Cincinnati Zoo and Children's Museum

While Nathan was at his conference on Saturday,  my brother and I took his kids to the Cincinnati Zoo and Children's Museum.  The best money they have ever spent was for season passes to each place.  They seriously go to one or the other, sometimes both, every weekend!  I have been there a few times, but I love any chance to go to a zoo.  My favorites are the polar bears, gorillas, lions, and sea lions.

Alissa was pointing out each letter on all the signs.

Taking the little train ride around the zoo.

We helped brush the goats and gave them feed.  Glad they had a big hand-washing station! 

I have a video of these screaming gibbons.  It sounded like something from a movie...they were so loud!

Riding the carousel...Alissa is riding one of her favorites, the cheetah.  Kai kept calling the cheetah "Tai" (that is their cat's name). lol

This was on the stall in the bathroom. ha 

The rest of the pictures are from the Children's natural history museum.

Check out that sass.  We walked down through the fake cave and she wasn't scared at all. 

She gets her silliness from her daddy, for sure!

They love the water play area... 

And the ball play area!

View of Cincinnati from the children's museum.

Me and hubs with Alissa, before he left for his flight back to AZ.  See you at Christmas!

I'm back!

Last weekend, my hubs and I went to Kentucky for a quick visit with family.  He had a conference to attend in Cincinnati and flew back that weekend, while I stayed the rest of the week at my Mom's house.  It was great to see family and friends but it went by too quickly, as always!

Of course, I took lots of pictures of my niece and nephews and also my Mom's pups!

Here's a few pictures from the first day we arrived.  My brother, husband, and I took my niece Alissa (4.5) and nephew Kai (1.5) to the park.  They are such cuties!  Enjoy...

We loved the much cooler weather and all of the Kentucky green!  We were getting too used to the brown, dusty desert, so it was really nice to see some trees and grass again!  I'll be back with some more pictures tomorrow!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Linking up with Jamie for WILW!

I'm loving that it's a 4 day work week for my husband and we are headed to Kentucky to visit family!  Well, actually he's going to a Zija conference and I'm tagging along, but we are also excited to see some family for a few days!  It's been way too long!

I'm loving that I got my hair done today.  I was in desperate need of a trim and I got the color touched up for fall.  Don't you love when someone else washes your hair?  I do.

I'm loving that a blog design change is in the works!  Thanks to Kit (who announced exciting news today!) and her recommendation of Sweet Simplicity Designs, hopefully we'll have a new look on here soon.  Anyone else feel like their design seems so drab after a few months!? 

I'm loving that I get to see these sweet pups in a few days!  I haven't seen them since Christmas!  Riley (the goldie) has since had surgery to remove some big fatty tumors, so one whole side of this body is in the process of growing back his winter coat fur.  And Webster (the newfie) has developed a phobia of walking on the kitchen tile AND walking out on the deck.  Poor buddy!

As always, I'm loving my sweet hubby!  He has been awesome lately, with doing his P90X workout in the morning, doing lots of projects at work, attending our couple's small group on Tuesdays and his men's small group on Friday mornings, AND reading his big honkin' textbook for his online class at Penn State, while still being the best husband I could ever dream of!  So thankful for that man!

Have a great Wednesday y'all!

A Happy Birthday and Remembering 9/11

I am terrible at blogging on the weekends!

My Mom's birthday was Saturday, so I wanted to wish her a Happy Birthday on the blog!

Happy Birthday, Mom!  See you in a few days!!!!

This picture is from our Jeep tour of Sedona in May 2011.

******************************

We watched the Dateline special on 9/11 on Friday night and it made me remember where I was when it happened.  I also learned a lot of details that I had never heard of before.  I think the waterfall memorial they built is really neat and especially cool that the names engraved are temperature controlled, so visitors can always comfortably touch the names.  I remember I was a sophomore in high school and had just gotten to my second period world civ. class.  Our teacher already had the TV on and we watched the second plane hit on live TV.  I didn't really understand what was going on or why it was happening.  The rest of the day was somber and we watched the news coverage all day.  A lot of students went home early.  I watched the news that night and was scared thinking we would go to war over this.  A lot has happened in the past 10 years, but we will always remember!

Our Weekend

Hey y'all...hope everyone had a good Labor Day weekend!

We had a nice, relaxing weekend.  Well, as much as you can relax when it's 110 degrees out!  We didn't go tubing down the Salt River, like we did last year!  We started watching a new (to us) TV series.  That's our thing.  We don't waste money on cable, dish, dvr, etc. because we honestly don't watch that much TV anyway.  So we rent movies and TV series' from the local library instead.  We finally finished LOST, which we started at the beginning of the summer.  We are sad it's over and consider it one of the top TV series ever made, next to The Office, of course!  Anyway, so we started on season 1 of Friday Night Lights.  I have heard from several blog peeps and friends that it's a good show for both husband (football) and wife (love story).  It took a few episodes to get into, but overall we think it's pretty good!  It's a little scandalous for high school, which I don't care for, but that's how tv is now I guess.  We are about half way through season 1.

We have also started Everwood.  You know, the sappy show from the early 2000's that came on the WB?  I watched a season or two in high school and I remember liking it, so we have gotten into that series as well.  We just finished season 1.

Saturday, we had lunch with some sweet friends from our small group and their itty baby boy, Caleb.  He's about 7 weeks old and so super cute!  We went to a local place to eat, like a salad/sandwich place and it was yummy!  We stayed and talked for a long while.  Then we made a stop at home depot to get some air filters for our house.  It was time to change those grubby things!  Hopefully it will help with the electric bill, too!

I can honestly say that one of my favorite things is going to church and meeting up with friends there.  It's fun to sit with our group of friends during worship and the service.  Our church is doing a 6 week marriage series, which has been nice!  We talk about the sermon at our small group meeting on Tuesday nights.

Nate wanted to make homemade oreos again, you know, the kind using devils food cake for the cookies and cream cheese icing for the filling?  We went to walmart and got the stuff to make them Sunday night.  We also went to the pool for some night time swimming.  We were surprised that the water wasn't like 90.  It wasn't cold either...felt nice.  And I was also surprised there were several other people there after 9pm!  We made Sunday night a "sleep over" except I fell asleep on the couch at 11pm and I'm pretty sure he fell asleep soon after!

We slept in a little on Monday and hubs woke me up saying, "can I clean the house today?"  This would probably be any wife's dream to hear those words, but I said no way because I didn't want him to clean on his day off!  Especially when I am home during the week to get it done.  I thought he was really sweet for asking though.  He took me to Bath and Body because he knew they were having a sale (somehow he gets those emails..haha) and we picked up some yummy candles, clearance soaps, and I got a freebie body spray in one of their new scents.

See?  We had a pretty relaxing weekend!  Nothing too fancy.  We spent a lot of time together which was nice and much needed because he has been working long hours for a while.   This is the first time I've mentioned it on the blog, but Nate is going back to school to get a second Masters!  He is doing an online program through Penn State to get a Masters in supply chain management.  He is excited because he always likes a challenge.  It's about a two year program, so it's not too much all at once....one class per semester, I think.  Today is his official start date.  I couldn't be more proud of him.  I know he will do great and hopefully he will love it!  P.S. What is a nittany lion? haha  We are Louisville Cardinals in this house!

Show Us Your Life: Favorite Blogs

Linking up over at Kelly's Korner for SUYL: favorite blogs!

I don't want to hurt any feelings by not mentioning people...so if you want to see ALL the blogs I love, just look at my blog roll to the right. ----------->

I pretty much check all of those daily :)

Three of my favorite from that list are:

1) Kelly @ kelly's korner, duh.  She's funny, inspiring, and I love pictures of her girls.  She loves everything monogrammed and is a true southern girl (and a huge Hogs fan)!

2) Megan @ in this wonderful life.  Loved following her pregnancy with Cohen, who passed away shortly after birth with heart complications.  She just had twins two weeks ago and they are soooooo cute and have the most eclectic nursery.

3) Ashley @ stealing baby kisses.  Struggled with infertility, but had a miracle baby boy 9 months ago.  She's a cloth diapering queen.

I could go on and on with a list about my favorites!.....The Garners, Bethany @ 4 sonsplus1, Sarah @ lifesweetlife, Katie's Keepers, Rebekah @ life with the edwards, Neely, Laurie, Dave and Brit plus 1, Look at the birds, Live a Charmed life, my IRL friend Teagan, etc. etc. etc!!  Just check out the sidebar.

I kind of see a trend!  Most of them are mommy bloggers who talk about daily life and post pictures of their sweet little ones.   Some of the others are girls are around my age who I have a lot in common with.  I have met lots of friends through blogging, for sure!  Fun times.

Hope y'all have a great weekend.  I don't have enough courage to do the accent vlog, sooooo I don't know if that will ever happen! :)  Anyway, we are looking forward to a fun long weekend.  We don't have much planned and that is kind of nice.  We are having lunch with sweet friends and their baby boy tomorrow and then who knows what else.  We may even take a little trip to Flagstaff to escape this heat!  We have had 75 days over 100 degrees and 36 days over 110 degrees so far this summer!!  We haven't even hit the downward trend yet.  All I can say is that I hope it is freezing to me when we visit Kentucky in a couple of weeks!! :)

Happy Friday!