Olivia's World

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Kiddieland!

Kiddieland, my favorite amusement park, will be closing this year. I have been there on previous visits as a baby, but not at least for two years, so when Brody invited me to go June 9 with him, Melinda (his Mom), his sister Delaney, and her friend Lalit, Mommy and I jumped at the chance. We had a wonderful time....the day was cool and cloudy so it was not crowded. Mama and I plan to go back at least 1 or 2 more times before the summer is over

I even went on the roller coaster!!!!

Here are the pictures that Mama got.

Lalit, Delaney, me, and Brody!

another one of all of us

I got tired of taking pictures in the parking lot

but they took a few silly ones

like this one!

I rode a lot of rides with Lalit!

Here's Brody with Delaney

And here I am on the boats with Lalit!

Brody and me on the cars

Flying saucers!

I really had a good time riding with Lalit

Lalit and Delaney took us on the mushroom spinner ride, which was super-fun!

Spinning around and around

Brody and me on the airplanes (yes, with the guns...sigh.)

Some whirly-car pictures:

Toward the end of the day, we all went on the tilt-a-whirl. Fun!

It was one super day with my friends!

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Oh, who are the cats in your neighborhood?

As part of my ongoing adventures outside, I have been regularly visiting my friendly neighborhood cats. There are three orange ones who live on the next block, and I named all three of them Coco (or is it Cocoa?), although we recently learned that they DO have names, as you will see in the pictures.

Almost every day Mama and I take a walk or bike ride over to see them and play.
And yes, Mama I do understand that I cannot keep them or take them home with me!

Shhhh....Fozzie is sleeping.

Here I am going off to pet Fozzie while Solly lounges in the distance

What a nice boy...if you look really hard, you can see Lionel in the background

(Lionel is the littlest....and she's a girl!)

Solly and me!

Calling all kitties!

Going in for the pet

swoop!

Solly!

Some fun times in my yard

As the weather has warmed up (kind-of, occasionally), I have been going outside for some fun times and adventures in my yard, with gardening and with animals.

Here are our flowers, pot by pot.

Some yellow begonias next to our front door;
I placed a tomato stick in them, though

Our gerber daisy in a pot that Boppy got us in Door County

The violas are in the basket and moss roses and a dahlia in the container behind them.

The pots used to belong to Nana (my great-grandmother), and she bought them at this really unique pottery stand in Alma, IL, a teeny-tiny town where Mama lived from ages 6 to 9. The way the stand worked was that you just took the pots you wanted and left the money in a box inside a shack by the road.....I guess it worked out okay in the early 1980s.

In any case, my Mama really loves growing things in those pots.

The potted lavender on the left was from last year and it came back on its own.
We made a planter out of the pitcher on the right, which was going to be thrown out

Here are purple 'nemestia' flowers in the middle with yellow violas on the outside

And on the other side of the stairs are purple violas around a yellow snapdragon!

And finally here are some violas that were more than half dead when I put them in these pots and Mama and I watered them....they literally came back almost overnight.....apparently even Mama can't kill violas!

In this one you can see our whole porch including all of the flower pots we have done so far, including the trumpet flowers Mama and I put in baskets on the porch.
Believe it or not, we still have a few more plants that need to go in!

Note: You can also see our amazingly yucky rock garden that sits right in front of our house....we are working on getting that O-U-T out! this summer.

And here I am working on sidewalk chalk with my Mommy

Blue?

Surveying my terrain

Playing hard or working hard?

Now this section I call 'our silly animals'

As you can see, this squirrel, who is much like his friend Lazy the Loungy Squirrel in St. Louis, is actually lying down while eating sunflower seeds!