Thursday, June 9, 2011

The Beach . . . Phoenix Style!

Lucky duck Ben got to stay at a really nice resort in Scottsdale for training with his new job. Originally he thought that he could stay at home and commute for the two days, but then his boss informed him that he would "have" to stay in the hotel with the rest of the new hires. Poor Ben! On my behalf he acted like he was sad to leave us for two days. Yeah right! Anyway, my friend Katie suggested that we at least take advantage of the hotel amenities while Ben was away and that I did! We had Ben smuggle five pool wrist bands and we partied for two days at the beach like pool. It had beach sand, a lazy river, and even a water slide. What a blast!


 Of course Ben found some time in his "busy" schedule to meet us at the pool.


 Braelyn shaking her groove thang!



Aren't these two just cutie patooties?! I could just eat them both up. Thanks Ben's company for letting us poor young family mooch off the ritzy hotel!

The best part of going to "the beach" was Braelyn's new vocabulary addition. I taught her to say the word "beach". However, it didn't go over as well as I planned. With her cute little pronunciation it comes out more like "bitch". Hahaha! She's been saying it the last few days. She even has a beach book and as soon as she came home that first day, she ran up to her book and yelled, "My bitch! My bitch!" So here is my disclaimer on the subject; if you hear my kid swearing in public, it's probably (hopefully) not the word you think it is!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Zoo!

We had way too much fun for Memorial Day! Thank goodness for my good friend Katie who twisted my, Ben's, and her own husband's arms to get us to go to the zoo. Seriously, we were all content being lazy couch potatoes until we got the message in the morning, "who's in for an exciting day at the Phoenix zoo?!" Needless to say, we were soooooo glad that we ended up going. Braelyn had a blast!

She liked sitting on the tractor with daddy.



She wasn't too sure about milking the fake cow at first. She had to watch her buddy Drew experiment before she would give it a try.

And try it she did! With a little bit of mom's help, of course.



Braelyn and daddy got to play around like little kids! Ben likes those days when he gets to act like a kid. In fact, those days come around quite often.



She even liked the petting zoo this time around! I didn't know that Braelyn knew some animal sounds until we walked by the goats and said, "bah bah!" Since then I've discovered that she knows what goats, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, and trains say.





And the best part, at my request, was the boat ride. This is what I remember about going to the Houston zoo as a kid. This totally brought me back to my childhood. It just made it all that much better that Braelyn loved it too. My little secret: I lied and said that she was two so she could ride the boats. As long as they were two and stayed in their own seats, they were allowed to ride. I knew I could fake the first part, but I was a little anxious whether or not she would stay seated. Braelyn was a trooper though! She sat the entire time and looked for fish and turtles. What a big girl!

We'll have to try to squeeze in one more visit to the zoo before it gets too dang hot here. Let me tell you, these 99 degree weekends sure have been teasers for what's to come. Thank goodness for swimming pools!