Guilt-Ridden Parents
As I'm doing this post, I realize that we must have had some real underlying guilt issues for leaving Ethan for 4 days while we went to Florida because he's been living it up these past two weeks since we've been back! Blake had a few days off after we returned from our trip so we took advantage of having some family time together. Believe it or not, I was actually at all of these places even though I don't appear in any pictures. Someone has to be the photographer I guess, right?
We made a little trip to Alstead Farms in Chester, NJ to do some strawberry picking. Besides the scorching heat, we had a great time. Ethan got to go on a tractor ride which was really fun. He wasn't thrilled that he had to ride BEHIND the tractor instead of IN the tractor but he got over it. 
Such a little helper! Ethan got the hang of picking the berries rather quickly although by the time they made it to the basket, they were usually squished. Oh well!
Riding in the wagon with his loot! I'm not sure which was more exciting to him: the strawberries or the tractor!
The other day we discovered a little bird's nest by our back door with 4 baby birds in it. Ethan was fascinated so every day we'd watch them grow and move around. Then, the other day we watched three of them hop into the bush and fly away. When the fourth one hopped into the bush, we walked around to see if it had flown away or was still in the bush. Suddenly the baby bird started flapping around in the bush and before we knew it, the mommy and daddy robins were swooping down at us making all sorts of noise to get us away. Ethan and I freaked out and hauled it into the house waving our arms over our heads to protect us from a bird attack. Once we were safely inside, Ethan said, "mommy scared!" "birdies get us!" and he was right. Mommy was scared (and a little embarrassed)! I still crack up thinking about how funny we must have looked! Needless to say, the birds have not returned to their nest. 
This is the bubble mower we got him when we returned from our trip. We were going to get him a Florida t-shirt but for the same price, we realized we could get him a bubble mower. It was a no-brainer!
We found a cute little park near our house which happened to be infested with caterpillars. Ethan went crazy! I just feel bad for the poor little caterpillar!
In our complex we have a large pool and kiddie pool that we can start utilizing now that it's warmer. Ethan LOVES it as you can see! 
We took Ethan to a fun place near us called Giggles Play Zone. It is like an indoor playground of sorts with rides, a huge climbing feature, a train ride, snack bar, and of course, tractors! He had a blast and so did we!
Cooling off with some homemade ice cream from Cliff's! I think he's eating cotton candy ice cream. Yummy!Okay, this tops off everything. We know that Ethan loves the Cyndi Lauper song, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" but this was even better. Last week Cyndi Lauper gave a free concert in Bryant Park in NY which was shown on tv. Of course she sang her famous song and Ethan went crazy! I had to keep rewinding it and playing it...over and over and over again. We crack up watching him dance around in his glow-in-the-dark skeleton jammies. What a kid!
