Wedding

You guys, I have the most embarrassingly lame problem to admit:

My new camera is too fancy.
I like it, I covet it, and as such, I don't want to throw it in my purse to capture 'potential' moments! I don't want to throw the strap around my wrist and drag it with me onto the playground. I worry about carrying it around, because it's too nice to get dropped, scratched, or bumped.

Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I went to a wedding in Ohio last weekend, and all I got was just a few pictures.

Trying out the lighting on my poor daddy  :)

 The first dance between bride and groom!

My grandparents, the longest married couple on the dance floor! 60 1/2 years!!! And still madly in love, I aspire to be in a relationship like theirs!

Buddy dancing with the bride for the "dollar dance"

Cheesy smile.

Buddy's older cousin proving that "slow dances can be fun too!"

My dad (the one with the cheesehead) may have had a few beers by this point :)

Anyway, the wedding was fun, especially the dancing, and although the 11 hour drive to (and from) Ohio sucked, I think I had a good time!

...I only say "I think" because we left Wausau during a thunderstorm/tornado (storms are one of my anxiety triggers) and then had to sit in a car (driving is another trigger) while following the storm for quite a while, and then I got sick on the drive down... which made me feel miserable and cough-y and exhausted and tense for way too long once we finally got to our destination! And the ride home, though not quite as bad, was still painful.

...but I should say, Buddy was a champ for the horrifically long drive! He was pretty much polite, kept himself entertained, and slept well when it was time :) last year's drive was WAAAAAY worse!

Helene's

Here are some pictures from the apple orchard, now that I finally got them uploaded!

He's spitting in his hand to clean off the apple. Thanks Amber, for encouraging spitting!

Minnesota, part deux

Grandpa and Shiloh

 I got sidetracked on my last post, I wanted to just give some fun pictures of our trip but I ended up whining about my kid. To be honest, we've had a really rough few weeks adjusting to school and our new apartment and  even less time with daddy...

But, here are some pictures from our trip!

Shiloh with Lego Woody at Legoland - Mall of America

On the carousel at Nickelodeon World

The seal does tricks at the zoo!

Spider monkey! We loved the monkey house :)

Baby orangutan! So cute!

Uncle Davey was fascinated by the monkeys :)

Update! (Finally)

So I finally got my pictures uploaded, and thought I would update everyone on our trip to Ohio. My Uncle Paul got married a few weeks ago, and lots of family traveled down to the wedding! I took the 11-hour drive with my dad, my Buddy, my cousin Korrin and her 5-year-old son.

We decided to make the drive through the night, hoping that it would let the kids sleep through most of the drive, since we were all crammed into my dad's SUV, which was not a very comfortable fit. 

This last picture is my favorite, it was taken around dawn while Shiloh was still sleepy. He didn't want the light to get into his eyes!

My dad and I stayed up the whole night, and ended up in political debates. Just FYI, it's not a great idea to try to have political arguments after being awake for more then 24 hours. Ridiculous!

We got to Ohio around 7 am, ate some breakfast and then drove to stay with family. I immediately crashed in the next available bed, and passed out for about 5 hours. I guess the kids went to the park or something, but I was way too tired to care!

We spent the night with my Aunt Vickie, who fed us and took care of us (and for free! Way better than a hotel!) but then ended up at a hotel for the next few nights.

My poor kiddo was so sleep deprived for the whole trip that he crashed every time we were in the car for more than 5 minutes. Also, who knew that if you put 2 boys together non-stop for 5 days that they would fight like cats and dogs? Oh right, sane people. Well, I forgot, and the boys drove each other INSANE!

Here Shiloh is about to cry because Payton smucked him in the face.

Here Shiloh is about to throw a fit because Payton pinched him with the "claw toys".

This is the theme of the weekend, one of the boys throwing a fit about something the other did! It was a lot of fun too, I love getting together with family! So here are some pictures of us just partying!

Buddy's doing the worm. It's pretty wicked.

Anyway, after 4 days of tons of fun and almost no sleep, we had to attempt the 11-hour drive back home.

Took 20 minutes. Tops!

The Zoo! (Finally)

So, in case you missed the memo, I've been wanting to go to the Henry Vilas Zoo for ages! And yesterday, we finally got to go with my friend Amber.

We meant to leave Steven's Point around 9 am and get to the zoo by 11. Well, as these things go, we didn't leave till around 10 and didn't actually get into the zoo till about 12:30. Needless to say, this made for a LOOOOONG day. But it was still super fun!

When we got to Madison, we met up with Amber's friend Kelsey for a little bit. A nice parking police-man asked us if we wanted him to take this picture so we could all be in it :)

We also at a picnic lunch before we went into the zoo, since we didn't want to spend a bunch of money on hot dogs etc. By the way, Lunchables are absolutely disgusting. I don't know why I wanted them so bad in elementary school!

Once we got to the zoo, it was 4 nonstop hours of looking at animals and reading signs. Of course there was some goofing around too!

Buddys's arms compared to monkey arms!

These giraffes were separated by a fence, since I guess they had been fighting haha!

This tiger was pissed.

Buddy as a baby kangaroo!

Mama with antlers!

On the train ride!

Giant turtles!

Alligator snapping turtle. Totally gross, and also fascinating.

The otters! Buddy played with them for a long time, they loved the attention!

At about 4:30, we finally left the zoo. We stopped at Kelsey's house to eat a quick dinner, then started home.

As you can see from the Capitol Building in the background, he didn't even make it out of town before he crashed :)

The zoo was amazing, I'm really glad I've got a friend like Amber who loves hanging out with my kiddo, and I want to go back again sometime soon!