Busy Summer so Far...

It has been a busy summer - but a great one. We've gone down to Starkville for a friend's going away party, to Meridian for a family member's wedding (of which I took no photos - but take my word for it, it was a wonderful weekend and a beautiful wedding), and up to Memphis to visit Chip's best friend, Matt and his family.

I had to put this picture in because it is so telling of who Josephine is. She's wearing her pink "princess" dress and her dad's tennis shoes. Mixing styles already!

Chip and I together - married for 4 years now! (Can you believe it??? :) )

For Memorial Day, my dad invited my family and my brother's family to the Tupelo Country Club for a true Memorial Day buffet (BBQ, wings, slaw, potato salad, etc.). Afterwards, we went outside to let the kids run together a little bit.

ALMOST all the grandbabies. Mary Frances is out of the country - but Jo still talks about her. She refers to her as "Many" and points to the calendar of Mary Frances's pictures my dad has in his house (as if that's where Mary is always and forever... haha).

Here Jo is ready to go to the zoo in Memphis - she had her sun "glassies" and her hat (seen in a later photo). She LOVED the zoo. Below are more pictures of our Saturday adventure:

Here we are in the reptile house (there's a scientific name for it, but I'm not sure what it is... it had snakes and turtles and stuff... an "herbarium" or something??) There was a step that Mikaiah and Jo could stand on to see the animals better - Jo had a blast. I look impatient in this photo - I'm not, I promise. We were watching all the snakes and alligators and such, our friend Matt and his wife Aimee were waiting to see the giant python be fed a rabbit. There was a large group of people waiting for that and I KNEW my 2 year old wouldn't wait for something like that.

There were several photo op places in the zoo. This one is inside the Panda area at the zoo.

There were also a few places to go inside and get cooled down (as you can see in the photo - Jo's about as red as a beet...). There was a coloring station and a tangrams station and a puzzle station. Neat - until kids about 15 years old came in and also wanted to play. We left shortly after. We're not going to compete!
I think the Komodo dragon was the first exhibit we came to where Jo was that close to the animals - she thought he was very cool - and Aimee had her pointing out the dragon's eyes, ears, etc.

Jo and her daddy!
I didn't know this picture even existed until I sat down to do the blog. This must have been Mikaiah's ONLY moment of weakness all weekend - both she and Jo were troopers and neither had a break down. Amazing! They are very good playmates.
Jo with her "Uncle" Matt.

Most of the exhibits had rails too tall for her to see over, but this one she could see through (this is in the China area of the zoo...). So funny!

After the zoo, we went downtown to the Peabody to see the ducks (what? Peabody AFTER the zoo??? Yes... the Peabody's an experience... AND we went to eat Rendezvous after the Peabody, so it was something to kill some time before we went and ate dinner).

Our Memphis trip was SO fun - we had a blast.

Chip kept Jo home from "school" today to have a father/daughter play date. After a morning of watching Dora, he took her to the park this morning for about an hour, we went out to lunch, he took her home for a nap, and then took her to a local kids museum called Healthworks.

She had such a good day with her daddy. I'm sure she doesn't want to go back to school tomorrow. She does want to go see her friends today. At lunch, she was telling us how much she liked all her friends and listed every one of them! She's very very sweet and really enjoys being around people. (I think she gets this from her Grandma Carolyn...)