Team Graff: Pre-Birthday Fun.

This is going to be a lot of random pictures just catching up.

Wally loves the dogs, especially Daisy.

Today, he connected Moosed a Daisy's collars to make one big collar, put it on Daisy, added Buzz Lightyear on her back and crawled under her. I'll try to get a picture up of that. She just stood there and took it.

Wally can even use his "X-ray vision" to look through Daisy!

Cicadas. So, they are supposed to only be around every 7 years, but they have been around every summer/fall since we've been here. They make an amazingly loud buzzing sound in the trees and they're huge. I've never noticed one flying, but they hang upside-down under tree branches and shed their shells that remain hanging. Wally and I enjoy finding them and sticking them to our clothing. Apparently, Chinese medicine uses the shells... Every once in a while we find a dead/dieing one on the ground. They are pretty amazing to look at.

We got Wally some floaty wings and star tube. It is so fun taking him swimming now because he can just splash all around by himself.

Pretty tough!

One day, Wally and I went blueberry picking at a local farm. I think we brought home about 5 that he picked, the rest went in his mouth. We will certainly do it again next year.

Joel found a feature with our webcam that identifies faces and then does funny things with them. One can identify the mouth and make the mouth really big. Others put hats on, or as in this picture put "cuss words" circling your head. He spent so much time messing with his appearance. It makes it hard to webcam though, a bit distracting.

Of course, Wally's favorite modification was pink hair!

We were heading to the lake for a picnic the other weekend when Wally says, "I want to go where we never go before." So, we went to the Coralville resevoir instead. We had a picnic on the rocks below the dam. It was neat hearing the water rushing out of the dam. I could imagine I was by the ocean.

There were also some really big fish, maybe brook trout, right by the shore. Too bad we didn't bring Joel's fishing pole!

Then we went for a brief walk (can't call it a hike) at a nearby veteran's trail. Along the trail are tributes/monuments to Iowa soldiers from all of America's wars (even the Civil War). The trail is paved/boardwalk and winds through the trees with several bridges. Even on a hot day, it wasn't too bad because of the shade.

At the end of the trail, there is a bird watching building with little windows that you can peak through at several bird feeders. There is a big bin of seed that anyone can use to refill the feeders. We didn't see a lot of birds, maybe because Wally was with us, but we did see several deer and a little fawn. They must be used to people, because they didn't move much when they saw us.

At the different plaques, Wally liked to teach. We would have to sit and he would give us a lesson while pointing at the plaques with a stick.

If you listen really closely, you can hear Wally over the birds and cicada's teaching Joel how to count in Spanish. Wally is very intrigued with different languages. I hope he can keep it up. We are going to miss his Spanish-speaking friends at the Coop when he starts preschool next month.

For my birthday, Joel got me a porch swing. It is great! Now the weather just needs to cool down so that we can enjoy it more.

We got Wally a slip'n'slide since he had so much fun at Gramma Kathy's with his cousins.

It was so hot, that even Dad joined in on the fun!

Yeah, so he's still trying to get the hang of doing the slip'n'slide.

Even things that we find to be a pain, Wally gets a kick out of. He just wishes he was big enough to wash the windows himself.

We've had bad luck trying to get the canoe out, as in it keeps raining on us. We managed to get it out the other weekend before a storm came in though.

It was great because there were lots of lily pads. I wish I had something in the picture for scale, because the flowers were probably about 12 inches in diameter.

Since the storm came in, we quickly paddled off the lake, loaded the canoe on the van, and watched as the sun came out and the storm was no where to be found. So, we went for a hike. I know this picture looks like it was taken in Montana, but it is actually in Iowa. Notice the nicely mowed grass wide enough for 2 cars.