Memorial Day Weekend

 I love long weekends with extra help with the kids and we usually get around to doing some productive and fun things.

This weekend we managed to take down a couple of dead aspen trees in our front yard, re-seed our dying lawn (hopefully it takes!) and we attempted an angel food cake from scratch.  It was a fail.  We aren't defeated, we will try again.  (Angel food cakes take A LOT of egg whites.  We think we over beat them and that's why the cake fell but it could have also been our pan.  But what do you do with all those egg yolks left over?  You make the most amazing bread pudding, that's what.  It was definitely not a fail.)  Oh yeah, and we also got those awesome family photos taken.  We were busy!

But we did make time to see the traveling wall - a replica of the Vietnam Memorial in DC.  It was pretty cool, not as striking as the real deal, but pretty neat just the same.  Jacob especially liked it as he hasn't been to DC.  Someday he and I will go.  I'm pretty sure Isaac didn't care at all about the wall despite our efforts to explain it's significance.  But, whatever, he's two.

 

 

Isaac did, however, love the retired army helicopter.  I think he wanted to fly it for real.

 

 

 

Don't let the expression fool you.  He did not want to get out of that thing.  No big tantrums or anything but he could have stayed much longer if there weren't a line behind us.

We packed a picnic dinner and stayed to eat it at the park. 

And don't worry if the thing Isaac has been talking about all week long are these silly excavator toys at the park.  He keeps asking to go back to the "digger park with the excavator."   I knew he'd love it, I just didn't realize how much he'd love it.  He had played on it last year but was too small to make it work.  He's still a little too small but that didn't stop him from trying with all his might.  He got pretty good too.

And mostly Ben slept.  Well, by mostly I mean for about 20 minutes of all the excitement.

And then on Monday we went to a different park to ride the trolley.  Another hit with Isaac.  We rode it a couple of times last year and I'm sure we'll be back this season.  It's a restored care from the early 1900s.  It's pretty cool and is cheap entertainment for the two year old.  

 

 

But guess what, Ben loved it too!  He would stare out the windows and occasionally smile at something, not sure what.  It was so funny to see looking out the window with such intensity.  He would barely stop looking long enough to snap a few photos.  Funny,

 

 

 

 

 

And then Isaac and Ben crashed on the way home.  We rode the trolley and played at the park with the Bills family and then they invited us over for an impromptu dinner.  We stopped by the store for some soda and loved seeing Isaac fast asleep with his sandwich safely propped up on his cup.  Cute.

Hope your Memorial Day weekend was also a good one!