Thanksgiving with Grammy Sweets

This year for Thanksgiving, we decided to host Thanksgiving. Only Grammy Sweets was able to make the trip out. She arrived on Thanksgiving day and stayed until the next Tuesday.

Jonah is completely enamored of a series of books, The Amazing Machines Truckload of Fun by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker. He is very persistent when it comes to reading these books, and Grammy quickly got roped into some. His current favorite is Terrific Trains, but he will select one by having us go through each of the options, one by one until he agrees to one.

Grammy reads a book to Jonah not long after arriving for Thanksgiving.

We didn't get a picture of the full Thanksgiving spread, but there was plenty of food for all. Jonah had a plate with a little of everything, but didn't try much. It turns out that he wasn't feeling well, so his appetite wasn't very big.

"This stuff was fun to move around on my plate!"

We did some painting with Jonah, but Grammy got some good video to go along with some pictures we got, so that will be a post of its own. Here's a photo to hold you over.

"Painting is fun!"

There was plenty more story time, too.

"C'mon! Can't I enjoy a story in peace?"

We also made a trip to the Mitchell Domes. That will also have a post of its own, including some more video.

Before Grammy left, Christmas came early for Jonah. It worked out well. Grammy got to open the Christmas presents she got him with him!

Opening presents with Grammy.

Pretending to be a present.

Landing airplanes!

Another highlight of the weekend was going to Candy Cane Lane to see all the Christmas lights. When he sees Christmas lights that catch his eye, Jonah says "Lights! Lights!" to let us know. When we got there, we pulled Jonah out of his car seat, and he sat in Mommy's lap for the slow drive through the neighborhood. He was completely mesmerized by the lights, and afterwards he was in a VERY good mood.

It was a great visit!

More pictures from the weekend are posted to our family photo site.

Family Ties - Labor Day Weekend

As Michelle has already written, we went to Cape Cod to visit the Sweetser side of the family over Labor Day weekend. Jonah got to see some familiar faces, like:

Uncle Russ

Auntie Shannon

Great Grandma Souza - "Oh, Great Gram, you are toooo much!"

Grammy Sweets

Grandpa Sweetser

First cousins, once removed Cory and Robyn Schnaible (and the rest of the Schnaible clan, including meeting Becky!)

We also had a great time visiting with the Toolas family, but we didn't get many pictures that night of Jonah with any one, particularly because he was feeling a bit under the weather. All pictures from our weekend are posted in our Phanfare web album.

Jonah also got to meet some family members he hadn't met previously. 

Great Aunt Marge (and her husband Alan)

Great Uncle Jim (and Sandy, Joey, and Kelly)

Unfortunately, we weren't as good about getting pictures with everyone, so we didn't get pictures with Great Uncle Mike, or Great Aunt Maryrose and Great Uncle Speedy, or cousins (once removed) Sarah and Amanda.

It was a great weekend filled with seeing family! More pics are available in our Phanfare web album.

The Baby on the Bike Goes Wah, Wah, Wah!

Daddy and a sleeping Jonah a few miles into our ride.

We started the morning of our final day on Cape Cod with a bike ride with Grammy Sweetser. We
rented bikes from Barb's Bike Shop in Dennis and hopped on at the Cape Cod Rail Trail trailhead right next to it.  Ben and I were definitely excited to get out and do something more active, especially as Jonah has done fairly well with bike rides in the past. This was his first time riding in a seat behind Ben, rather than in a trailer behind the bike. And as usual, he expressed his distaste for the bike helmet (they do seem impossible to get situated properly and require frequent readjustment).


The ride started out really well - Jonah enjoyed himself a bit before falling asleep.  The day was beautiful for a ride and there were lots of people out on the trail.  We stopped briefly in Nickerson State Park to use the facilities and continued heading east, motivated in part by the mileage indicators every tenth of a mile (how awesome would that be for speed work for running?!).  We turned around just shy of the 12.5 mile mark, as the trail joined the main roadway and we didn't feel like trying to caravan as a group on a busy street.  The day was beautiful, and all seemed to be going great.

Get me out of here!

Unfortunately, the return trip was not nearly as peaceful.  Jonah decided he had had it with the bike ride and cried nonstop for at least 5 miles of the return trip.  We stopped at one point to try to console him, but ultimately had no option but to put him back in the seat and continue on back to our car.  Eventually, he wore himself out and fell asleep as we approached our destination.  In hindsight, we think he was hungry and that exacerbated his frustration: he inhaled his food in the parking lot when we got back.  This serves as a good reminder that we should always plan to have at least a small snack with us!

Hopefully our next bike ride will be much happier.  I doubt we'll attempt 25 miles in the near future, though.

A Day (Care) at the Zoo

Jonah's room at day care took a trip to the zoo on a Friday in June (the 24th).  As it was the day prior to his birthday party, he brought along an entourage, including Grammy Sweetser and Grandpa and Grandma Gregg.  Parents had to accompany their children, so it turned out that only about half of the kids in Jonah's room were able to participate, but it was a great opportunity to see the teachers and student workers outside the classroom, to get to know the other parents better, and to witness animal antics. 

Probably the most memorable moment of the outing occurred at lunch time while we were eating at picnic tables outside.  Two of the many peacocks that wander the zoo got into a bit of an argument and chased one another under and around one of the tables our group was seated at.  Hopefully Miss Tracy's daughter isn't scarred for life!!

Jonah showing some love to his teacher, Miss Tracy.

Jonah insisted on helping Grandpa push the stroller.

Liam and his daddy, Craig, have some fun. Unfortunately, Liam's graduated to the 1-year old room.

Adeline smiles for the camera.

Jonah and Grammy Sweets

Sharing a laugh with Grandma Gregg.

All tuckered out.

One of the zoo's elephants. 

The zoo's three giraffes. Rahna, the lightest, is not albino, but on the light end of the color spectrum.

The polar bear put on quite a show with his ball.

More photos from the outing are available on our photo website.  For those who live in the Milwaukee area, we highly recommend the zoo pass; we've used it twice already this summer and it's paid for itself.  We're planning to visit again this coming weekend and I'm sure we'll go more before the end of the summer. It's nice to be able to go for just a couple of hours and not worry about seeing everything there.

Grammy Sweetser visits

Wow! It has been a long time since we've made any posts! We completely missed the month of May! Well, let's see if I can make up for that a little.

Grandma Sweetser came out to visit Jonah at the end of April/early May. We had a great week and though he missed the week with his friends at day care, Jonah had a lot of fun hanging out with Grammy for the week. The day after Grammy arrived, we went to the Boerner Botanical Gardens. Because of the cool weather this spring, we weren't expecting there to be too many flowers out, but there was a craft fair going on, too, so we headed over.

Though the temperatures were reasonable, it was *super* windy! We felt pretty badly for the craft fair vendors who were outside. We did get some pictures, though!

We also stopped for some Kopp's frozen custard after the botanical garden!

At the end of the week, we went to the aquarium at Discovery World. Jonah seemed to enjoy seeing the fish, though he was just as interested in the glass and metal of the aquarium tanks.

 Jonah made some pretty funny faces... perhaps he was trying to mimic the fish?

 Grandma Sweetser met Bing Crosby in the Les Paul exhibit.

Jonah took a little nap.

 But woke up energized before Discovery World closed at 4 pm.

See more pictures from our visit to Discovery World on our photo site.

The next day, we hit the zoo. It was the first time Michelle and I had been to the Milwaukee Zoo since the first year we moved here. We picked up a Zoo Pass - it only takes two visits to make up the cost, and we certainly figured that would not be a problem.

 We started in the primate house. Jonah loved playing with the apes!

  Especially this statue of a baby ape!

"Wat-chew lookin' at?"

 Jonah ate and took a nap not long after we saw the primates, but he woke up in time to see the penguins.

 There are TONS of peacocks at the zoo. They hang out with all the different animals and don't seem to have a place of their own.

 Jonah enjoyed watching the seals swim around. He got pretty excited.

 Later, we went to see the sea lion show.

All in all, it was a great day. You can see more zoo pics on our photo site.

We finished it off with some Red Robin for dinner and some awesome carrot cake from Mitchell's Fish Market.

Grandma Sweetser flew home the next day (the day before Mother's Day), but it was a fun visit!