Here Comes A New Shelmet

Zoe has a three wheeled scooter and recently saw that she could get one with only two wheels. We're happy to give her more means of transportation (knowing full well that I'll be the one carrying it five minutes later), so we went up to Toys R Us to find one. While we were there, they had a number of small bikes with training wheels. One of those happened to be Frozen themed and, after seeing that, all thoughts of a scooter went out of her head. She rode it around the store, having me run after her to keep up, and we took it home. She buckled on her helmet and we took a ride around the block. She does have a little trouble getting the bike rolling sometimes, but once she gets up to speed I have to run to keep up with her. She goes really fast.

Zoe has never seen fireworks. She is typically not up late enough to see them and when it gets dark early, no one is shooting of fireworks. Also, she hates loud noises, so I was uncertain as to how this whole thing would go over. On both July 3rd and 4th Sesame Place was doing fireworks. Cheryl had to work for a large part of the holiday weekend, so Zoe and I drove up on the 3rd to see them. I recorded a little video of the experience. Things went a lot better than I expected. When she wanted to go into the car, she almost immediately wanted to go back outside. More importantly, she said she wanted to come back the next night with mommy to see them. Before we did that, we went to Mimi and Joe Pop's to say hello and Zoe held her first sparkler. Of course, shortly after these pictures were taken Zoe got her first burn from a sparkler. Thankfully with a little ice she was good to go back to the fireworks. She had a lot of fun with her cousin and some glow in the dark bracele...

With the fourth of July falling on a Saturday, Cheryl and I both had off on Friday the third. That being the case, and our lack of freshly jarred jams, we decided to spend the morning at Linvilla picking blueberries and peaches. We didn't get up too early, but we got there with plenty of good picking weather ahead of us. Not only did Zoe do a great job picking ripe berries (she was really good at identifying ones that were more blue than purple) but she also talked so much that she kept us and anyone else nearby entertained with her observations. Here are just a few pictures. After we picked a pallet full of berries we rode the tractor back to the car. We were picking for over an hour, so we were all in the mood for some play. Zoe drove us down to the other end of the farm with the animals and playground. She did pretty good for a first timer. Once we were safely parked, we made our way to the playground and the animals. Zoe did a good job feeding them and running aroun...