We love the Zoo

This weekend at the MN Zoo, the big zoo as Harrison calls it, they had a Tropical Beach Party. I thought since it was about zero degrees out it would be a great outing for me and Harrison since alot of the zoo in indoors. I invited both my mother in law and my friend Linda with her son Henry to join us. We are members of the zoo and we have not used it to its fullest extent but we will in the coming months. When we all got there we first went through the exhibits. The first, and according to Harrison the best, stop was the Lemurs. Harrison loving Madagascar also knows what Lemurs are and loves them. He was so excited. He even started singing the song that the Lemurs sing in the movie "I like to move it, move it....I like to move it, move it." It is hilarious.

I even ventured to let Harrison out of his stroller and walk through the exhibits with me. He held my hand really well and only bolted twice. There was this great tunnel for the kids to go through and we spent about 20 minutes there while Harrison ran from one end to the other repeadedly. When we were done with the land animals we went over to Discovery Bay to see the sharks and dolphins. Harrison told me that he wanted to "see the Dolphins swim in the big water". That is what he called the big tank they were in. He was fascinated by the dolphins...not so much by the sharks even though he has been into watching Shark Tales.

After the dolphins went away we had lunch. They ahve a great food court at the zoo. Both kids ate really well.

There were some fun art activities for the kids going on. Harrison and Henry both made a great sand art picture. Harrison had fun dumping the sand onto the paper.

We then went back to the Lemurs and the dolphins. After that Henry went home to take a nap. Harrison and I went to play in the giant indoor sandbox. They set up this enormous sand box with never ending amounts of sand. they were also giving out shovels and pails to the kids. Harrison was tentative at first to put his feet in the sand but after about 1 minute, he was loving shoveling sand into the pail and Grandma showed him how to make a sand castle out of the sand in the pail.

When we finally left and got into the car Harrison said to me "Mommy, I had good time at the zoo". That is all I can ask for!

Happy Valentines Day

At Harrison's day care they had a little Valentines party. I don't think Harrison knows what it was all about except that he got to take home a goody bag. I created valentines for all of his friends there. I had found some Madagascar valentines at the grocery store in January and since Harrison loves Madagascar I thought it would be perfect. I also found some great glassine bags with a heart on them in the $1 spot at Target, so I put some candy in the bags with his valentine message. He came home with alot of goodies but his absolute favorite are the valenine Little Debbies. He really likes snack cakes.

At home that night Harrison and I made rice crispy treats together and was really a joint effort. He pulled his chair up to the counter next to the stove and put the marshmallows in the pot, one at a time, and then stirred them, I don't know how he knew to stir them because he did it before I even told him that was the next step. Then I measured the rice crispies and he dumped them into the pot as well and tried to stir again. He liked making them with me, especially because h had a stash of jelly beans on the counter he got to eat while we were cooking.

Very Busy

It has been a long while since I blogged. I have been really busy and even went away on business to Dallas. I was gone 5 days and Harrison was with Cliff the whole time. For the most part it was uneventful. Harrison was really good while I was gone. Well for the exception of 1 hour on Saturday. He did act up a bit at Gymboree but Cliff handled it perfectly by leaving with him. They did spend the rest of the morning/afternoon at the Como Zoo looking at the animals. Harriosn absolutely loves animals. I came home on Sunday and spend alot of time with the both of them.

Last week I was really just trying to recover from being away. Harrison went to New Horizon's day care for 2 days last week. He really enjoys going there to play with his "friends". But dropping him off is a bit traumatic. He will go there again on Friday because Carol rescheduled her dr. appointment for then. I think Harrison is excited to go back.

This weekend we all had a good time. First the Olympics started. I absolutely love the winter olympics. My favorite things to watch are the Alpine Skiing, Short track speed skaing, Speed Skating, Luge and Skeleton. Again my favorte Short Track Speed Skater - Apolo Anton Ohno is competing. He is just fun to watch and now I have added Bode Miller to my list of favorites. I get so addicted to the Olympics coverage.

On Saturday after Gymboree I took Harrison shopping with me to TJ Maxx. I told him we were going and that he can pick out a new book. Well, when we got there I started looking at clothes and after about 4 minutes Harrison declared that "We are at TJ Maxx and I want to look for a new book!" It was hilarious. So of course I took him over to the books. He picked out 2 new ones - A Curious George book and a Thomas the Tank Engine book. He looked at those while I continued to shop. After that we stopped at McDonalds for lunch. Harrison loved his chicken nuggets meal. What I think he liked the most was the box it came in. He also loved the apple dunkers he got. He got to take the apples and dunk them in caramel. He only ate 2 of his 4 nuggets but he wanted to bring the rest home for later.

In the car on the way home I asked him if he was going to give his nuggets to Daddy or eat them later himself. He then stated in no uncertain terms that "I eat them later...and I eat them in the box NOT on a Plate!! IN THE BOX!" It was hysterical. So that night for dinner, I heated up his nuggets and gave them to him in his box.

On Saturday night we got a sitter and went out to our valentines dinner. We ate at a great neighborhood restaurant...Trattoria DaVinci. I had the best Gnocci ever. I would recommend it to anyone. Cliff got steak and he really enjoyed it as well. After dinner we went to a party for my friend Barb who turned 40. It was a pretty mello party and since we were not feeling to well, we left around 11:00.

On Sunday we went over to the MOA. I had some free tickets for the rides at the amusement park. So we took Harrison there. We first went on the train. He really liked it, after first being a bit scared. But he ended up loving it. He went on it 3-4 more times. I then asked him if he wanted to go on the school bus ride. He of course said yes but I told him we should look at it first and we watched the ride go once around. He then declared that he didn't want to go on rides that went up in the air. He wanted to stay on the ground. So that is what we did. We then made our way over to the Truckin' ride. He loved that and Cliff and I took turns taking him on that one as well.

After the rides I noticed that they were doing auditions for Super Nanny. I lingered around there and of course they came over to us. I started talking to them and they seemed interested in Harrison, mainly because he was so cute. But unfortunately we didn't do anything about it because Cliff doesn't want to be on TV.

We then went to lunch at Johnny Rockets. We all had a great time, especially Harrison who got a vanilla milk shake and was in ice cream heaven. I did get him to eat 1/2 of his hamburger but he really liked the milk shake. Our trip to the mall was a success.