Cinnamon Roll!

Mom and Dad just wrapped up their two-week visit with us and Friday night we took them to Farmhouse Cafe & Bakery here in Omaha for dinner. One of the specialties of Farmhouse is their cinnamon rolls, which are indeed awesome. Mom LOVES cinnamon rolls, so we wanted her to experience at least a portion of one before she went home.

Katy and I love these cinnamon rolls, too, and so does Zac, though that night I had the Oreo Cheesecake. Dad settled on the Key Lime Pie. All in all, great dinner and great dessert and a nice finishing dinner to a fun two weeks with my parents. :)

Fun With Grandma & Grandpa

Zac is really enjoying having his Grandma and Grandpa here with us.

Mom and Dad joined us last Saturday, the 10th, and have another week of vacation with us before they have to return to Custer.

Today I'm sharing a few pics of Zac with both, plus a video of him riding his grandpa like a horse. :)

Zac Eats

Anyone with a toddler understands the "beauty" in watching your child eat. Zac does very well with eating , despite his odd tendency to be picky about meats and things he's had too much before. The first pic today was captured by Katy the other night after supper.

Zac's absolute favorite thing to eat at present is a peanut butter and honey sandwich. Or, put it on anything and he'll eat it. We were out of bread the other night, so I made him a tortilla roll with this inside. Here you see the results of that little experiment.

The other pics today come from his stay with Nana & Puddin' Friday night.

As Katy and I left fairly early Saturday to pick up my mom and dad in Ogallala, which is about 4 1/2 hours west of Omaha, Zac stayed with his Nana & Puddin'. They picked their first squash of the season which he is holding in one picture.

He loved the fried squash and also enjoyed his corn, as you see from the other pictures. At least these veggies (and he loves most veggies) are much cleaner than what I fed him! :)

A July 4th Haze

Thought I'd try to get a video up right away tonight now that we're home from our July 4th festivities. After a day full of rain which did not end until well into the afternoon, we ended up with a beautiful evening for grilling and fireworks. Zac took a few moments to enjoy the trampoline at his cousins' house and had a very good time. This video is that event and, though it says it's 1:58 in time, the converter I use duplicated the second half. It's really a minute of actual video, then 58 seconds of the same video without sound. Overall tonight, we had good food and good company and good haze. What's that you say? Good haze?

Well, the heavy rains all day turned to a very still evening with temps in the low 70s. While that sounds perfect, what we really had was a sticky, no-wind environment which, when everyone began lighting off fireworks, resulted in a huge haze. This was the thickest we've seen it in the past several years, but it didn't take away from out enjoyment of it! While Zac was fairly tired by the time fireworks began going off, he did enjoy them and sat in the chair for a good deal of time watching with his cousins.

The Many Positions Of Sleep

Well, I've learned that irregular posting on the blog leads to very few comments, so I'll try to be a little more regular moving forward for everyone. :) Today's entry is focused on Zac's propensity to sleep in odd places, in odd positions.

I realize everyone does this, but how many parents then POST the pictures of their children and then write about them? I am up to that task. Picture number one was before we got Zac his new bed. We still keep his crib mattress next to it for all the times he falls out, but this was typical prior to getting his new bed.

Picture number two is yet another example of him sleeping in oddball positions. We're unsure how he makes this comfortable, but somehow it works.

The rest of these are all similar in concept because of the sheer oddity of the positions he falls asleep in.

The last picture is how he falls asleep almost every night, by his gate, in view of us in the living room. :)

A Great (Wolf Lodge) Memorial Day Weekend!

Last weekend, we were fortunate enough to be able to celebrate not only Memorial Day, but Gary & Nell's 40th anniversary at Great Wolf Lodge in Kansas City, KS. We had a GREAT time and all enjoyed the water park. Though the weather was beautiful outside, I believe most of us stayed inside in the 83 or 84-degree temps and incredible noise. You know how a fast moving river or a waterfall can be very loud? Or, have you ever been to a party for someone at Chuck E. Cheese? I'd liken the experience at Great Wolf, at least indoors, to being at a 3-day Chuck E. Cheese party with water. We had to pretty much shout to each other inside just to hear each other. :)The rides were a lot of fun and Zac really enjoyed the kiddie pool area and all the water features. This picture of him with the water coming out of the pipes is something he spent a lot of time around. A picture I didn't include is the "after" picture of when he was hit full-on with this water. It had quite a bit of pressure!He also did enjoy some time with the Baker girls, Lucie and Elisabeth, in the lazy river area, even though it doesn't look like it in this pic. :) They were wonderful babysitters for all the two-year-olds and Jamie, affording the adults a few hours of time in the park alone here and there. They also watched the kids for us as we went out to a special dinner at Plaza III Steakhouse on the Missouri side in Country Club Plaza. Nice restaurant, very good service and food. We enjoyed ourselves quite a bit!Sunday night we all went to the T-Rex Cafe. Now, as far as theme restaurants go, this certainly has the eye appeal. Katy and I were able to get a few pics with Zac outside the restaurant, but admittedly he wasn't super excited at this point and was pretty cranky. The food was good. Service? Well, not the best I've seen, to be sure. :) Zac did come away with a new stuffed animal, a little T-Rex, which he loves already. It's no pig, but it's become pretty important to him quickly.

Zoos!

OK, this is a looooooong time coming, so you get two zoo trips in one! And, to make it even more special, the pics are from different zoos! So, we went to the zoo here in Omaha with Claire in late March and it was a "refreshing" 45 degrees that day. This first pic is from that visit in March. Zac slept a bit of the time in his stroller, many animals were inside because it was so refreshing outside, and we went through the zoo backwards, which as it turns out means climbing some of the biggest concrete hills I've ever seen. I guess since they have re-done so many exhibits and provided interior walking spaces even when viewing the animals who are outside, this is what has happened. It's an incredible setup, but it wasn't the best zoo experience we've had.

A few weeks ago we visited the zoo in Des Moines, but didn't get any pics that day as we forgot our camera and when we try to use our phones, the pics are awful. Claire is very good with hers, but I didn't get those pics copied to this laptop so that'll get included in the next entry. We had great, great weather for the zoo visit in Des Moines and had a great time getting to see new things and walk among the wallabies and emus.

Then yesterday the 15th, we attempted to go to Omaha's zoo again...but apparently everyone else in Omaha had that same idea. If you don't know, Henry Doorly Zoo sits right next to Rosenblatt Stadium, the home of the College World Series. The zoo has two parking lots of average size, and then overflow parking usually extends 6 or 8 rows into Rosenblatt. Not yesterday! Yesterday both zoo lots were full; people parked on the grass; Rosenblatt's lots were full all around the stadium. The only time I've ever seen that many cars even in the Rosenblatt lots is for the 4th of July show every year, which then of course also overflows into the zoo lots. Just crazy!

So that was out of the question. Instead, we made the trip down to Lincoln to visit the Lincoln Children's Zoo. It was a beautiful day, around 68-70 degrees with a light breeze. Except that the otters were hiding and the crocodiles and some turtles weren't out yet, we enjoyed the zoo quite a bit. We'd taken Zac to this zoo last year and he wasn't quite sure what to make of the animals and feeding them came with mixed reactions and some fear except for the small animals. This time, however, he was completely on board. He loved the animals, was willing to feed them and touch them, goats and all, and had a great, great time. Though it added to our driving for the day, we sure enjoyed our time in Lincoln. :)

A Zac In A Hat

Had to post something new, so we tried to capture a bit of Zac wearing his straw cowboy hat tonight singing "Hillbilly Bone", a song by Blake Shelton and Zac's namesake, Trace Adkins. We had a nice little show until the camera turned on and then he lost interest. You do get a little bit of it, though, in the video. :)

Also adding a pic tonight Katy captured just the other evening after Zac had gone to sleep. You'll see he has a twin bed now, but as added safety, we placed his old crib mattress next to it. Often times he'll get up after we've put him to bed and come to his door, listening to the radio we place outside his door. He loves his music...or "mukic" as it comes out quite often. When he goes back to sleep, sometimes he ends up on his crib mattress and this was one of them. Enjoy!