Lots of Parks and People!

So far this week, we have spent a lot of time out and about. Tonight, Ryan is seeing the Dark Knight, which he has been highly anticipating. We didn't do it as a date night, because we are having one tomorrow to attend a friend's birthday party. Prior to the movie, we spent the evening at Maybury, where I was actually able to run about a whole mile without stopping to walk. I had been previously alternating short bursts of running with walking, depending on uphill or downhill. I have actually found it easier to run uphill, because it is easier to control my pace with the stroller than to be pulled downhill by it. Keira really enjoyed running, and when I did start to walk, she pleaded for me to run more, which was not a good idea, and it turned the remainder of the work out into a walk for me. It was still great to get in a decent chunk of running. Keira has also decided that "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's Addiction is her new favorite song. She calls it the "dog song" and we listed to it about 7 times today, and that is a lot considering we were only in the car long enough to listen to 2 or 3 other songs in addition to that one. We will add it the blog once I figure out how.

Thursday was also a very full day. We spent the morning running errands, and on our errands we heard about a family day at Shiawasee Park in Farmington that was going on that afternoon. It is a really great park with a cinder trail where I used to do track workouts for my marathon training with a really fast group of runners, and they have a great play scape as well. Of course, as soon as we get to the park, Keira was not interested in any of the festivities and wanted to swing on the swings. I eventually got her away from the swings to go look at the ducks that are usually in the stream that flows through the park. I had no idea the ducks would come as close to us as they did. They got a little too close for Keira's comfort. This picture is not zoomed at all.

After seeing the ducks, we made our way over to where the rest of activities were. We stopped at the Farmington Fire/Police area, and Keira was very excited to run around on the mat intended for "Stop, Drop, and Roll" demonstrations. She didn't want to explore the fire engines on her own, so I was able to get one of the firemen to take our picture. I had wanted to have her put some gear on, but it was super hot and she was still nervous about the whole thing.
Then, we made our way over to the petting zoo that was set up. One the way, Keira found a hula hoop, which she had only seen before in use on a TV screen (Word World, Wall-E, and Wii Fit). She wanted me to do it, which doesn't work so well with a big pregnant belly.
After the failed hula hooping, we went to the petting zoo area. As usual, it took Keira a few minutes to get warmed up to the animals. She really liked the bunny because it was very soft and stayed pretty still.
She also enjoyed the goats. She was debating trying to feed the goat some grass here, similar to how she fed the cow at Maybury on the 4th.
She jumped back a little once the goat showed some interest.
They had a whole variety of animals. They had a pony, donkey, several goats, llamas, a duck, a wallaby and a small ostrich. This was my best attempt to get Keira, the ostrich, and the wallaby in the same shot.

As if we had not spent enough time in the heat yet, once we left the park, we came home, and then went to the pool once Ryan got home from work. We were able to try out the swim float that my mom had brought up during her visit last week. Keira really loved it!
One Wednesday, we spent the morning at McClumpha Park. It is a great park, with a huge massive play scape and a sprinkler park. Keira was slightly disappointed when we arrived because we were not going to the swings, and we were not going to a pool, and she had her suit on. Check out her unsure face looking at the sprinklers.
We had gone to meet people from church for their Wednesday Park days, and had only hoped to stay an hour or so. Unfortunately, it took Keira a while to get used to the whole thing and people were really late to show up, so we ended up spending a lot of time there. At least she had time to enjoy herself. I did have to just carry her into the sprays to show her that it was fun, but she ended up finding a big puddle to splash around in that provided her with lots of fun. We will probably try this park again once Chase arrives next week.
After the park, we came home and Keira napped, and then we went over to Valerie's house to see her new baby Lucas. He was 16 days old, and a super cute well behaved baby. He slept pretty much the whole visit, and Keira enjoyed playing with her friend Katie. It was really fun to see her actually playing with other children, instead of just playing alongside. At one point, we heard hysterical laughter coming from the next room. We aren't sure what they thought was so funny, but everything was intact, so whatever it was must have been between the two of them. Here is a photo of Lucas.
Tuesday was more Kindermusik with Lisa and Dominic. I didn't get any pictures of this. We walked into Kellogg Park in Plymouth after the class for a bit, but I had to rush home to meet our new Realtor- Elaine Knuth of Century 21 Town and Country, to pick up our new listing papers and take photos of our place for the websites. We are discouraging people that we know from just looking up our place online, because she tracks the hits on our site. I don't want to get my hopes artificially inflated from people we know just checking it out and thinking we have a lot more interest than we do. If you do, please send us a note so that we can subtract it out from the count she provides to us. We are hoping that with her detailed reporting on interest and the market, we will be able to react better to changes than we had previously.

Monday, my former roommate/sorority sister Amanda was in town on business for Kroger. She was staying just a couple miles away from our place, and we were able to meet up after the workday was over and went to Maybury for a walk while Ryan rode his bike. She is training for a run, and with the weather and her unusual work schedule, we figured a walk would be sufficient and more social. Afterwards, we met up with Michelle, fellow former roommate/sorority sister at BW3s for some dinner. The Novi BW's is much nicer than the one we used to frequent in college! It has been really great being able to keep in touch with so many of my friends from college. I was able to visit Amanda outside of Cincinnati in March (I was unfortunately not so good at doing blog updates then, so I don't have any of the cute pictures of our girls together posted). Michelle lives about 20mins south of us, so we do see her quite often for running/biking and other social events. Michelle, Amanda, and Me.