Warning: Cuteness Ahead

In an effort to split up the blog posts, I split up our first day with Phil's family. This is part two :)

After the wagon ride and petting zoo (see previous post), we had a snack and then let the kids play on the playground at the zoo for a little while.

Caleb:
Caleb and Noelle:

Trying to get a picture of the three kids is nearly impossible! Here was an attempt to get them to all smile and look in the same direction:

The fields were FULL of buttercups, and made for pretty family pictures :) Here is Nathan, Kim, and the kids:

Then Phil and I jumped in:

After the zoo, we stopped for an ice cream treat (I think Uncle Phil wanted this as much as the girls!) Here's Miss Madison:

I told Noelle she looked like Rudolph:

That night, we got dinner where there was an outdoor fountain, which entertained the kids quite a bit.

This cracked me up:

Beautiful Madison:

After a LONG day, Caleb was ready for bed (cutie pie):

The next day, we hung out at the house, low key for the morning. The girls put on swimsuits to play outside. It snowed at their house the day they left NY, so they thought the swimsuits were justified :)

Phase Two of Phil's birthday surprise arrived that evening: His cousin, Catrina, and her family, drove down from Buffalo to be here to celebrate :) They brought their new tent to camp in the backyard. I joked that it was as big as our house! Here's everyone putting it together. Their son, Aidan, is four, and he was a big help :)

Check back soon for pictures from Phil and Nash's birthday cookout :) (Thirty people, beer and burgers, one bathroom, and six dogs for Nash to play with... need I say more?)

SURPRISE!!!

Phil's 30th birthday was at the beginning of May, and I surprised him by arranging for his brother, Nathan, to come down from Saranac Lake, NY, with his family for a long weekend. It's a really long drive, especially with a 4-yr old, 3-yr old and 1.5-yr old! But we LOVED having them here, and it meant so much to Phil!

The first full day we had with them, we went to the Lazy 5 Ranch, just outside of Charlotte. It's basically a huge zoo. We took a wagon ride through the zoo, and the animals come right up to the wagon to get the feed from you. It's pretty cool :) Our neices, Madison and Noelle, were a little anxious around the big animals, but our nephew, Caleb, was pretty curious.








My favorite, of course, were the animals leading us through the park:

After the wagon ride, we could wander through a petting zoo area, where we saw more animals, and Noelle got up the nerve to feed a miniature goat:

Shortly after this picture, the camel made the weirdest, nastiest sound I think I have ever heard from a living creature. We later found out that it was chewing it's cud (like cows do, but cows don't make that noise!!) Phil and Kim got pretty good at replicating the sound over the remainder of the weekend.

One surprise that didn't pan out was our hope that Phil's brother, Mark, who lives in Australia, would be able to come for his birthday. I think he and his wife, Lesley, were trying to make it work, but understandably, that's a bit of a difficult trip! We miss them terribly, but thought about them often over the weekend. We even saw a kangaroo at the zoo and thought of stories they've told us about them in Australia :) Hopefully we'll make it to see them one day soon and see a kangaroo in it's natural habitat!