The Wonder Place

Well folks, you are getting two posts in one day! I was going through my pictures and found some from a trip to the Wonder Place. Burke and I met Landon and Katie there last month sometime. It was the first time I had been and it was pretty fun. There are lots of activities for the kiddos to play with and best of all...you don't have to clean any of it up!! Technically, I think the Wonder Place likes you to pick up after yourself if you have taken toys from one area to another but in general, it's a destruction zone outside your house. We did encounter one weird kid in the kitchen area that I had to get a little rude with. He was bogarting all the food and supplies and so I had to lay down the law and say 'if all of that is for you then you can't have any of her stuff on this table!' Fortunately, his mom retrieved him to leave not long after that.

Here is Burke on top of the climbing thing (whatever it's called). She required my assistance getting up there.
Here she is in the kitchen area. The look on her face says 'What's up with this weird kid bogarting all the stuff?!'

She loved the door on the house! She opened and closed it a million times!

An up close shot of the door action.

Hanging out on the drum.

Checking out the cash register!

Leaving the 'veterinarian's office!' Her favorite thing was the button on the xray board!

I love the sequence of these pictures.

Burke: What are you playing with Landon?

Landon: This cool pipe thing that sucks in balls or scarfs.

Landon: See, you just put your hand in here.

Burke: (Pondering the process)

Burke: Oh I get it! It looks like fun!

Landon: Yeah, it is fun! Let's try it out.

Landon: (inserts hand)

Burke: (air blast to face)

Landon: (Enjoyed Burke's previous expression and thought he'd give it another whirl.)

Burke: (Still taken aback by the burst of air...enough to move the smallest of her ever so little amount of hair!)

Burke: That was fun Landon!

Landon: I told you!

We will be back at the Wonder Place for a birthday party next weekend. We'll see if she's still so 'blown away' by the air thing!

Long Time No Blog...

So it has been a while since I've last blogged. Truthfully, I knew this would happen. I knew I'd be all about it at first and then never want to do it again...I'm there. BUT, people have been bothering me to upload vacation pics so here we go. This should probably be like 3 posts but I've crammed it all into one. We went to Gulf Shores in June; we meaning me, Burke, my mom, sister, and two nieces. Dan couldn't take off and the boys were at church camp so we had a girls vacation. It was nice other than my youngest niece. Anyway, after vacation came the 4th of July. We had a great fireworks show in our neighborhood. Then I've posted some random pictures of events that have happened in the past few weeks. Enjoy the pics!


Here is Burke...ready for the pool with her cover up and sunglasses!
On our last night, our 'next door neighbors' were fishing and found this dead shark! He said it weighed about 100 pounds. It had no marks on it so I'm not sure why it was dead...oil maybe??!! BTW, we had NO oil on our beach while we were there.

This is cute little Burkie in her tutu bathing suit. Lauren got it for her for her birthday. I also LOVE her hat. She hates hats but toward the end of the week when she wanted to go outside she would bring you her shoes AND her hat!

Enjoying being outside...she HATED the sand btw. Like meltdown cry if it got on her or you tried to make her walk in it.

Playing with her blocks. She did SO good on the trip down there and back! I took lots of things to entertain her but what saved us was the portable DVD player! Also, I don't know if you noticed but we had to block off the stairs with the coffee table!

Her cute Ralph Lauren swimsuit! She was always pulling on the skirt!

I love this picture! I don't know what she was pointing at!

This picture is totally blurry b/c it is a 'picture of a picture.' But, we totally got an old fashioned picture made at a store there! I love it and think it is HILARIOUS! She was totally hyper, running all around, while we were in line to get it made so I thought it was going to be a disaster having her put on this itchy, lacy dress. WRONG! She LOVED it! I guess she's going to be a 'girl's girl!'

We stayed at a beach house on the Ft. Morgan peninsula. Ft. Morgan is a more residential area vs. all the condos and tourist-y places to stay. So we enjoyed the privacy. Our house shared a pool and deck with 3 other houses. Burke's favorite thing was the water hose!!

Here we are in the pool. This was the first time she had ever been in a big pool. She enjoyed it but got bored after a few minutes. I never put arm floaties on her and let her go so she might have enjoyed that more.

Lauren taking B for a walk on the beach (and trying to convince her sand wasn't so bad!)!

Her first and last time to walk in the sand!

Trying to convince B to wear her hat since Nanny was wearing hers too!

Posing as a pirate after getting our old fashioned picture made! This was a great store!!

This is right after we got there on our back deck. Burke loved walking around out there. We were right on the beach as you can see in the background.

We were always trying to snap photos of her in her hat since she didn't like to wear it! This is her 'fine, I'll wear while you take a quick picture' face!

We also did some major shopping at the Foley Outlet Mall. It's great! We looked like the Beverly Hillbillies on the way home b/c of all the stuff CRAMMED in our van!! I bought SO much stuff for me, Burke, Dan, and the boys! This is a picture of Burke riding one of the 'rides' at the outlet mall. BTW, I can't break this kid of the passy. Any suggestions? I've cut the tip off and she still sucks what's left!

This is us right after we got there...checking out the beach.

That wraps up our vacation pictures. We had a lot of fun, ate a lot (Lulu's, Tacky Jacks, Lambert's, etc.), and bought a lot! Let's move on to the 4th. Our neighborhood fireworks started at 9:00 pm. Which is 1 hour past Burke's bedtime. She did good though (finally went to bed at 10:30!) and wasn't scared. But after 5 minutes she was over it and wanted to walk around.

Watching fireworks with Daddy.

Waiting for the show to start...Jacob & Ben. Jacob is half asleep here and Ben is trying to act depressed. He has total middle child syndrome.

This is 'Uncle Sam'!

Miss America trying on Uncle Sam's hat!

Waiting for the show to start. I just realized I didn't get ANY pics of Burke in her cute, smocked 4th of July dress! She wore it earlier that day to a cookout at my cousins. Darn!

So starting a week or so before the 4th, B was having some poopie issues. Let's just say we took in some 'samples' to the dr. Several days later (on the 3rd) she woke up with red, raised bumps all over her torso. They then spread to her entire body. I would have thought they were measles or maybe chicken pox but they didn't bother her or itch and she had absolutely no fever. I called the dr. office several times and they said it was probably just a virus trying to leave her body. Yesterday, they FINALLY started to clear up. I was embarrassed taking her out in public b/c she totally looked infested. I tried to get some pictures while she was in the tub.

You can see them faintly here on her face...mainly on her chin. But they were all over her body.

Spot girl!

This is just a picture of a new tutu I got her. I got her a red one too. She was not crying b/c of the tutu, it was b/c she wanted my camera. She's obsessed with electronics and you can barely get a picture of the kid without her going ballistic (sp?) to get a hold of it. Cute tutu though, huh? I'm stocking up on them for her to be able to play dress up with in a year or so!

Pardon the random expression on Dan's face here! I was trying to get a picture of the super cute watermelon dress I got for Burke at Gymboree!

She's SO cute!

Well, that sums up our lives over the past few months. Maybe I'll blog again sometime!

Misster Hornet

On Friday, Jacob did a fundraiser for his football team...the MISSter Hornet Pageant. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of batteries once we got there so I didn't get many of the other contestants. Also, the pictures are out of order.


Here is Burke...wondering what in the crap we've taken her to.
Jacob (in the red), thinking his girl walk is spot on.

Notice the man chick in the green...nice gut! He/She got the Susan Boyle award. The guy/girl that is 3rd from the left, he got best eyes. He had on a nice set of fake eyelashes. His make-up was professionally done (at a salon). He also gave Jacob a ride home after school and made us all late and me really mad. But that's another story for another day.

Here they all are. Jacob is in the middle. The guy/girl that is the 3rd from the left, in the zebra dress, he won. He was really funny. He had the best girl poses when he walked out. Like he really looked like a girl vs. all the other dudes doing stupid impressions. He also did a hilarious booty shake at the end of the runway that scored votes.

There goes Jacob...

This is not a good picture but they all came flooding out from the three doors upstairs when it started.

Burke, again wondering where she is.

Here is Burke scared to death when it all started up. Look at that face!! She is saying 'OMG! These drag queens are scary!"

At home posing before the pageant.

Is it funny to anyone else that his dress fits so well. We found this at a resale shop. And he's wearing one of my old bras. I wonder how bad that grossed him out!

My niece did his hair and make-up. He and one of the coaches looked like actual girls. I think b/c his hair looked so real and we didn't just slap a stupid wig on like most of them. We slicked his real hair back and clipped in a fake ponytail from Walgreens!

Meagan hard at work. He's a little tender headed...she didn't care.

Getting his make-up done.

This position looks painful...again, Meagan didn't care.

Another view...

Overall, it was a pretty funny deal. It was $5 a person to get in and there were lots of people there. The guy that won raised over $400. They all had purses and if you wanted to 'vote' for them then you put your donation in their purse. I gave him a few bucks for his awesome booty shake. While they were tallying the votes the guys did a few line dances and a soul train line. Poor Jacob...no rhythm.