Wednesday, September 29, 2010

A Family Walk with Aurora!

One gorgeous weekend we decided to visit a near-by botanical gardens. It was huge and magnificent!


There were little ponds all over the grounds. Aurora was fascinated with the water.


Sitting on a leaf!


A peacock! It allowed us to get within a few feet of it.


Another little pond.


A fountain!


Riding on Daddy's shoulders through a green house.


Running through the rose garden. She ran most of the morning we were at the garden. This kid has almost endless energy.


After lunch, we headed to a pick-your-own apple orchard.


Aurora enjoyed trying to get her mouth around an apple. They were too big. :)


She loved putting apples into the bag.


Another.


And another.


And yet another!


It was difficult for her to pull the apples off the branches, but she sure tried.


At the end of the day, we were very tired and happily headed in to cool off and head home.


~Regina

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Aurora Randomness

Story 1:

When your toddler learns to open her bedroom closet doors during naptime....


And you don't realize it until you hear giggling through the door of the room that should be quiet...


Someone had lots of fun during naptime! :)


Story 2--or, less of a story, more of a random collection of cute pictures that don't have any other place.

Faces:

Don't like!


Goofy grin


Begging


Toothy grin!


Angelic pose...


~Regina

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Running!

Aurora loves running. What toddler doesn't?



~Regina
(For those reading on facebook, please visit wilnregina.com to view the video.)

Monday, September 20, 2010

Reading to Herself

Aurora LOVES books. Sometimes, she'll be quiet and I'll realize that I hadn't heard her in a while, so I run out to see what trouble she's gotten into. Just as often as being into something she shouldn't, I find her surrounded by books, flipping through the pages of her little board books. Even better, she'll be reading outloud to herself....



~Regina
(For those reading on facebook, please visit wilnregina.com to view the video.)

Friday, September 17, 2010

A Walk with Aurora 3

One of our new favorite places here in Wooster is the Secrest Arboretum and Flower Gardens. The park, since there's no better word to describe it, has lots of twisting, turning paths and an amazing variety of beautiful flowers, plants, and trees. We go there at least 3 times a week to run around.

Contemplating the bright sunlight and warm day.


Wandering slowly past the Brown-eyed Susans--yellow is her favorite color, so it's rather hard to get her to move faster than slow when she sees anything that color.


But once we got past those flowers, she made a bee-line for her favorite place: a rock fountain.


The water is nice and cool and she usually gets soaked before we move on.


Blowing a good-bye kiss to the water fountains.


Mommy, look how much taller than you I am!




Oh, look! Rocks! There are several beds of rocks scattered throughout the park and we have to stop at each one and examine the rocks. Then I get the fun task of convincing Aurora that the rocks need to stay where they are, rather than coming home with us.


Then we trekked back across the park to get a drink from the beloved drinking fountain. Nevermind that I had her cup with me, she wanted to drink from the drinking fountain. :)


Across the road, into the rose gardens. Aurora enjoyed picking up and throwing fallen crab apples.



Enjoying some shade! It was a warm day.


Finally, we settled down under one particularly shady tree to wait. Why wait? Because we were meeting daddy for lunch!


But Aurora got hungry, so she got a cracker to hold her over. It's a good thing the park is only a minute or so away from daddy's work!


Finally, daddy showed up and we got our yummy food.


When lunch was over, Aurora wanted to help carry stuff back to the car. But she wanted to carry her booster seat, which was obviously way to heavy...


She stubbornly made it a few feet, but then I was able to convince her to trade the seat for the quilt. It worked out much better for her. :)


And then we went home. Aurora took a nice long nap and mommy probably ate something cold and frozen and yummy. Also known as ice cream. :)

~Regina

Post-script: This post was scheduled several weeks ago to run on this day. Yesterday evening the campus on which the Secrest Arboretum and Gardens is located was hit by a tornado. We have not been able to go see the damage, but driving by on the freeway we could tell that many of the trees were snapped or twisted in two. I can guarantee that the gardens do not look like this today....

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

More Corn!

Shucking corn is an experience every child should have, right? Well, Aurora enjoyed it well enough...


But not so much the silky strings...


The face says it all.


But, as we all remember from my last post, she was very happy with the end result:


Mmmm!


Crunch!


Crackle!


Dribble....


That was some good corn!

~Regina

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Shucking Corn!

Now that there's fresh produce everywhere around our farming community, Aurora has gotten a few wonderful new experiences. Like shucking corn...


...and then eating it, completely uncooked. :) Now any cob of corn she sees, she tries to eat it right then and there.

~Regina
(For those reading on facebok, please visit wilnregina.com to view the video.)

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Haircut!

Aurora got her first real haircut today. I've trimmed her bangs a couple times, but this was the first time I'd cut all of her hair. But she had developed a bit of a mullet, so it was time to even everything up a bit.

From the front, she looks about the same...


But in the back, the curls are all gone! :(


But it's still a little bouncy back there, so maybe the curls will re-form as the hair grows out again.


She's getting to be such a big girl!

~Regina