Work a little, play a little

Because of some schedule rearrangements at work, I got a 5-day weekend. As if that wasn't awesome enough, it also coincided with the best weather south of Georgia in at least 100 years. Fine, it was more like 6 months that felt like 100 years.

Then my friend Tere, who really is too sweet for her own good, offered to help me paint. It has been almost 5 years that she's been listening to me complain about how much I hated the beige.

So what to do with a toddler when you paint? Let her help you.
She'll paint about this much, get bored, and find something else to do.
The least we could do for our friends for helping us paint was feed them, and because we had torn apart the kitchen, living room, and dining room, we were left with the option to grill.

And as we sat out on the giant people cage lanai, Kitty spotted the emptied, open bag of charcoal. Stupid cats can't resist crawling into bags.

White cat+charcoal=not pretty.

After all that hard work (um, Kitty bath, hello), it was time to play so we went to Busch Gardens. Now, the last couple of times that we went there, we took Lily to the Sesame Street area. We saw Elmo, Big Bird, and went on a bunch of rides. This time, we thought we should do something different. Like, instead of Big Bird, we could see some real birds. Instead of rides, how about the train?

We got about half the plan. We rode the train, and Lily loved being on the "red choo choo tain!" Then we were off to see some real birds when Lily started flailing, flapping, and grunting. She was pointing frantically, so we went back to see what had caught her eye.

She saw the Gwazi Gliders. It was Dumbo all over again. Except this time, we couldn't go with her because we are both taller than 56 inches. She was on her own.

I stood by the fence with my camera asking her repeatedly if she wanted to go, if she was okay, if she was scared. Somebody should've smacked me. But look. She looked nervous, right?
She was fine. She's just very serious about rides. That's all.
Sniffle. I don't want her to go by herself. But I do want her to go to sleep by herself. Why can't I have it both ways??
We did find a ride for everyone, finally. Daddy got to go with her, Lily got to fly, and I had the camera.

Too bad she was too busy with the ride to even glance at the camera. Or smile.
She had a plane to fly.
Eventually, we made our way to the aviary where we thought Lily would like to feed the birds. She has a weird bird obsession, but she was not a fan.

In her defense, a bird did land on her head almost immediately. That would freak me out, too.
She really didn't like sharing her daddy with the birds.
He didn't mind, though.
So after such a nice morning at Busch Gardens, we all took a three hour nap. It.was.awesome.

But we did have to get up eventually, and when we did Lily took Kiki for a walk. Just like old times.

Some things just don't change easily. Lily still had to stop and march and/or dance on whatever these things are.

Old routines still intact, it was time to add in some new features. Like somersaults. Or at least the start of one.
And a new strolling style.
With Mama's shades, of course.
And so ended the official weekend, but I still had one more day at home with Lily. I planned to run some errands.

Inexplicable vomit changed my plans, and we just stayed at home.

The vomit earned Lily her first ginger ale, which was also her first carbonated beverage.
For the last task of the weekend, Lily "pank-ed" her new birdhouse.

She took the project seriously.

How much do you think I could get for these on Etsy?