What? It's Monday?

It can't be Monday, I didn't have to go to work . . . wait, it is Monday and I am on VACATION!!!!!  

And I think that maybe Mother Nature read my blog post about the trees changing colour and how it is far too soon for fall, because we are getting some GORGEOUS summer weather!  Dare I say that it was even almost too hot this afternoon?

Nonetheless, we took advantage of the fact that we are on vacation and the beautiful weather and went for a nice picnic today.  We found a nice little park, took the little bbq, Henry cooked up some hot dogs for us and we fed the ducks!

Liam's amazement when he saw a real live duck was adorable.  He knows what a duck is when he sees a picture in a book.  He knows that the yellow squeeky things in his bath are ducks.  When he saw the first one, he did was he always does when he something interesting that he's never seen before.  He pointed and asked "whsat?"  When Daddy said it was a duck, he got this look of pure astonishment on his face.  He looked at the duck, looked at daddy and looked at the duck again.  "uck?"  And then looked to me for confirmation.  Then he got excited and said "uck" about a hundred times.

The excitement grew when Daddy got out a hot dog bun and showed him how to feed the "ucks".  Liam did a great job throwing the bread to the ducks.  And loved watching them.  He didn't want to stop for lunch and as soon as lunch was over, we where back to feeding the ducks and probably would have been there all day if we hadn't run out of bread!

"Daddy, can I help cook hot dogs yet?"

"Duck?  Is it really a duck?"

"I can throw the bread to the ducks?"

One of about six ducks that came over for a snack of hot dog bun!

"Feeding ducks is hard work.  I need to energize."

"Dad, can we feed the ducks again?"

"Come on Mom, let's go feed the ducks."

Hungry duck!

"Am I big enough to climb trees yet?"

Feeding the ducks with Mom.

A great family day!

Yesterday we had a great family outing day!  It is nice that Liam is getting to an age were we can start to do things like this and he does more than just sit in the stroller and stare!

We started out day at Valleyview Little Animal Farm.  We had never been there before, but had heard good things about it, Liam LOVES animals and it was close, so we figured we couldn't go wrong!  First we went into the Little Animal Barn where we saw goats, sheep and a variety of chickens and other birds.

The goats were Liam's favorite.  He kept calling them dogs, but he enjoyed petting them and feeding them.  He even got head butted to the floor by a mommy with horns and wasn't deterred at all!

He liked the sheep too, but not quite as much as the goats.  I think that it is partly because the goats were more active.  

Once we got the munchkin away from the goats, we started to check out the outside animals.  There were rabbits, but those were boring, he can see rabbits any day!  We saw lots of other animals . . . numerous types of ducks, peacocks, alpacas, cows, pigs, deer, llamas and probably a few things that I am forgetting.

We took Liam's wagon for him, but he walked most of the time.  It is hard to believe how big and independent he has become!  Valleyview also has a huge playground area.  Liam got have his first experience with a slide.  We are still undecided on that.  It wasn't horrible, but he didn't seem to be overly excited by the experience either.

He was much happier to sit and play in the sand with a stick!

We had a great time at the farm and I totally recommend it to anyone with little ones in the Ottawa area!

When we were done at the farm, we headed to Richmond for a picnic lunch.  I wasn't sure how successful I picnic lunch after such a busy morning would be, but you don't know until you try!  Liam was dozing to sleep in the car as we looked for a park to picnic in, but got a second wind as soon as he got him out of the car!  We were a little disappointed in the park selection in Richmond, as we couldn't find anywhere with picnic table, but we made do with what we had.

Henry set up the little charcoal BBQ on the tailgate of the truck and Liam's seat went on the grass.  Liam wanted to help BBQ, but settled on having his peanut butter sandwich instead!

Surprisingly enough, Liam lasted for a trip to the hardware store to buy sand for his sandbox and the garden center for Mommy to buy some plants before he finally decided that he couldn't take anymore excitement and fell asleep in the car!  Once we got home, I took him out of the car seat, into the house, put him in bed and took off his shoes without him waking up!  He slept for three hours!!!  

I love days like this and wish that we had the time, money and energy to go on outings like this more often!!