Anniversary Trip to Cleveland - Part 2

We went to the African Safari Wildlife Park in Port Clinton, OH. It is a drive-through safari. The fee includes a ticket to drive through as many times as you would like and a cup of food pellets. The first animals we encountered were the buffalo, and they gave us quite an introduction to the safari. Jim rolled down his window, and this huge buffalo stuck his head right into our car! As Jim tried to feed him some food pellets from the cup, another buffalo pushed in, and the first buffalo grabbed the cup from Jim's hand and took it. As the buffalo took it, food pellets spilled all over Jim's lap and the floor boards of our car.

Jim was a little overwhelmed by the buffalo, and Drew was very scared. He actually screamed!

We saw all kinds of animals.

There were many, many deer. This one came right up to our car.

Alpaca

Deer

Llama - they would just come right up and stand in the road in front of our car.

We were some of the only people there, and since we had to drive so slowly, we put Drew up in front with us. He hugged George the entire time.

On our second time driving through, the buffalo were there to greet us again - this time, they were blocking the road.

Those buffalo loved us!

Drew tried to ignore them.

We bought a bag of carrots for the second ride through. Drew was not excited to have the windows go down to feed the animals again.

If we slowed down at all, the animals thought they were going to get food, and they would just swarm our car.

A huge herd of deer.

Zebra

The zebras were in the same pen with the giraffe.

At the end of the safari, there was a vacuum, so we were able to clean up all the spilled food pellets. The safari also has a walking zoo, animal rides, and pig races. We thought that Drew had probably had enough, so we just went on home. This was a really neat experience, and we will probably go again some time.

Anniversary Trip to Cleveland - Part 1

Jim and I celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary this weekend with a trip to Cleveland, OH. We decided to take Drew with us and do some things as a family. We stayed in a fun hotel - Embassy Suites in Independence, OH. These are the elevators. We could look through the windows as we rode up to our floor. This is the view from the balcony outside our room. We had a really good breakfast down in the atrium on Sunday morning. There was a chef making made-to-order omelets that were so good!

We went to some outlets to shop later in the morning. The outlets had a little train that drove around, and Drew was fascinated. It was all he talked about the whole time we shopped. We told him that when we finished shopping we would ride it.

The conductor told us we could put Drew on the front of the train to take pictures, so we did, and he got very scared.

He did not want to stand on the train by himself.

He was very serious for most of the train ride.

He finally started to enjoy himself toward the end of the ride.

After our outlet shopping, we went to the Cheesecake Factory for a late lunch. We loved our food and our cheesecake! Drew had a large amount of fries. Jim and I split a salad and a pasta dish and had cheesecake, of course! After the Cheesecake Factory, we drove about an hour away to Port Clinton, Ohio to go to a drive-through safari.

The Frosty

Jim has been away playing in a golf tournament this weekend, and since Drew and I have had a quiet weekend together at home, I decided to take him over to Wendy's to get a Frosty to share. When the girl at the the drivethru window saw Drew in the backseat, she asked if he would like a little Frosty of his own. We brought our Frosties home to enjoy. Drew started out well and loved his ice cream!

Drew had a little trouble keeping up. He couldn't eat it as fast as it was melting. In the end, he might have ended up with more Frosty on his shirt than in his belly.

He was such a mess! We went straight to the bathtub after this little treat.

We are looking forward to seeing Jim again later this evening and then celebrating Father's Day tomorrow.

Warren Splash Park

Drew and I met some friends at the city water park on Monday afternoon. For the first part of our time there, Drew just stood and stared at the water and the fountains. He was scared to get too close to the fountains, and he didn't quite know what to do.

He finally started to realize that this was supposed to be fun, and he tried splashing in the water.

Once his friend Joseph arrived, he really started having fun.

We had a fun time, and we hope to go back many times this summer.

Water Table

Now that our weather has gotten warmer, we decided to get out the sand and water table that Drew got for his birthday. Jim put it together on Sunday afternoon. We are planning to just use water this summer (no sand). Drew went out this evening after dinner to try it out for the first time, and he really enjoyed it. He had fun playing with his little boats.

He also spent a long time filling these little cups with water and then dumping them out.

I think he will get hours and hours of fun from this table this summer!

Besides enjoying his water table, Drew has had fun this past week going to the library, the city water park, and playing with his new basketball hoop that I bought off of Craigslist. I will try to post pictures from some of those activities soon. I am planning to go scrapbooking with some friends from church tomorrow evening, so I hope to have some new pages to post later this week too.

I also want to mention the new link I've added over on the right side bar. Jim and I have been doing all of our internet searches through swagbucks.com (whose searches are powered by Google) for the past few months. Each search we do is a chance for us to win swagbucks - which add up to "bucks" that we can trade in for prizes such as Amazon, Target, Starbucks, and many other gift cards or other prizes. It really works, and there are no fees or any other strings attached. If you join Swagbucks through our blog, it will not only get you started on earning your own prizes, but it will help us too. It is kind of fun to get something for doing something you do anyway. If you have any questions, please ask! :)

Potty Training

We have started a little bit of low-key potty training. Drew has been telling us about his dirty diapers for a while now, but it has always been after the fact, until recently. A few times this past week, he has asked to use the potty, and he's done it successfully! We've been praising him for going to the bathroom in the potty, and we are also giving him his favorite treat as a reward - M&M's. I used this little gumball machine of M&M's as a reward in my classroom this past semester, and when school got out, I brought it home. After Drew goes potty, he gets a penny for the M&M machine.

We were hoping to potty train this summer, and it seems that Drew is interested and ready. We're hoping that it will be an easy process. We'll see. . . If you have any tips or good resources for us to refer to, please feel free to share!

Guest Room Projects

As we prepared for Drew's birth, we switched our guest room into a nursery and our office/computer room into a guest room. For the past two years, our guest room has been a hodge podge of flowers and golf (which were the themes of our old guest room and office - now combined). I have wanted a more cohesive look in the guest room for a while now, so I decided to do a little makeover in there, which I hope to finish before my parents come to visit us the first week of July. I've been trying to keep my changes as inexpensive as possible, and I've been having fun coming up with pretty and cost-effective ways to beautify the space.
I made these throw pillows this week. I made them out of place mats that I bought on clearance from Marshall's. I just stitched two place mats almost all the way around and then stuffed them and finished stitching them. They are reversible - one side is blue with white dots, and the other side is white with blue dots. I bought this mirror from my favorite thrift store for $5. It was pretty nice as it was, but I cleaned up the frame and then spray painted it with a fresh coat of cream paint. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

We are hoping to paint the walls a light blue and get some new window treatments in the next few weeks.