we had pirate ship pizzas, hook shaped breadsticks, cannonballs (olives), and some pirates gold (corn).

I used a black poster board and cut our Peter's shadow.

Here's a shot of our dinner.

Dawson painted Peter Pan and Captain Hook so I decided to put them in frames and use them as part of our decorations.

I put Captain Hook, the crocodile, Tinker Bell, and Peter Pan by the TV until it was time to watch the movie and then I got them down so the kids could cuddle with them.

After dinner (before we watched the movie) we went outside to find our shadows! Luckily none of them were missing.

Dawson was wearing his Jake shirt (the closest shirt he has to Peter Pan) and Ashlynn had on her Peter Pan shirt.

Dawson calls the grassy area in front of our apartment "Neverland" so we went to play in Neverland. Dawson brought out his sword and hook and there was another little boy out there that he played with for awhile. They took turns holding the sword and the hook and would chase after each other.

We all had a lot of fun and are looking forward to our next family movie night! Hopefully I can squeeze it in here soon!

Dawson's First T-Ball Game!!

Dawson had his first t-ball game last night and it was so cute!! This was his first time up to bat. It took him a couple of tries but he did hit the ball.

Any guesses to what he did after he hit the ball?? He ran after it and got it too! I was laughing so hard!
You can see in this picture that the girl from the other team is asking him for it...

 

He eventually made it to first base with a little guidance from daddy. I love how big his smile is in almost every picture. He was having so much fun!

 

Here he is playing third base. I think he got a little bored and sat down. haha

He eventually stood up, though. I love this picture with the mountains and temple in the background. We live in a beautiful state!

He ran all the way from third base to get the ball and throw it to first. Good job, Dawson!!! He loved chasing after the ball no matter how far away from it he was.

Water break.

He had a lot of support from family who came to watch him. He wanted to come and sit with us a few times but we would remind him that we were here to watch him play and then he would walk back onto the field and start playing again. It was a lot of fun to watch him!!! His next game is tomorrow night, I'm going to bring the video camera and get some video to share. :)

Solar Eclipse

I'm really late in posting these since the solar eclipse was on May 20th but I want to post them because it was AWESOME!! We missed a lot of it, including the "ring of fire" because it was so cloudy. I'm glad we were able to see some of it, though. We bought some welding glass for a couple of bucks and used that to protect our eyes. We also took pictures through the welding glass and that's why it looks green.

 

Apples and Grapes

I'm getting behind on posts again! Tonight me and Dawson went to JCPenney to pick up a couple of shirts for me and on the way home we passed by an Applebee's, Dawson pointed out the apple and wanted to know what that restaurant was called so I told him. A couple minutes later we passed by an Olive Garden. Dawson said, "look Mommy! It's grapebee's!" bwahahahaha Get it? Because Olive Garden has grapes on their sign. I thought it was the funniest thing. I love how his little mind works. I'm glad that I somewhat keep up on our blog, that way years from now we can remember little things like this. I'm so grateful for my little family. I feel so blessed!!

Butterflies!!!

I'm a little behind on updating on how the caterpillars are doing! When you last saw them they had grown a lot! A couple days after my last post the caterpillars hung upside down and their cocoons formed! In this picture you can see four of them hanging, one of the four is in a cocoon and the fifth one is getting ready to hang upside down...

Did you know that the thing that hardens around the caterpillar isn't a cocoon? I didn't! I became a bit of a caterpillar expert (I seriously looked up and read so much about them!) It's actually called a chrysalis. We have two children's books about caterpillars changing into butterflies and both of those books call it a cocoon so we decided not to confuse Dawson and we also called it a cocoon. Cocoon is easier to say, too. Anyway, I've always known it as a cocoon so until we teach Dawson what it's really called (when he's like 6) I'm going to continue calling it a cocoon.

Here are all 5 caterpillars in their cocoons. I watched the last caterpillar hang himself upside down and it was pretty cool! 

After the caterpillars had been in their cocoons for a couple of days we took the lid off the little cup that they came in and took off this little paper disc that was attached to the lid. The caterpillars were attached to it. We pinned the paper disc to the side of the mesh butterfly garden that we got. That way they'd have a lot more room when they emerged as butterflies!

I like this picture that I got. Two of the butterflies had already emerged, what I like about the picture is you can see the orange of the butterfly's wing that is still in the cocoon. 

We missed the first two coming out of their cocoons, it happens so fast! We were determined to see at least one of them emerge so we had our eyes on them all day! I saw one start to shake around a little bit so I called Dave and Dawson over and sure enough a little butterfly was coming out! It was really neat to see!! Dawson was really excited. I also watched the 4th and 5th ones emerge. I was holding Ashlynn up to see the last one and she seemed really fascinated by it. I was really surprised about how interested in the butterflies she was. Once every hour or so she would stand next to the butterfly garden and want us to pick her up so she could see them.

Here is one of our Painted Lady butterflies!

We kept the butterflies in our butterfly garden for two or three days and then we decided it was time to let them go. We let them go one at a time and let each of the kids let one go. Dawson didn't want to touch it, he pulled away at the last second. haha

Ashlynn wanted to hold one, though! She wasn't scared at all!

One of the butterflies couldn't fly. I'm not sure if his wings didn't form correctly or what. I had Dave put him on one of our potted flower plants so he would have plenty of food without having to search for it. Then later that night I started feeling sorry for him so I made Dave go get him and we put him back in the butterfly garden and gave him some fresh watermelon. Painted Ladies only live 2-4 weeks so we decided just to keep him inside.