Mother's Day and Other Stuff

I was spoiled for Mother's Day. First of all, among some other fun gifts I got some beautiful flowers. Ben also got me a camera lens! It is a nicer zoom lens than the one I already have. So of course I had to play with it all day!

don't mind our moving mess...

 I'm all like, what???? I was not expecting that. Ben thought I didn't like it because I was speechless!

Now for the new camera lens pictures! I went outside to test my lens out, and James came out and played with chalk. Soon after Ben and and Theo came out as well. Eventually Ben started doing this whistle thing with a blade of grass. It soon drew the attention of a group of boys in our complex. For about the next hour they had Ben teach them how to whistle with their hands and with a blade of grass. After that they loved Ben. In fact, after church they wanted him to teach them more. And the next day, and the next...

Ben and his students...

I just love this one... ha ha

PA Bucket List

We had an unofficial bucket list of things we wanted to do before we left PA. One of the items on the list was to hike Mount Nittany. It is the equivalent of hiking the Y at BYU. Our friends the Clarks let us borrow a really nice backpack and baby carrier. The first half mile of the hike, which was a pretty good incline, James practically ran up! He loved it. It was awesome. Eventually though, he got a little tired and just wanted to stop and throw rocks down the mountain. So we put Theo in the baby carrier and James in the backpack.

 We made it to the "top"! Or at least to the prettiest lookout. We let James out and he had a blast climbing up the rocks and benches and making friends with a funny group of Penn State students. We even saw an eagle fly by while we were up there! Awesome.

You can see Penn State, the law school, and even the hospital where the boys were born in the background.

Theo slept the whole way down!!!

when we got home, Ben and Theo took a nap while James and I played outside.

That same week we rented a car and went to Pittsburgh! My mom was flying in there, and so we made a little day trip of it. First stop was the Zoo! Of course it was raining that whole day, so we all got pretty wet, but other than that we enjoyed ourselves!

looking hot in our ponchos!

 James LOVED the elephants. It was so cute.

This little penguin swam right up to James!

 They have a little sting ray petting zoo of sorts. James tried going through the tunnel, and then he stood up... ha ha.

this was as exciting as the polar bear got for us.

 When we got to the otters, this one came and put a show on for me! He was in front of me for a whole minute doing flips, and spins, and what not. It was hilarous.

of course we forgot to bring any umbrellas, or the umbrella that goes for James's seat in the stroller, so we had to buy one rig this little set up. Worked pretty good except James's pants got soaked. And of course we didn't bring a change of clothes for either one. Rookie mistakes. 

James was the only one in the whole zoo playing on the awesome playground.

all tuckered out after the zoo!

After the zoo we headed to the airport and picked up my mom! Then we went to a nearby shopping mall and ate dinner and and played/shopped for a bit. We finally made it back home late that night!

It was a quick trip, but it was fun and I'm glad we got to see a little more of Pittsburgh.