African Safari Wildlife Park

Haha! That picture cracks me up. ;-) I've never been quite that close to an alpaca before! He was almost touching my camera.

My sister in law, Kelly, invited Will and I to join her and my niece Cecilia for a visit to the Safari Park in Port Clinton on Saturday morning. Sophie was invited too, but I was pretty sure this would have terrified her and the logistics of us all fitting into one vehicle would have been difficult. So Craig took Sophie for the morning and got her down for an early nap to accommodate our afternoon plans.

Will was IN LOVE with this whole experience.

Llamas, alpacas, zebras, buffalo, antelope, deer, a giraffe... He was in heaven! The curvy drive through the park was lined with animals that walked right up to our car for us to feed them grain and carrots. Not a bad gig for these animals! But some of them looked like they could use a weight loss plan. ;-)

We let Will sit on the center counsel and Celia in Kelly's lap while we basically crawled along the path so that they could have a good view without being responsible for gently pushing the animals away if they got to close.

I love this guy's teeth and hair. ;-) Haha!

Um... whoa.

OMG. OMG. OMG.

That's what I was thinking when this huge head came poking into my window.

Ya... so we just rolled up our windows when this guy came strolling by. :) It's amazing how the animals can just tell when your windows are up and they just stay away.

Celia's main priority during our visit was messing with all the buttons in Kelly's car. :) We kept cracking each time we realized she was freezing us out with the thermostat while simultaneously cranking up our seat heat. Haha.

Aww... he's just a baby!

The zebras are so cool up close!

The giraffes were the grand finale... and they definitely ended our driving tour on a high note!

Probably my favorite picture of the day. The sky is so blue and he's looking right at me!

For what was probably the most exciting moment in his entire young life, Will stood up in the sun roof to reach up and feed the giraffe a carrot.

Crunching the carrot.

"Do you have anymore?"

Yep. That's a really, REALLY long giraffe tongue reaching down into our car. :)

Whoa.

I just love these next few...

Will had just touched the giraffe's tongue!

Haha.

Well, hello there!

Kelly was so thoughtful. She drove, she paid our admission and she even brought us a snack for afterward! Cheese and fruit - yum. Thank you so much, Kelly! We had so much fun!

After our driving tour and our snack, we walked through the foot path behind the cafe to see some more (smaller) animals.

I love lemurs almost as much as I love monkeys. They're so cute!

Kelly and Celia checking out some monkeys.

This guy was really putting on a show!

Will found a broken branch on the ground and said "Look, mommy, I'm a big-horned buffalo!"

We saw a white alligator...

And Will played gallant big cousin and explained... um... something to Celia.

This was such a fun trip! Next year, I'd definitely like to bring Sophie and the twins and see their reactions to this place too. ;)

Homecoming

This was the start of one of the busiest weekends {October 7-9th} in the history of weekends for us! ;-)

My cousin, Bethany, made senior homecoming court this year for Genoa and my aunt and uncle asked me if I would take some pictures at the game for them. We were planning to go anyway, so I was happy to play photographer for the event.

We also saw our friend and babysitter, Brynn, who was the freshman attendant.
Both girls looked really beautiful and so did the evening weather.

One of Bethany's good friends was voted Homecoming Queen, but we are still so proud of our "Bep"!!!

Aunt Lori, Bethany & Uncle Dan

And P.S. - Bethany, can you teach me to do my hair like yours? :) So cute!

Bethany has been picking our kids up a little early from the sitters on Thursdays when our sitter needs to get to her son's football games an hour before we normally pick up. (Bethany lives across the street from our sitter.) So Sophie was really excited to see Bethany at the game and cheer for her. She kept saying "I want to see Bethany!"

Nana & Sophie. Nana used to have that same big gap between her two front teeth when she was a little girl. :) I've often thought they looked similar.

The Comets won, of course. They've pretty much dominated the league for the past few years and haven't been less than 30 points ahead of their opponents in a LONG time.

Both kids were ready to go home by the end of the first quarter despite the fact that Will is always asking to go watch the Comets play football. Craig was able to hold them off till half time with a bag of M&M's from the concession stand. ;-) Will kept telling me "It's getting late, mommy. Can we go home now?"

Then it was home and to bed. We had a BUSY day planned on Saturday!

More Karate

A few more karate pictures from class a couple weeks ago. This was Cora's second class and it was so fun to watch Will and Cora together. She's a scrappy little thing! The girl's got skill!

"Bear crawling" exercise.
"Army crawling" exercise.

Cora's front kick.

Will's front kick. (I kept missing a good kick picture by about a second. So the ones I took are all pre- or post-kick.)

More front/side kicking into the taller boy holding the mat.

Will ran off the mat at the last two classes to come up to me and tell me he "loves karate". I'm so happy he's enjoying it!

Will's really going to get some good practice at developing his coordination skills with karate. (They could use a little work.) On the other hand... our little intellectual kid had no problem memorizing the code after just a little practicing with daddy on week 4.

(P.S. - this is my first attempt at embedding a video into my post. Hopefully it works!)

And just for fun (and more embedding practice), here are a couple more videos from this week's class. I actually took Will two weeks in a row because Craig wanted to flip flop week rotations with me so that I was always present for the biweekly "report card" weeks. Basically, we fill out a brief report on whether or not our "little dragon" is upholding the karate code at home and at school/daycare and then the instructors talk to the kids about things they need to work on. Love it! Also at this class, our good friend Mike (who owns and operates the karate school - and usually teaches some of the adult classes), was filling in for our usual instructor. So I wanted to see how Will responded to him in this sort of disciplinary role. In casual, Will refers to him as "Big Mike", but in karate class, he's "Sensei Jacobs". Will has no problem with this change... he's already used to that with "Nana"/"Mrs. Skees". You can see Mike leading in the second video clip with "frog hopping". And in this first one, the assistant is helping warm the kids up with a rolling drill. Will loves this drill and has done well with it since day 1.

Will-isms

Picking up where we left off in July...

1) (July) Eating dinner at Nagoya for Grandma Riedeman's birthday, Will looks at the menu and reads the word "beer". He then tells Craig "That says 'beer'. Can I have a beer?" He has no idea what beer is because it's never at our house. :)
2) (July) Driving in the car, we are playing Will's favorite game. It starts with "I'm thinking of a dinosaur that..." and then you give clues and other people have to guess it. I don't remember all of Will's clues, but on of them was that the dinosaur was a meat eater. So when Craig guessed "an Edmontasaurus?"... Will responded in this don't-be-ridiculous tone of voice: "I saaaaid it was a meat eater!" Duh, Craig. ;) And later, when it was Craig's turn, he told Will "I don't know, buddy. I'm running out of dinosaurs that I know." So Will said "I'll help you think of a new one... what about a Brontosaurus? We haven't done that one yet!" Craig said "Oh, I'm not sure what that looks like. How will I give you clues?" So then Will told Craig some descriptive details, Craig repeated them, and Will guessed it. Haha! :)
3) (August) This in not a Will-ism, but something funny our babysitter relayed to me. (It's actually a "Charli-ism"!) Will had dumped a bunch of board games out of their boxes on the living room floor and Lisa asked him to pick them up. When Will didn't start cleaning right away, the other little girl Charli jumped in to add: "I'm serious, Will. If you don't start listening, I will NOT marry you!" Charli is about 4 months younger than Will and they have been best buds since birth. (She is Jagger's younger sister.) Will recently told me that Charli was his girlfriend. Way to keep him in line, Char!!
4) (August) Papa Riedeman is asking Will about our most recent trip to the beach. He asks Will "How deep was the water? How far did you go out?" And Will responds: "It was up to my junk."
5) (August) Will announces to me this evening, just as Craig is about to give Will a bath: "The Riedeman men are ready for a bath... Craig Thomas Riedeman and William Dean Riedeman are ready to take a bath!"
6) (August) Craig sticks his head in my car to say goodbye to Will before we back out of the driveway. Will asks Craig "Why can I see more skin on some parts of your head and not others?" He started the sentence over several times and didn't know how exactly to ask it because he didn't know the word "scalp". But that's how it came out... and Craig responded "Well, because I'm losing my hair, buddy. Do you think you'll lose your hair some day?" Will says "yes". Craig asks him "How old will you be when you lose your hair?" Will replies "Probably about your age." :)
7) (August) We're telling silly "knock knock" jokes with Aunt Casey and after one of hers, Will told her "You're killin' me!" ;-)
8) (August) Swimming in Nana & Papa's pool, just the two of us, Will tells me (as we're hugging and swirling) "I love you, mommy. I love swimming in the pool with you. I'm gonna' marry you." Awww!! I tell him "That's so sweet, Will, but you know I'm already married don't you?" Will: "Yes".
Me: "To who? Who am I married to?"
Will: "Daddy".
Me: "That's right. And one day, you're going to meet a really nice girl who is smart and funny and beautiful. And you will love her. And then maybe you'll get married."
Will: "I'm going to marry Charli." :)
9) (August) Craig has a rule that the kids cannot play with toys (or leave them sit) on the leather chair because he's afraid they'll scratch it. So when he finds an abandoned toy sitting on the chair this day, he ask "Who left the toy sitting on the leather chair?" Will raised his eyebrows and said "Sophie did it... I can't explain that."
10) (August) Craig and I are having a conversation at the dinner table and we hear Will casually talking to himself... apparently listing steps for how to play with his farm animal toys. This is what we heard: "Step 1: walk over to the barn. Step 2: open the barn door and pick the animal you want to play with. Step 3: play with it." Haha! I think he was listing steps because of something similar we'd read in a library book recently.
11) (August) Will always comes upstairs to greet me in the mornings when he wakes. Most of the time I'm getting ready for work and he just chats with me for awhile and then goes downstairs to play with toys. I often remind him to get dressed when he goes and this morning he said "I'll meet you downstairs... okay, mama?" He just sounded very adult like!
12) (August) Talking to Craig about tractors and I think which ones he wants to own when he's bigger (?)... Will starts a sentence with "I'll tell you what, daddy..." Cracked us both up. :)
13) (August) Touring the new elementary school, we walk through the library and Will scrunches his eyebrows and asks me: "Sooo... do you think they have a dinosaur book in here? I'm confused."
14) (August) Will listed 3 big-named dinosaurs for me and then told me that they were "predators" of the Stirachosaurus (sp?). He's recently been curious about "predators" and "prey".
15) (August) Returning from the library, we are driving on the road perpendicular to ours. Will tells me "Our house will be on the right side of the road when we turn onto our road and Dana's [our across the street neighbor] will be on the left side". It amazes me that he can visualize that. He's known left and right for a long time now, but to be able to mentally visualize directions? I quizzed him with other people's houses we know too. Like, "when we drive to Lisa's house... is her house on the left or the ride sight of the street?" And he got it!
16) (August) Will told me he saw a new litle girl named Teagan at Lisa's house today. I asked who Teagan was... a baby? a big girl? Will said "No, she's two like Sophie and Jax. She's a 'toddler'".
17) (August) Will spells random words in the middle of conversation now (because he's heard us do it). For example, "Mommy, when will we see a C-A-T in our field again?" or "Do you think our D-O-G will scare it away?" (P.S. - this was August, but he's been spelling 3 letter words since probably late May/early June. But just recently, he's gotten really interested and good at spelling in general! 3 and 4-letter words are almost always correct... and he even makes a pretty great attempt at larger words too! It's that visualizing skill again... I can just see him picturing the word and sounding each part out in his head. My mom told me he spelled 'apple' the other day while eating them for lunch after school. He learned that, among others, from an alphabet/spelling toy we own.)
18) (August) Lately, whenever I ask Will to do something, his response is "Sure thing, mama!" :)
19) (September) A particularly warm day. Will says "Mom, it's a hot monkey outside!" (He got that from our babysitter. LOL)
20) (September) At a play date in the park with some friends, Will is amazed at how fast his new-ish friend Marley can run. She's five months older than Will and has much longer legs. :) After a little while playing tag, Will tells Marley's mom: "She's so fast! And she never gives up!" Then later that night at the dinner table, he asks me: "Mama, who do you think would win in a race... a cheetah or Marley?" Hahaha!!! The game continued after I laughed so hard, with other speed comparisons: "a giraffe or an elephant? a polar bear or a camel? a flamingo or a..." :)
21) (September) "Daddy, do you want to take an S-O-W-R [he means shower] with me tonight [instead of a bath]?" More spelling!
22) {September) I asked Craig "do we have any P-I-C-K-L-E spears?" I was packing lunch and didn't want to say it out loud 'cause I knew Will would ask for one. Craig was sitting there trying to visualize the word for a few seconds to figure out what I said... and Will asked me "did you just spell 'pickle'?" :) Craig looked amazed and baffled. He said "my 4-year-old got it before me"! Haha@ :)