The Melted Zoo Crew

This week, Landon and I drove to Indianapolis to visit with Lindsey and Brent, Lori and Baleigh, and Aunt Lou. Uncle Bob even made a special appearance, which Landon was most impressed with. 30 minutes after Uncle Bob had left, Landon was still saying, "Bye Uncle Bob." He made quite an impression. After a late evening of "Pouncing" (that's a card game for those of you who are wondering) we made a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo. Due to the late evening, we didn't make it to the zoo quite as early as we had planned, and hence it was HOTTER THAN BLUE BLAZES. I really want everyone to know exactly how hot it was at the zoo before you see the pictures of all of us with our make up running and hair flat. Landon also made the trip even more enjoyable...and I mean that sarcastically. The only time he was happy was when we were looking at the fishies inside in the AC. He pretty much whined, cried, and threw fits the rest of the time, as you can clearly see in this group photo, which pretty much captured the whole Indianpolis Zoo experience. We did see an elephant get a bath, and Baleigh got to feed a giraffe. The dolphin show, well the 7 minutes of it that we saw before Landon started crying again, was very impressive. Lori and Baleigh got to pet sharks, while the rest of us looked on, and the walrus exhibit was pretty cool, too.


After we came home, I went up to school and was able to work in my classroom for the first time. It was like Christmas I tell ya! I have a teaching position in the mecca of Elementary Education! Since two first grade teachers retired this school year and I'm the only new hire in the grade level so far, I inherited a GOLD MINE. I kept opening boxes and going, "ooohhh!" and "holy cow!" and, well, you get the picture. I got a lot of stuff. I'm putting a before picture up of my room. When it's done I'll post another picture.

On a sad note...tragedy struck the pond on Saturday morning. Boop Boop and Ditt'em Datt'em have both moved on to fishy heaven. We have narrowed the murdering culprits to two possibilities: a) an excess of fresh water with possibly too much chlorine and b) the Bug Free BackYard spray that we used to kill the mosquitoes that feast upon us and all of our visitors if we're outside more than 20 seconds. I'm putting a picture of the front of the house on. I didn't take a before picture, but it looks MUCH different than it did a mere two months ago. We have weeded, rearranged plants, and rocked the landscaping, put in the pond and all the plants around it, painted the garage doors (which you can't see in this picture) and the front door, and I even arranged the flower hanging to make the door more welcoming, and repainted the shutters from a pale gray color to the chocolate brown. QUITE THE IMPROVEMENTS. Only thing left is lighting. That's going to have to wait until it cools off a little, because frankly, we're sick of sweating.

Also, Julia and Liam came by last night with Aunt Deanna and Christie. I had to share them reading together. They're all so cute!

New video of Landon this week, reading "Moo, Baa, La La La!" by Sandra Boynton. It's one of our faves.