Fishes and Pumpkins and Cake, Oh My!

We had a BUSY weekend! The weekend actually started a little earlier than planned. Liam’s teacher called around 3:00 on Thursday saying that he had a fever. Since Josh was already home working, he went & picked him up, but I left work (since I didn’t have much to do) so I could watch Liam while Josh finished up his day. The fever (100.5) lasted through the night, and most of Friday. But we were happy to see the cause – a tooth! Finally! We’ve been waiting for this for about 2 ½ months now. We’ve been sticking our fingers in his mouth just about every day feeling around for something and it’s finally there. Of course Liam is now miserable & grumpy, but I know that’s just temporary.

We still went to the Aquarium on Friday, despite the fever (since we knew he wasn’t sick). We had a good time, although we were a bit disappointed to see that the penguins have gone “on vacation”. Apparently they are re-doing the penguin area. Zachary loved it though and seemed to have a great time. Saturday morning we went up to Burt’s Farm in Dawsonville. It was our first time there on a Saturday (we’ve always gone on a Friday in the past) – I think this will be our last time up there on a Saturday. It was a zoo…even as early in the day and the month as we went. We got some fun pictures, although Zachary is now at an age where he really doesn’t want to cooperate for pictures. He either makes a goofy smile (he always says “cheese”, which results in a completely silly face – I wish he would stop it with the “cheese”…) or has a finger somewhere it shouldn’t be (nose or mouth, most likely), or he just won’t look at the camera (which isn’t always a big deal, but like, he’s not looking in any direction that would make for a decent picture…). But when we threaten to not have any pictures of him, he gets bent out of shape. Have I mentioned that three is SO much fun??? When Zachary woke up from his nap that afternoon we went to the kids’ school – they were having a 5th birthday party in conjunction with a local antiques & arts festival. The school had a couple of moonwalks, and different activities in each classroom. Zachary painted a pumpkin in his classroom (or, really, slathering all the paint onto his tiny pumpkin is more accurate – there was so much paint that it was still gloppy & wet when we left – hopefully it will be dry today…). And they were making ice cream in another class. It was neat – they put milk, sugar, and vanilla in a Ziploc baggie, and then put that baggie inside a larger baggie filled with ice and rock salt. Then they had to shake the bag for about 5-10 minutes (I didn’t time it…), and as if by magic, the milk had turned into ice cream! I would have never thought you could do that.

On Sunday we had my birthday dinner at my mom’s house. It’s my favorite meal of the whole year (yes, even more than Thanksgiving!). She always makes lasagna, salad, Cole’s garlic bread, and we get chocolate cake with chocolate frosting from Rhodes Bakery. My family has been getting cakes from there, I think, since my mom & her brothers were little. For those of you who know Meghan Connelly Rhodes, she married George Rhodes (I believe he’s the 4th…). He runs the location on Holcomb Bridge Road in Roswell. Small world!