In Z House: Our Move to Michigan: July and August

We moved out of our house in Olathe, KS on July 15th.

Here's one last picture of Brandon in front of our house right before we left. We drove from KS to St. Louis to stay for the night. St. Louis is where Krzysztof and I met, and we have so many nostalgic places that we love to visit there. Unfortunately, we didn't have any time to go to any of them.

We did, however spend a few hours at the zoo. Brandon looks pretty excited about those penguins.

The penguin exhibit at the St. Louis zoo is one of best we've ever seen, and the chilled air inside was especially appreciated on this day because it was 95 degress outside. The penguins were just about the only animals in the whole zoo moving around at all.

Here's a worn out Brandon and me with my 22 week baby bump.

We drove from St. Louis to Kalamazoo for the night, and then it was on to Waterford, MI. Our friends Blain and Sarah in Waterford graciously allowed us to stay with them for a whole week until our temporary condo was ready for us to move in. They, along with our other Waterford friends Brandon and Stephanie did tons of babysitting for us while we house hunted with our realtor during that week. I don't know what we would have done without them!

Brandon and Trevor (Blain and Sarah's son who is 6 weeks younger than Brandon) had so much fun playing together all week!

Trevor has a dog at their house, and the boys were very amused by feeding the dog little scraps from their trays. Brandon also found out it is fun to feed Trevor that way too.

This is at Brandon and Stephanie's house. They have 2 boys. Christian is the one pushing Brandon. All of the kids LOVE this car! It is definitely the most sought after toy at this house.

After our stay in Waterford we moved into a small condo in Royal Oak. The Detroit zoo is in Royal Oak, so we became members. They sometimes have evening events for members, and this was at one of them.

Blain, Sarah, Trevor, and Andy and Erica came with us this particular evening. This is inside the polar bear and seal exhibit.

Brandon and Trevor attempting to give each other a hug.

And here they are with the dinosaur masks they gave out to the kids.

This is also at the zoo, on their train! But this is another day when Sarah and I went just with the 2 boys. We really took advantage of our zoo membership! Brandon and I went almost every week while we lived in Royal Oak.

These boys LOVE riding this train!

This is the zoo train on yet another zoo visit...this time with Daddy.

Here's a good indication for you that Brandon is not bypassing typical terrible two behavior. Staying with me when not strapped to a stroller is not his strong suit right now. He often runs off, and he really doesn't care if I follow him or not. On the other hand, he will occasionally just lay down and protest moving any further as you see here.

This is back in Waterford on our friend's pontoon boat.

These boys will probably be driving boats like this before we know it.

There was a neat event for kids in downtown Royal Oak in August. They had all kinds of fire trucks, police cars, mail trucks, tractors, etc. for kids to climb in.

Ok, last zoo picture for a while, I promise. This trip to the zoo was with Kalina (Krzysztof's sister). She was in town with KZ's parents to visit with us and KZ's uncle who was also in town.

We had a nice family gathering with everyone.

We were still living in Royal Oak during the Woodward Dream Cruise, an annual event where people come from all over the country to show off their classic cars and cruise up and down this one highway for a whole week. Our condo just happened to be right off that road, so we were right in the middle of all the action (neat for car watching and people watching...bad for traffic!).

On the Saturday of the Dream Cruise week, the whole area along that stretch of road is transformed with food and store vendors, thousands of spectators on bleachers and risers, stages with bands, and tons more. They had a kid area with things like bounce houses and balloon artists. Brandon love it.