Cody's mom, sister, niece, and nephew came to visit us for Memorial Day Weekend this year. It was the first time that they all saw our house completely finished/furnished. We were so happy to have them come visit us. We had such a fun weekend.
On Friday night we were playing in the bed.
Cody was giving everyone zeeberts or blowing on our bellies.
And of course we were wrestling and tickling.
Then we went out to dinner at Houlihans in the Strongsville Mall. Despite it being a Friday night we got to walk right in to get a table. They got a chicken nacho appetizer that they all really liked.
Here we are taking pictures at Houlihans. Afterwards we walked around the Strongsville Mall for a little bit and we went into Petland to see the puppies and kitties.
Here is Kelsie in the kitchen Saturday morning. Cody had to work during the day on Saturday so he wasn't with us.
We went back to the mall for a couple of hours and the kids had a blast. Here they are on the train in the mall. Little Dave loved the train, he was so excited to go on it.
Then we went into the play land and they got to play on all of the toys there.
Here is Kelsie trying to line up the correct people to their outfits.
Here they are playing in the cars.
Little Dave loved this "whale". I asked him if he liked the fish and he told me "No it's a whale". He was jumping off of it onto the tree stump over and over again.
He was running around and having a good old time.
Kelsie quickly made a bunch of friends to play with, and they were playing hide and seek.
You can see her counting and the little boy going to hide. She kept peeking to see where he went to, so she always found him right away.
Here she is on the tree. They kept climbing onto and under it.
Little Dave's favorite part was watching the train. He was jumping up and down every time it passed because he was so excited.
All of the little kids were watching it at one point.
Then we let them go back on for a train. You can see their fan club cheering them on as the train went by.
After the play area and the train, it was time to ride on all of the moving cars. Davie loved the Bob the Builder one.
Then we had to go on the Mickey Mouse car one.
Then we went on the motorcycle one.
Then Kelsie and her friend wanted to go on the roller coaster simulator one. When I looked at it, they were pretending to ride the Gemini. The screen was showing the Gemini track and then the ride was moving like they were on it.
After our fun day at the mall we came home to play with Uncle Coco. You can see that Kelsie changed right into her new outfit that she got at the mall. Justice was having a good sale, and the dress she got there was adorable!
After that we picked up Uncle John and went to the Rib Cook off. Of course Kelsie spotted these big hamster balls and had to go inside of one. There weren't too many people around so they let her stay in it as long as she wanted to. She was running around and around. When the entrance part was on the ground she couldn't get it to move, so I kept pushing her so she could run around in it.
Here is Kelsie inside of the ball. I'm pretty sure that this is my favorite picture from the whole weekend.
Later on Kelsie got her face painted, then she jumped in the bouncy house, then she got onto one of those trampolines that let strap you in and let you jump. While Kelsie was doing this, Cody and I were eating some food, and we were listening to a girl perform live music. I'm not sure what her name was, but she was really good! She kept playing songs that she had wrote herself and I liked it. She had one song called "Hey Bully" and I thought it was pretty good.
Before we left Kelsie played a dart game and won herself a purple ball. Then she went back and won a blue one for her brother. However, this blue balls life was short lived, because it got popped the next day. And you can't forget the candy apple that Davie got. You should have seen his face, it was so cute, he was a complete mess by the time he was done with it.
Here is Kelsie and Krista. Kelsie didn't want Krista's food in the picture. I think this might be my favorite picture of them from the weekend.
On the way back to the car we ran into a couple of people with horses. The girl told us we could come over to pet him. The horses name was Cody! We thought this was funny. You can see the kids petting him. At one point the horse started nuzzling little Dave. I could tell that he wasn't sure how to react, it was so cute.
On Sunday we spent the day at the zoo. Here are the kids ready to go.
... And here we sitting back down because Nana (Cody's mom) was late. We were supposed to meet at 1 pm to go to the zoo, but we didn't end up going in until about 2 pm because we were waiting.
Once Cody's mom and Uncle John got there, Cody got us our tickets and we were off. The kids were super excited to go in. They were really patient waiting to go in.
Here we are inside of the new elephant exhibit. They were bringing in some of the elephants to feed them inside while we were there. They were throwing them peanuts down to lure them in, and Cody was like "I bet those peanuts do a lot for them" because the peanuts were so small in comparison to the elephants haha.
Next we went to go see the wolves. Kelsie was snapping picture after picture trying to get a good picture of this wolf. He kept walking right past the glass by everyone. I was super proud of this shot I was able to get. It's another one of my favorites from the weekend.
Here is Davie and mommy looking at the fishes in the wolf exhibit. It's so funny, I remember when all of these exhibits were brand new. All day I kept saying, "Oh I remember when that was the new attraction at the zoo." It made me feel old!
Here we are looking at Santa's reindeer. We were trying to find Rudolf but we think he might only live at the North Pole.
Here is Kelsie looking at the seals and sea lions. I'm not sure when they put these fences up, because I remember they weren't always there. When I was young they would let you buy fish to feed the sea lions with. I wonder if something happened to make them put this fence up. Also they only had 3 sea lions/seals in the area. It seems like they used to a whole lot more when I was younger.
Cody and I at the zoo. :)
Kelsie and I
Uncle Coco and Kelsie
Here we are looking at the tigers. Kelsie and Davie kept saying hi to every animal we visited. Most of them were sleeping though.
For most of the day we weren't with Uncle John and Cody's mom. It was hard for Uncle John to walk very far so we ended up splitting up pretty quick. We did meet up at the top of the hill by the Gorillas for lunch. And we didn't take the tram... we actually walked all the way up to the top of the hill. It was a climb, and Kelsie fell once and scrapped her knee, but other than that we made it to the top!
Here is Deb and Renae. We met Renae around 3 for lunch and then she hung out with us for the night.
Kelsie and her blue lips from her slushy at lunch by the Cheetah.
She loved looking at the sting ray in this aquarium. She kept following it with her hand.
Instead of taking the hill back down we walked through the forest paths. Krista had Davie in his stroller so she had to walk all the way around.
Cody, Kelsie, and I took the short cut down the steps and we beat Krista and Davie down the path.
Kelsie was thrilled that we beat them. She thought it was the funniest thing ever. She kept laughing and laughing.
Here they are coming up to us.
When we went to the Australia exhibit (and yes I remember when that was just added into the zoo too) the first thing we had to do was go on the train ride that goes through the area. Here are the kids together.
Here is Melanie and Coco! I also really liked this picture of us.
Then we went into the play area here. You can see Kelsie standing on the bridge.
Here she is with the steering wheel.
Here is a picture with the girls.
Here we are with the wheel.
There goes Kelsie down the snake slide. Little Dave was too scared to come in this enclosed section.
There was a fake alligator in this area that came to life and pretended like it was going to attack you.
Davie wasn't sure if he was terrified of it or if he loved it. They had scary music playing in the area so I think that might have been part of the reason he was scared. When we got outside he kept saying that the alligator was trying to chomp him.
But once we got outside he wanted to go back in to see it again. In this area you could look down above it to see it. So there was Davie and uncle Coco trying to spot it.
Afterwards Kelsie got a ride on a camel. I think she might have been scared at first because you can see how tightly she is holding onto it.
By the time she got to us, she gave us a little wave.
Cody put little Dave up on his shoulders to walk around as we were leaving the zoo to go to the Cheesecake Factory in Crocker Park. It only took us a couple hours to see everything at the zoo. I think that the zoo might have gotten rid of their zoo keys. But that's such a shame because I used to love learning about the animals from them. I wonder why they got rid of them. I wonder if it was too hard to maintain or something?
Here is Kelsie giving Uncle Coco a hug before we went to the Cheesecake Factory.
Aunt Mary met us for a dinner.
Evan had run off on his own at the zoo so we got to see him at dinner.
Here is Uncle John looking at pictures on Krista's phone.
233 pictures throughout the weekend and this was one of the last ones... Can't you tell how much Cody loves me taking pictures of him?
Here is Kelsie and Aunt Renae.
We all had such a fun jam packed weekend. We were so glad that they were able to come out and visit us. Our house is a little too quiet now that they are gone. I'm glad that our basement has so much room for them to run around and play in. We also learned this weekend that our house echoes. That should be interesting for when we have kids someday... But overall, it was a great weekend and we can't wait to see them again in July for Miss Kelsie's birthday!
