grandma surprise!

Having my mom visit is exciting.  Exciting and surprising.  Why surprising, you ask?  Because I can never remember when she's coming.  She'll tell me.  I'll pretend to store it in my memory (I say "pretend" because I know that I have no memory to store it in currently).  A few weeks will go by, and I'll remember she was planning on visiting, but I can't remember when.  So, I email & ask.  She'll tell me again, and usually I have only a few days to remember by then - short enough time to retain the information.  And usually I do remember.  On Friday she told me she was going to be here on Monday.  For some reason I remembered she had said Tuesday.  So, it was quite the surprise when she was suddenly at my front door Monday night.  I couldn't figure out why she had arrived a day early.

I do it to make her feel loved.  Who doesn't feel loved when their child can't ever remember when they are coming for a visit?

PARK ADVENTURES:

Today we went to a local park.  It's a beautiful park around a pond.  We decided to start off with a little picnic:

If you notice my mom making a disgusted face, it's because Rhys had just puked (not a ton...she choked a little and gagged on her food).  I'm not used to having someone else there to help clean up the puke!  Thanks, Mom!

Emma eating...my mom trying to reenact her disgusted face from before.  I don't think she reenacted it very well.

SQUIRREL ATTACK!!  (ALMOST...sort of)

While I was telling my mom about a crazy squirrel Emma and I encountered when we were leaving the doctors once, we noticed a squirrel walking up to us right then.  More like hunting us right then.  It was probably 20 feet away when I first saw it.  Then it would run a few feet, stop, stand up and smell the air...trying to catch our scent so it could stalk us and kill us.  Then it would run closer, then stop and smell the air.  Then come closer.  It was ironic, considering the story I was in the middle of telling!  It kept running closer and closer until it was just a few feet from us and was ready to keep running closer!  My mom was screaming, and so was Emma.  I was laughing hysterically.  My mom was too, when she wasn't screaming.  My mom shooed it away in time before it attacked her.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't going to attack her, but it definitely wanted our food.  It ran up a tree and then kept peeking around the sides of the trunk to watch us.  It was pretty funny.  I don't have any pictures of it, but I do have video.  I might post it sometime, but video always takes a lot longer to post!

   

FEEDING THE DUCKS

I so wish I would have brought my fancy camera!  But, I didn't.  I only have my phone.  So, here are a few photos of the kids feeding the ducks with grandma.  We brought a whole loaf.  The kids spent a bit of time feeding the ducks all their bread.

It was so cute.  A momma and her many baby ducklings:

We walked for a while.  Emma and Violet illegally picked flowers (isn't it illegal here? or everywhere?  maybe not...).  

Violet caught in a funny pose:

The kids also had fun laughing & chasing the geese into the water.  

Here is my mom pushing the stroller.  Near the end, Emma and Violet and Rhys were too tired to walk.  So, they all rode (Emma and Vi sharing a seat).  

I think we were there for about 2.5 hours.  It was a lot of fun.  I got a little tired of holding Ella, who did not want to ride in the stroller.  If only I had remembered my baby carrier!!

It was really funny.  As we neared the parking lot, we saw this van with the back door not closed.  We were really confused, wondering why it was open.  

It was my van.  I had pulled the stroller out, got the babies in it, and gotten them up and out of the way of the parking lot, and it apparently slipped my mind to close it!  That would explain why my lock button on my keychain wouldn't work...

Yep, I'm a dork. 

Anyway, it was a fun time...and now I'm exhausted.  Oh, and Rhys & Ella fell asleep on the ride home.  Since we didn't want to wake them up by taking them out, we decided to go get ice cream cones...with ice cream in them, of course.  Yummy.  

It was a good day.