{the simple things} porcupine

Yep, it's me. I'm still here. A little exhausted maybe and busier than I would sometimes like, but still here. And yes, I know I was going to post party details. Some other time. Right now, I am lucky if I manage to even read a blog before my brain shuts off for the night. Writing a post? Oh, right, I was going to write...

About this little guy for example. The photos are from Sunday a week ago. The kids were running around the neighborhood and ended up discovering him on the street. We kept him in a box for a little while to make sure he was ok.

He eventually had some water, ate some oats and a couple of grapes.

Then he tried to get out of that box.

The boys had fun watching.

Although he was still fairly small, it's only September and we figured the reason he was on a little walk in broad daylight might have been due to the kids running around an empty lot. We put him back and told them to stay out of there for now.

He's cute though, isn't he?

Cheers,
Swenja

{the simple things / embrace the camera} family fun

How did it get to be September already? The air feels like fall, even though it's been really hot here this weekend. For us, September also means big brother's birthday. He turned 6 last Monday, and as a tradition we always take a family trip on their actual birthday and then do the party some other day.

Well, more on the party later, as I still have sticky floors, a ton of leftover cake, bunting and balloons all over my driveway and backyard to deal with.

So for today's simple things I wanted to share a few photos of our family trip. We went to a nearby park that has all kinds of animals plus a really nice playground, featuring a giant yellow slide as the highlight. First time my husband went down the slide with both boys, big brother commented that while he thought that was nice, he was done with it now. Little brother just smiled and screamed "AGAIN!!!!" at the top of his lungs, before turning around and running to climb up the stairs again. He couldn't get enough, and eventually big brother decided he might give it another try, too.

We've been here a couple of times before, but we haven't seen the latest addition to the playground yet: a wooden pirate ship.

They also have these large inflated pillows to jump on. This time it was little brother's turn to be skeptical.

Big brother loved these though and could have spent the entire day on them.

And then there are lots of animals to see and some they brothers also got to feed. Awwwww, isn't that cute?

This guy was just a tad bigger...

Every other time we've been there, we went in the morning. Since big brother has school now, we went after school and were at the park much later than usual. Maybe that is why we have finally seen the lynx. Big brother was quite excited, we have always looked for them and never before even caught so much as a glimpse. Now here he was, sitting there and eating dinner.

I didn't realize sheep could be this loud. This little guy came running along the fence after us. We named him Karly - after a song on big brother's favorite CD (for German readers: if you don't know the Mukketier-Bande yet, you absolutely have to check it out. It's music for kids that somehow manages to be only very mildly annoying even after listening to it a million times a day).

I'm off cleaning floors and eating some cake, but I promise to be back next week with some details of the party.

Happy Sunday!

Linking up with the simple things and Embrace the Camera.

Swenja