The morning we flew to Orlando we got a call from Joe's dad telling us
Joe's grandma had passed away that morning. Joe's dad and uncle were
in Chicago at the time so they had to book their flights down to
Florida. Monti and Dahlia were excited when they found out that both
Papa and UK would be on our Southwest flight. Here they are riding
the train from our gate to baggage claim at the Orlando airport.
No birthday cake for Dahlia. She chose to serve donuts from Dunkin
Donuts at her early birthday party. These donuts are just not the same
since they removed the trans fats from their recipe. The lady working
at Dunkin Donuts was very patient as Dahlia took a full 5 minutes to
choose every donut in the dozen. Monti and Dahlia both chose chocolate
frosted bavarian creme donuts.
Dahlia had a chance to celebrate her birthday a week early with some of
her cousins in Chicago. Monti is right there to show her sister how to
use her birthday gifts.
Monti loves doing sewing projects with my mom. They decided to do a
quick project for Dahlia's birthday. Monti went through the attic and
found an assortment of metallic colored fabrics. She decided to make a
gold and silver birthday dahlia flower for her sister. Dahlia proudly
wore it all day in her hair.
Gabe told us that the mama polar bear is in the process of weaning her
baby polar bear. When we first saw them, the mother was trying to get
away from her son who just wanted a little food from his mom. Hudson,
the baby bear, is the tubby one in front. It looks like he has been
well fed.
Gabe’s little girl cousins were so excited to see Gabe at work. He walked with us around the zoo on his lunch break.
It was Gabe’s last day working at the Brookfield Zoo this summer. We were disappointed that we never saw him truly in action.I know he would be great. This week he was named Young Volunteer of the week out of 90 working volunteers.
The young volunteer program that Gabe has been involved in this summer had some great hands on experiences set-up around the zoo. In this spot kids were able to test different tools that represented a variety of birds beaks. The flamingo’s beak acts as a strainer to catch their food. Dahlia experimented with her flamingo beak to catch all the floating goodies in the water.
Brecken pretended he was a woodpecker fighting to get a bug out of a tree. His woodpecker beak consisted of a set of tweezers. He was a very patient little bird.
Someone once complained to me about truck traffic in Seattle. I could
only guess they hadn't ever lived in the Chicago area. This is a
picture from the toll road at 11:00 am on a Wednesday. We were in dead
stop traffic surrounded by trucks plus we had to pay for the privilege.
While we were camping we stopped by the picnic shelter to do camping
crafts. They had bowls of beads and pieces of Sassafras wood set out
on the tables. The Sassafras pieces are soft in the middle so you can
push a stiff wire through them. Everyone was given a wire to thread
their selected pieces on. We all ended up with very unique and sturdy
bracelets.
