Daddy's weekend

We were a little bummed about him having to work on Saturday, but we still showed daddy a fun Father's Day weekend. We actually managed to squeeze in an evening baseball game, complete with fireworks at the end! It was the Brooklyn Cyclones' opening season game against the Staten Island Yankees (Minor League teams). The Cyclones lost, but not before scoring at least another homer in the last inning, closing the game at 3-2. It was so nice to be able to drive around our old neighborhood and reminisce a little, mostly about our friends, the views, the awesome library (our library here is not only small, but seriously lacking), the shopping, and all the eateries. Traffic was horrendous on the way back because of two accidents on the roadways and it took us all of two hours to drive back home. We had to stop midway to empty out Liam's bladder from an entire litre of soda he drank at the game. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go!

Happy Father's Day to the best husband and daddy!

 With our friend, Bro. Young
(die-hard Brooklyn Cyclones fan!)

 My little baseball fan!

 Fireworks to Katy Perry's "Firework"!

All the little boys (and not so little, ahem) liked having their pictures taken with the cheerleaders. 

Liam, not so much.

Daddy's back in the Bishopric, this time, as Second Counselor, but thankfully no extra meetings or interviews were scheduled on Sunday, so we got to spend the entire day together. I made him one of his new favorite, super healthy lunches: pasta with vegetables and peanut sauce (a RAVE diet recipe). So yummy, even Liam likes it. Then, we took a short drive out to one of our favorite parks in this area. Liam sure loves that park, "the playground with the curl". (Pic and vid to follow soon.) If it were up to him, we'd be going there every single day. It's a 98-acre wooded nature park with a pool, separate barbecuing area, several athletic fields, golf and a huge playground area with the nice squishy turf. While Liam ran amok, daddy took a nap on a nice sunny bench. On our way out, we saw this vintage auto and stopped to take some pics. The owner, at seeing Liam's excitement about his fancy trophy car, came to us and gave Liam a toy replica of it. So cool!

Such a fun weekend!

Oh yeah, you should know, that the festivities of our Father's Day Weekend started on the rainy, late afternoon on Friday with, yes, another barbecue. We really couldn't help ourselves, rain or not. We had turkey burgers slathered in BBQ sauce, organic hot dogs, veggie kabobs, corn on the cob, and our favorite grilled peaches. Next time, we will try really hard to hold off and take some pictures of our grilling feast before we start devouring it.

The Central Park Zoo

Sometimes I find it hard to believe that Central Park has a zoo. Not quite as big and complete as a regular zoo, but it is so well put together and organized in such a way to maximize the relatively small space it occupies in Central Park. If it wasn't for the occasional urge to look up at the Manhattan skyline, you could almost forget that you are in the middle of an urban metropolis. For a split second, we thought we were at the much larger and more complete Bronx Zoo. The Central Park Zoo is ingeniously able to pack in all of these animals for our enjoyment year round: 

- the sea lions at the garden pool

- polar bears and penguins at the Polar Circle exhibit

- red pandas (small and brownish, looks more like a common raccoon) and the snow monkeys at the Temperate Territory exhibit

- snow leopards (the zoo's newest exhibit)

- ducks, swans, and from the Tropical Zone: lemurs (think, the Madagascar children's animated movie), a sloth, a tamandua (a Brazilian anteater), peacocks, turtles, frogs, many exotic birds, magnified views of ants hard at work, snakes, and bats (too-many-to-count, creepy bats flying non-stop)

Not to be missed is the penguin feeding at 2:30p and the sea lion demonstration and feeding at 4:15p, and the Children's petting zoo complete with a feeding section, and other fun places to climb and explore.

Liam has become quite vocal and decisive in his preferences, so picture-taking lately has been limited. After all, time well spent is the precious little time we have to enjoy carefree moments with our family without all of the constant photo snapping. I find it better to sometimes forgo the picture taking and take the time to explain things to the satisfaction of my inquisitive little boy. I did, however, manage to take these cool pics:

My little angel

Caught in the act!
(I didn't realize what was happening until after I took this photo. You may click on the photo to really see what I'm talking about.)

Fascinated by the penguins swimming close to the glass.

Very active ducks

With Katarina
(my long-time friend Helena's beautiful daughter)

Getting a push from Connor

(Helena's handsome teenage son)

Oh, how he loves all the attention and cuddling!

Exclaiming, "Adventure is out there!" (From the movie UP)
Basically, he is just really happy that my friend Helena bought him the Sponge Bob creamsicle that Mama initially refused to get for him.