A perfect end to a beautiful weekend

This weekend finished much better than we thought it would. On Thursday, both Hope and I were sitting in the doctor's office, getting our various infections (my throat, her sinus) addressed...I felt pretty miserable much of Wednesday and Thursday, and Hope had been suffering from early in the week. We figured that our grand plans would fall through for the weekend due to these illnesses, and were happily disappointed!

Our first taste of good news came on Friday, when our rebate check (for the full amount) showed up. Once it arrived, we planned on doing our "civic" duty by spending it to help revitalize the economy. So, the next morning, we drove up to Little Rock. One of the things we used our rebate on was to renew our membership to the Little Rock Zoo, which is a surprisingly good zoo for this part of the world (even though this gorilla looks less-than-thrilled):

It was a beautiful morning, with sunny skies and pleasant temperatures and humidity. Stephen and the other kids loved it:

The alligators at the zoo were warming themselves in the sun, and probably wondering if they couldn't get a "snack" from the crowds passing by them:

Lil' Stephen was unconcerned, as his toothy grin proves:

Stephen actually has three teeth--he has one on top that you can't see in this picture. We got to a majority of the animal exhibits. One of the new features this year was the installation of a large, antique merry-go-round that the kids really enjoyed:

The little girl sitting next to Kenny is one of his schoolmates from Monticello Elementary School (I don't remember her name). We ran across her and her grandmother at the beginning of our zoo trip, and then walked over the zoo together for most of the morning. Hope took Beth and Stephen on the same ride:

We then did some shopping and returned home by supper, after which we watched a movie and then went to bed. Today, we got up, went to church, did our grocery shopping, and then after lunch Kenny and I went to see the next Narnia movie (Kenny has actually seen this one twice so far--he and Hope went Friday evening, while I watched Beth and Stephen). When we got back, it was such a beautiful afternoon, that we grilled out brats, boiled up some rather good corn on the cob, and had a nice picnic supper in our backyard. Just as we finished eating, the ice cream truck drove by, so we got some popsicles for dessert. Then, we hopped in the wading pool which we had filled this afternoon (the kids and I did) and splashed for quite a while. Even Stephen enjoyed his time in the cool water. We can relish a beautiful late spring day like this now, knowing that in a few short weeks we'll be unbearably hot and humid, and it will remain like that until the fall.

Perhaps the best part of this weekend is that both Hope and I are well on our way towards recovering! Woo-hoo!!

Comments

Anonymous said…
let's see how many times i can say this: those kids are sooooo cute!
6:25 PM
Lisa said…
Michael and Emma can't wait for Kenny, Beth, and Stephen to visit in June! They hope their cousins will want to have a sleepover with them in their bedrooms!
7:14 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Late fall activities

Image
Well, I better get this blog post out before too long--hard to believe it is already December and the holiday season is upon us!  The picture above is from a visit earlier this fall by Beth--and her introduction to our new female tabby kitten "Charlie".  Charlie got her name from the neighbor boy who thought she was a he when this small stray kitten showed up in our neighborhood.  We believe someone dumped her when she was old enough to be on her own--she was definitely very friendly from the very beginning!  The neighbors "found" her first, but as they have cat allergies, were not going to take her in...Since our Bella had died earlier this year, we determined that we were going to wait until early 2024 to find a replacement cat...but as they say, you don't find cats, they find you...  So now we have Charlie! This has been a fairly conventional if very busy fall for us...Halloween came and went remarkably quick, with our traditional pumpkin carving (above) and ...
Read more

Happy 4th of July!

Image
Nothing like starting off the 4th of July with a bit of a BANG!!! When we last left y'all, we were in the midst of the 2011 Arkansas Archeological Society's summer dig... The rest of the week, we continued digging, and continued to find neat things like this 1830s vintage silver US dime: Here's an interesting picture--the orangish color object is a brick--what is the white thing above it? (Hint: it's upside down...) It is the ceramic, painted head of a toy doll! Like many (most) archeological digs, some of the neatest items turn up at the very end, and this dig at Historic Washington was no different (the dime and doll's head were found on the last full day of the dig). We thoroughly enjoyed this year's dig, heat and all, and look forward to next year's excavations. Earlier this spring, Kenny was given a cabbage to plant, and though it didn't fare well in the heat and dryness we had, it did produce a decent little head that was pretty tasty chopp...
Read more

It doesn't feel like fall yet...

Image
Today has finally brought some relief from the heat, humidity, and yes, drought, of the past weeks...No matter what the calendar says about fall starting in the third week of September, it never feels like that this time of year in southern Arkansas!  Yes, we have a lot of the fall trappings, such as kids back in school and football (and tailgating) back in style...But the only leaves changing colors down here are those succumbing to drought.  As you can see in the picture above, Stephen and his fellow bandmates are still playing at halftime of these evening games in shorts...and our tailgating the other weekend at the UAM football game was a warm and sunny affair: I spent several days traveling parts of Arkansas for work recently, looking at old stands of timber...and some of the wildlife that lives there...Saw my first tarantulas in the wild while on the Ouachita National Forest on this trip...The one pictured below was actually being killed by a large wasp called a "tarantu...
Read more