Mostly Wordless Wednesday: Our Artist

Penelope's drawings are now starting to resemble creatures. She seems to like to draw these bugs.

This project went a little awry. The idea is that the parent draws a tree and then the kid uses q-tips to make little leaves in fall colors. Penelope decided to make a "dirt pile" next to the tree while I made the leaves with q-tips. Oh well, still fun.

Our Very Wild Animals

To start off let me just say I'm a zoo lover. I think the majority are doing good things and are helping endangered animal species. There are some that make me sad for the big animals if they are in small enclosures, but most times I love visiting. I've been to many zoos...Reid Park in Tucson, National Zoo DC, Chicago zoo (can't remember the name), Edinburgh Zoo in Scotland, Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, and we can't forget Animal Kingdom for our honeymoon.
This year we got a membership to the Minnesota Zoo. Once we went 4 times it was paid off. The great thing is they have so many indoor exhibits that even in the winter we can spend a good two hours wandering around the tropics or the sea life exhibits. I would never expect a zoo this size to have a dolphin show, but they do:

This guy is 47 years old! He was pretty exciting to watch. They also have a mommy and a baby dolphin. The trainer did a great job sharing facts and environmental tips so it was very conservation oriented. Here's Penny visiting with some of the newest additions to the MN zoo.

They also have tons of animals I've never seen or heard of at other zoos like the tree kangaroo and the red panda. Check out this guy

He's a binturong. He looked like a mix between a cat and a bear and is probably around 50 lbs. He can hang by his tail. We've actually never seen him on any of our other visits. He was pretty active walking around the exhibit he shares with the tapirs.

So Penelope will know what a binturong is, but has never seen an elephant or a hippopotamus in person. I respect the MN zoo for knowing that it doesn't make sense to bring these big african animals to Minnesota. The other zoo here has chimps and orangutangs and giraffes, and they stay in small indoor enclosures from October through March. I find that very sad.

For their outdoor exhibits they have a Minnesota themed exhibit complete with raccoons, porcupines, coyotes and wolves. We saw the wolverine in action.

And we saw a Fisher eat a mouse.

Have you ever head of a Fisher? Me neither. Funny thing is they don't eat fish, only small rodents.

Since it was a cool 33 degrees the animals of the Russia Grizzly Coast were hopping about like crazy. The wild boars were chasing each other around and making a ton of noise:

When we've visited in the summer the most movement we've seen from these guys is a twitch of the ear as they wallowed in the mud.

The grizzly bears were pretty active too. We also heard the snow leopard roar a few times and the otters play with a ball.

 Penelope likes to get close to all the statues for her picture. This is a bear cub...kind of hard to tell in the photo.

A great way to spend a chilly Minnesota morning!

Use of my time

Sometimes I think "hmmm...maybe I should be looking to go to graduate school...or maybe I should train for a marathon...or just maybe I should set a pie in the sky goal to keep up with the laundry so we don't have a "Shoot! I have one pair of clean underwear" moments on a Wednesday at 11 pm" but then I realize I wouldn't have time to easily whip out a turkey hat for my friend's baby in a weekend...

 And right now turkey hats are how I enjoy spending my evenings when Penny is asleep. So those lofty goals will just sit where they are for the time being.

I also made this hat for my sister

Her text message said "I love my hat, but why couldn't I have turkey legs too?"

Colores

I realized last night that it has been months since I've taken a video of Penelope! I was so good about it last year. The ironic thing is my camera is highly rated because of its video feature, I just haven't bought the right SD card to take video. So I broke out my flip cam and asked her to sing her Colores song. Without further adieu...

My little romanticizer

Do all of you know Caillou? I'm thinking it's a no. Caillou is a cartoon character on PBS. We actually found him first in the book series. Penelope loves Caillou. We have a book that has about 7 stories in it and she wants to read all of them. In fact on our camping trip this summer I think I read the same 10 Caillou stories 50 times each. Now there's one small detail about Caillou that many people don't realize. He's Canadian! Yup, the book and tv show come from Canada, which explains this:

There are LOTS of episodes and stories in the winter. Caillou loves the snow. Due to Caillou's love of the snow Penelope has been asking "Is it a snow day?" about 3 or 4 times a week since August. We would groan and say "no, it's a looong looong ways away" and tell her all the things that had to happen before it would snow...Mommy's birthday, Penny's birthday, Papa John and Grandmama's visit, Halloween...and Chris would throw in Thanksgiving which I thought was pretty optimistic. Turns out I was right. Look who got to play in the snow...

Similar to her mommy who romanticizes every activity before it happens and then often has to remember we are not in a novel, the snow did not live up to Penelope's dream. She played for about 10 minutes and decided her hands were cold and the snow was wet. We tried to put on her waterproof mittens, but nope, she wanted her red mittens (what can I say...the purple waterproof ones didn't match. Should I really have expected she'd wear them?) So after 10 minutes of playing outside we decided it was time to come inside to read some Caillou books. It is nice to jump in our Caillou book and romanticize winter without that pesky cold part that happens in real life.  Maybe the next snowfall we'll get enough for sledding and she'll change her mind.

Two Connecticut Yankees in Princess Penelope's Court

We had a great weekend with Grandma and Grandpa! Penelope is going through princess withdrawal this week.

After a great day of dance class, the playground and shopping!

Modeling the backpack Grandma bought her. She didn't want to take this thing off all weekend. She said she wants to bring it to show and tell tomorrow.

Yup, she moved up to the preschool class. The "silly faces" start every time I break out the camera.

On Sunday we visited their hotel where Penelope showed off everything she is learning in swimming class.

Swimming class doesn't have a huge water cannon, but she figured it out fast.

No Strand trip is complete without a trip to the Mall of America. Penelope was very adamant on which rides we had to do.

Her favorite is the carousel.

Grandma and Penny on Diego's Adventure Bus.

Checking out lego world. Yup, she had her backpack and her new stylish boots. She calls them "cowboy boots"

And another funny face...

Strand trio

 Notice I finished the matching scarf. Penelope is ready for the snow forecasted this weekend!

Trivia: What does the title of this blog allude to? 

Mostly Wordless Wednesday: Imagination

Penelope has been starting to play "pretend" where she create a story of what she is doing. At first she was just doing things like pretending to make food in her toy kitchen, but now it is so much more complex.

 For instance, on Sunday she yelled from the living room "Mommy, I'm a doctor on a caballo! I'm coming to visit you" (see her dr. kit hanging off the side of the horse?) Our little Dr. Quinn the medicine woman.

Then there's just a few more fun pictures I took: