Milwaukee Zoo

Richard is on-call today so me and my friend Chelsea took our kids to the zoo (Richard and her husband are working together this month and have the exact same call schedule). Marshall and I haven't been to the zoo since last summer and at that time he had no idea what animals were. It was more fun this time around and we even bought a zoo pass-good for a year! The zoo is really close to our house and we will definitely get our money's worth!

Today at the zoo Marshall learned how to feed a goat. Actually it did not go so smoothly as the first thing he did was put the goat pellet in his mouth-YUCK! But, we retrieved it and all was well. Marshall went into the feeding area with Chelsea and her little girl. I stayed back with Chelsea's baby and snapped a few pictures.


Okay, so he actually didn't feed the goats, in fact, he didn't even touch them, but he came close. By the end of the summer he'll be a pro. But, I guess that means I have to show him how to do it, and quite honestly, letting a goat eat out of my hand disgusts me!

Good-bye Miss Lily

Meet cute Miss Lily. I sure love this little girl! Back in January Lily's mom, Sara, and I began a baby-sitting swap. I watched Lily two days a week while Sara went to the gym and Sara watched Marshall one morning a week so I could run errands. This was a fantastic deal for multiple reasons...

*Running errands without a toddler is SO fast and stress-free!
*Lily is one of the cutest girls I've ever known. When I started watching her she was just 3 1/2 months old and now she's 9 months. Its been so fun to watch her grown and learn. And hello, who doesn't love those baby fat rolls?!
*Marshall got somewhat accustomed to having a baby around, hopefully that will come in handy some day!
*Lily's family has a dog, a big dog, that Marshall eventually got used to on the very last day Sara watched him. :) From January through June we would drive to Lily's house, I would get Marshall out of the car, and he would walk halfway across the street and then turn around. I would then pick him up, hand him off to Sara and the end report was that he always cried at least a little bit when the dog was around. Well, the very last day I took him to Sara's he willingly walked all the way across the street, walked straight into their house, and was tear-free for the entire two hours-WOW!

Well Lily, we sure will miss your morning visits, and Sara's too! Thanks for a great swap!


On a side-note, do you like Marshall's shirt? It's a perfect fit for him considering what is in his hand...this boy loves his blue blanket! :)

If you want to meet this big dog and read more on Marshall's end of the baby-sitting swap, click here.

Happy Kid

Marshall was particularly happy at lunch the other day. He loves this picture. Every time I show it to him he just starts to giggle-good memories!

Strong Kid, Strong Door

Marshall has developed some impressive upper-body strength in the last week. He loves to hang on anything, including door knobs. Richard took this picture and I didn't even know about it until I was flipping through the pictures. I'm just glad the door and knob survived!

A Boy And His Dad

Marshall got to enjoy five wonderful days with Richard; he was one happy boy! He sure loves his daddy! Thursday was a sad day for all three of us as we had to get back to real life. On Thursday afternoon Marshall walked all over our apartment saying "Daddy! Daddy!" It was very sweet. We sure love Richard and look forward to more down-time, but for now, we'll take what we can get!

First EVER Leake Family Vacation!

At the beginning of the year I told Richard that I wanted us to have our first family vacation (Richard, Jenny, and Marshall only). Just something simple, we don't have much time or money, but I just wanted us to be able to get away and make some good old family memories. Luckily we were able to do just that!

Richard had a five-day break between his 3rd and 4th year of medical school so we took our free weekend and took a trip to Chicago! We drove down Friday afternoon after Richard's exams and checked into our hotel, right downtown. Marshall was completely amazed by the buildings. At first he kept calling them temples, but after a while he finally understood that not all tall buildings are temples.

Anyway, onto the vacation. On Friday night we walked to Millennium Park and had a great time. All Marshall really wanted to do was push his stroller around and our camera battery was dying, so the pictures aren't the greatest because we had to take them so fast, but here they are...

Here's the Crown Fountain. There are two 50-foot glass block towers. Video images are projected and water flows off of them as well as shoots out of them, pretty cool. Marshall had a great time playing in the water and was pretty soaked by the end.


And here's the famous Cloud Gate, of course we couldn't miss this one, even though Marshall had zero interest.

I took this picture standing under it, right in the center.


And a quick family picture...

If you want to see a picture of the entire structure, check out this link.

And here are my two boys, sure love 'em!


Here we are at a park on Saturday morning before we went to the Shedd Aquarium.

Cute, happy, active Marshall!



After a quick jaunt at this park we made it to the Shedd Aquarium. I visited this aquarium with my family when I was in elementary school and have great memories of it so I'm glad we were able to go!


Quick note: Just before we left the aquarium Richard discovered that we actually have an aquarium setting on our camera-who knew?! But, by that time Marshall had completely lost it and there was no time to go back and take better pictures. Not the best luck with pictures on this vacation-oh well, life goes on!

The cute penguins; my favorite exhibit.


Beluga Whale


Moray Eels


Sharks! Richard's favorite.


Dolphins


And here we are at the end of our vacation...as you can tell, Marshall was ready to be done!


Well, despite the lack of quality pictures, it was still a great time! It was so fun to have a little vacation as a family of three. It was definitely an adventure to get out and explore a new place, but I think my main memories of this trip will be Marshall's immense desire to only push his stroller and his love of the phone books in our hotel room. I think we will keep this in mind for our next vacation-all we need is a stroller and two phone books. :) Anyway Chicago, good-bye and thanks for a great vacation!

BIG Storm!

A couple of weeks ago we had some nights of pretty intense storms. In fact, there was even a tornado about 30 minutes away from us, fortunately we were just fine and didn't even need to go to the basement. But, the next night we had another big storm that woke both me and Richard up (this is highly unusual as we had slept through all of the other storms).

Anyway, the next morning Marshall and I were leaving to run errands and this is what we saw as we came around the back of our apartment to our parking lot...quite the sight!


Marshall still talks about this tree every time we get in the car. He says, "Tree, fell down, uh oh!" Very cute. It obviously made quite the impression on him.