A Happy Monkey Momma Birthday

What a great birthday weekend I have had. Yesterday we went to the farmer's market down town because the insects ate my zucchini plants while we were out of town... no zucchini means NO ZUCCHINI CAKE and that's just not acceptable. While searching out the vegetable stands for the best zucchini Logan, Eric and Amanda spotted a fresh cut flower vendor and decided that I needed a bouquet for my birthday. How sweet! : ) On the way back home, Eric asks if I would like one of my presents early... "Ummm, do I need it early?" Well the answer was yes. He decided that I needed a new attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. After shredding all the zucchini with my new toy, the kids helped Eric bake my cake. They were super excited to eat it, but Saturday wasn't my birthday. It would have to wait until the next day.



Jump to this morning. Eric got up with the kids and let me sleep in. When I rolled out of bed (at 8:00!!!! - THAT's sleeping in for me!!) The kids shouted "HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! CAN WE EAT THE CAKE NOW??!?!?!" Why not! So we had a lovely zucchini cake breakfast.



In our house, on your special day you get to choose the activity for the day. My choice was to visit the Chaplin Nature Center near Arkansas City, KS. It's run by the Wichita Audubon Society and I've been wanting to check it out since we've moved here, but I've never found the time... UNTIL TODAY! We got going pretty early since the weather man was calling for another hot day.



We hiked the trails and saw lots of animals. Spiders were the most prolific, but we also saw deer, a toad, two frogs, some fish, and many butterflies. I only spotted a few birds because my monkeys were a little loud, but that's how the cookie crumbles some days.

One of the trails leads to the sand banks of Arkansas River. At first the kids just wanted to put their feet in...

Then they started splashing around...

And all of a sudden. They were both soaking wet. Oh well!

After our hike, we headed into town to get some lunch. I made a quick stop at Wal-mart to pick up some clean dry clothes for the kids. Then we found this wonderful park and HAD to stop and play.

There was also some really cool playground equipment, but all my monkeys wanted to do was play on this train.

For TWO HOURS!!!

And they STILL hadn't had enough.

I had to promise that we'd be back again real soon.

But the nature center building is only open from 1 to 4 on Sundays so we had to hurry back and check it out before they closed.

They had a great time checking out the exhibits... studying the animals under the magnifying glass...

Watching the birds on the deck...

And playing in the moon sand / track table. I think we spent almost two hours there as well! A great birthday indeed.