California... part 3 ~ The San Diego Zoo

On Tuesday, we all headed down to the San Diego Zoo for some fun with the animals. Thankfully, Micah slept most of the way down, so by the time we arrived, he was awake and ready for the day. We had a quick picnic lunch in the parking lot... free parking, by the way! woo hoo! :) ... and then headed into the zoo to see some animals. This is an amazing zoo. Unlike any I have ever been to... which, my zoo experience is quite limited... I think I've been to the Lincoln Park Zoo, Brookfield, the Racine County Zoo, the Milwaukee Zoo, the DeYoung Family Zoo (another amazing zoo, but for other reasons), and maybe the zoo in Grand Rapids... but I really enjoyed the way the San Diego zoo was set up. You don't really feel like you're wandering around a zoo... each type of animal has its own "trail" that you follow to see the different species. And there are a LOT of hills! We were all ready to sit down in the car after walking around the zoo for several hours. :) We had a great time and got some great pictures of the boys and the different animals we saw. So, without further delay... here's the San Diego Zoo in pictures. :)

The flamingos ~

Looking at some species of monkey ~

A closer-up of that species of monkey ~

The boys were quite enthralled with the monkeys ...

I love the look on Lisa's face in this picture... I'm pretty sure we were watching a monkey poop in his hand and eat it. Disgusting!

An Okapi ~ he kind of looked like a mix of a giraffe and a zebra

Up close and personal with the hippos ~ they are massive animals! I certainly wouldn't want to encounter one of these in the wild!
I love how you can see Aaron and Micah's faces in the glass. Micah was pretty interested in the hippos. :)

Wow!

Just outside of the hippo exhibit, they had a little play area with a cast-iron hippo that the boys could have played on for hours. But, we got our pictures and kept moving (to the dismay and protest of Luke and Micah)

This one is for Grandma K ~ Micah and the otter :)

:)

An arctic fox having some lunch

Mountain lion thinking the people watching him looked like lunch ;) We were just glad there was a fence separating us from this guy!

Panda munching on some bamboo ~

It started to cool off quite a bit towards the end of the day, so we bundled Micah up with some blankets. We all thought he looked a bit like Mother Teresa... any thoughts? :)

Our boys (and a random grandpa-looking guy in the background)

Aaron, Micah and the rhinoceros ~

We had a much better experience with the giraffes at this zoo than at the one in Racine. :) Ask any member of the Klingenmaier family for that story!

My sweet boys ~

And to finish off the day, we all posed for a picture by the sign at the entrance. What a wonderful, fun zoo experience!

California... part 2

We took full advantage of the fact that we were on vacation that first weekend we were there... on Saturday, I don't think anyone got dressed until close to noon! :) Aaron and I were up early, as Micah was still on central time and thought he'd had enough sleep by about 6:30, our time... 4:30 California time... but we managed to keep him fairly quiet for a few hours until the rest of the house (except for Jung, who I am convinced is nocturnal) was awake. We had some breakfast, and just let the boys play... and by "boys", I'm referring to all 4 of the men in our lives. Micah and Luke enjoyed their day playing together... and they play very well together. The only issue we had was with Luke's lion push toy, which also happens to be Luke's very favorite toy. We thought it would be a good toy for Micah to use to walk behind, but Luke was a little possessive and struggled to let Micah take a turn. We did manage to give Micah a few turns with the toy, but mostly when Luke was sleeping or distracted with something else. :) The big boys, aka: Aaron and Matt, were content to lay on the couch and watch football. Lisa and I, on the other hand, were not so content to sit at home and be lazy. Don't get me wrong, we took our sweet time getting our acts together that morning, but we did get out of the house for a little while to run some errands. We put together a menu for the week, including our Thanksgiving meal, and ran to the grocery store, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Ross, and Walmart. It was kind of nice to be able to get out just the two of us, and to be able to go from store to store without having to buckle the little guys back into their car seats in between each stop. Plus, you can never have too much sister time! :) (now that we're adults, that's true... if you'd asked us about too much sister time when we were growing up, I think we'd both have a different answer for you!)

How the boys spent their first morning together ~

Breakfast ... "looks good, can I have some?" :)


Banging on the window ~


The live version ~

Sunday, we all got up and went to church together, and after the service was over Aaron, Micah and I headed out to Santa Monica Pier to meet up with our friend Kevin. He had been in Santa Clarita visiting some friends, and we decided to take advantage of the fact that we were so close, geographically, to get together. I'm mad at myself for not getting a good picture of all of us from that afternoon, but here's what I do have ~

At the end of the pier ... it was VERY windy!



In the aquarium under the start of the pier ... Micah had a blast looking at the fish and getting to touch things like starfish, seaweed, and the like.



Micah's first encounter with the Pacific Ocean ... or ANY ocean, for that matter ~

We had a wonderful time catching up with Kevin, and introducing Micah to him. Our time together went by too fast, but we are grateful we were able to see Kevin at all, since he lives way up in the Sacramento area. :) Thanks for making the trip down and making time to see us, Kevin! :)

After a great day in Santa Monica, we still made it home in time for Micah and Luke to play together before bed. :) We were all amused by the fact that instead of Luke showing Micah how (and encouraging him) to walk, Micah brought Luke back down to his hands and knees and the two of them would crawl around together. The funniest part was that Luke had a hard time keeping up with Micah! (who is insanely fast on his hands and knees!) Luke would tire out pretty quickly and get back up and start running, while Micah just put his head down and crawled that much faster to keep up. :)

C'mon, Luke, let's go!

On Monday, once again, we had a fairly lazy morning. Matt had to go in to school for a few hours, so after taking it easy for a while we decided to take a drive up to Oak Glen to walk around and taste some of their famous cider donuts. (Lisa had been hearing amazing things about these donuts, and Aaron and I didn't need a whole lot of convincing... who doesn't love a good donut in the fall? ...or anytime of the year?)

Here we are, enjoying a nice, lazy morning ~

Sharing their juice ... so sweet!

How big are Luke and Micah? SO BIG! :)

Playing together ~

This is the infamous lion toy I mentioned earlier. It was definitely the favored toy, by both boys, during our week together :)

Sadly, I only have one picture from our time at Oak Glen. But again, you can check Lisa's blog (http://deboerdays.blogspot.com) for more pics. :)


And we ended the weekend ... or started the week ... with more football. Some friends of Lisa and Matt's had invited them over to watch the Broncos/Chargers game on Monday night, so we all headed over there to hang out and watch the game. In my opinion, our "pre-game" entertainment was much better than the stuff they have on ESPN. :) Luke and Micah got out some footballs and "played" their own little pickup game with Aaron and Lisa. What fun!

Here they are, playing in the entertainment center at Lisa and Matt's friends' house. :)

Our next adventure takes us to the San Diego zoo... stay tuned! :)

California... part 1

We've been home for 3 days from our vacation time in California, and my goal for this first week of being home is to get our blog updated with pictures and stories from our trip out west. :) It might take a few posts, hence the "part 1" part of the title, but bear with me and I promise you'll get the highlights (and probably more) from our vacation. If you're really dying to know all that went on, you can check out my sister's blog ~ www.deboerdays.blogspot.com . She did a great job of updating their blog as we experienced the week together. The nice thing about that is, she doesn't face the task of posting everything all at once and having to remember all the details after a week (or more) has gone by. I should have done the same thing, but I didn't, so here goes... let's see how good my memory is these days! :)

We left bright and early ... well, maybe just early ... for Milwaukee airport, after having spent the night at Tracy and Eric's house. (they live in Kenosha, which saved us about an hour of driving in the morning... thanks for putting us up for the night guys! I hope we didn't disturb you too much getting ready that morning!) Our flight left at about 6:30, and we were prepared. This being our first time flying with Micah, we had an arsenal of things to keep him full, happy, clean and entertained stuffed into our carry-on bag. And guess what... we barely needed any of it! Micah was asleep before our first flight took off and slept the entire way to Kansas City. Once we arrived in Kansas City, we had several hours to kill before our next flight to LAX took off, and since Aaron's good friends from college lived close by, we decided to see if they'd be interested in coming to the airport to hang out with us while we waited. They were more than happy to come say hi, so we got to spend our layover catching up with Matt, Karen, and their two youngest kids, Ella and Asher. It was great to see them again and the kids had fun playing on the floor in the waiting area. (the nice thing about KC's airport is that we were able to go out of the gate area and sit with our friends, and get back to our gate without a major hassle of long lines going through security. They have it set up so that there is a security checkpoint for every 5 gates or so, which makes going out to see people not flying that day possible during layovers.) We had a nice visit, complete with chasing after some very active and mobile little ones, and before we knew it we were on our way to our final destination ~ LAX! and after that ~ Beaumont, and my sister's house! :) Once again, we were ready with anything we might need to keep Micah from screaming the whole time we were in the air, but needed none of it. We started a movie on the portable DVD player we'd bought for the trip, but Micah was more interested in pressing the buttons on the machine than actually watching the movie, and before long he crawled up on my shoulder and fell asleep for the rest of the flight. He woke up when we were landing, probably due to some pressure in his ears, but we made it to California without any major incidents. (unless you count my having to change a blowout diaper in the airplane bathroom an "incident".)

The first leg of our journey ... looks quite exciting, wouldn't you say? :)



In Kansas City with the Hubers ~

Our bags were among the first to come out of the baggage claim area, so we grabbed them and headed out to the curb to meet Lisa, who had been circling the airport for a while waiting for us. (Our flight had actually arrived a few minutes early, but because the gate we were going into was still occupied, we sat out on the tarmac for about a half an hour before being let off the plane. That was probably the most difficult part of the entire trip... we were all ready to get off the plane, and Micah had had enough of sitting on laps by that point in time)

But once we were in the car with Lisa, any travel woes were forgotten. We were on vacation! In California! And even though it wasn't too much warmer there than it was here, we were happy to be there, and in the company of family and friends. (and let me just say, our happiness only grew as we arrived at the DeBoer house and were able to let Micah roam free and play with Luke!) We stopped for a quick dinner on the way home, and then got settled in and let the boys get re-acquainted.

Cousins reunited for the first time since this past summer ~

And that's about it for highlights from the first day. Well... except for the mouse hunt that went on after the boys were in bed. Jung (the exchange student living with Matt and Lisa) came flying down the stairs at about 9:00 saying he had just seen a mouse run into Matt and Lisa's bedroom. (I didn't actually witness the flying down the stairs or the announcement that a mouse had been spotted, but I did hear my sister shrieking a few minutes later and decided something was going on that should be investigated) :) Sure enough, there was a small mouse up in their loft area that we ended up cornering under the couch. How's this for a mental picture... Matt and Aaron trying to corner the mouse; Aaron wielding a tennis racket, with which he intended (and eventually succeeded) to use to dispose of the little rodent; Lisa and I ending up holding one end of the couch up so that Matt and Aaron could get to the mouse and dispose of it. After that, we all went to bed... but what a way to start our vacation! :)

Daddy's little helper

Well for starters, I think it's time for a larger house... preferably one with a workshop for Aaron to work in. (and by "workshop" I do not mean our living room floor) :) In the past few weeks, our house has been torn apart and put back together again several times over. Actually, we're still working on the "putting back together" part. After 4 years of working and waiting, we finally have new cabinet doors in the kitchen! When I bought our house, Aaron said he could make new doors for the kitchen cabinets and 4 years later... they're beautiful! I have to cut him some slack on the length of time it took him to finish them for 2 reasons. One ~ we don't have a house with a workshop where Aaron can do his woodworking projects, so any projects are generally started and done up at his parents' house in Upper Michigan. And two ~ he can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to his woodworking projects, so in all reality, it could have been a lot longer! ;) The bottom line is, they're now hanging in our kitchen and what an improvement!

The "before" ~

The "during" ~

The "after" ~

As I mentioned before, we do not have a workshop at our house, and unfortunately our garage has been overrun by baby toys, tools, and a bunch of other stuff that makes the possibility of using that as a workshop nearly impossible. He did do some of the finishing out there... staining and sanding, mostly (thank goodness!), but brought the doors inside to put the hinges and hardware on. We definitely have a little boy on our hands! Micah was VERY interested in what daddy was working on, and had to be at the center of all that action. I know I should have jumped in and pulled him away so Aaron could do what he needed to, but it was so cute to see him "helping" that I had to get the camera out first! :)

Helping Daddy with the cabinet doors

King of the cabinet door mountain!

"I bet I can figure this thing out..."

"...or maybe I'll just help you take it apart..."

The last couple of pictures are from another project Aaron was working on... figuring out setting up his router table. I know it looks like some kind of table saw, but there are no blades anywhere on the apparatus, so I wasn't worried about Micah "helping". :)



I think it's safe to say that we've got a good little helper in the making. Life is so much fun with a little one! Busier, and a bit more chaotic, but definitely a lot of fun! What will Micah find to "help" with next? :)

for Great Uncle Paul... and the Bottle Band

My wonderfully creative uncle has been making music using nothing but empty bottles for 30-some years now. He and my grandma were the co-founders of the St. Luke's Bottle Band, and since the band was formed, it has become widely known... even making appearances on the David Letterman show and Wild Chicago! Basically, the group plays songs, arranged by my uncle, on bottles that have been filled with various levels of water to make different pitches. Quite honestly, it's amazing! Not only do they blow on the bottles, they pluck them by snapping a finger out of the top of the bottle, and play them similar to a xylophone... or as Uncle Paul has named it, the "bottle-o-phone". If you want to see some songs the Bottle Band has done, just go to Youtube, and search "St. Luke's Bottle Band". You'll LOVE it!
I've grown up going to bottle band concerts, and having a wonderful time laughing and enjoying the unique way they make music. Micah, on the other hand, has only been to one concert... and that was a very mini-version of the actual show. (Some of the family did a brief performance at my cousin's wedding this summer.) However, despite his lack of experience with the bottle band, he seems to come by the various methods of playing the bottle quite naturally. During a rehearsal at my parents house back in June, Micah got a chance to participate... he didn't actually make any sounds, but he probably changed the pitches in the bottles from his drool! :)




And then yesterday, I was sitting at the computer while Micah was playing with his toys and all of a sudden I heard this tiny popping sound. I turned around, curious as to what was making that sound and saw Micah, sitting in a pile of toys, plucking his finger out of the smokestack on his Thomas train! I can't even do that and I've been trying for EVER! My fingers are just too small! And here's my son... not even 10 months old, plucking like a pro!

So, there you have it. I guess it's just a matter of time before Micah is dressing up in goofy costumes, marching into the gym at St. Luke's church along with the other members of the bottle band. I guess it's true, what my uncle says at each concert... "it's never too early to start your kids out in music, and for the cost of a six-pack, you can get him started in bottle music today!" :)