What an interesting title: "Flamingos, a Porch Swing, and Little Toot" for a post. If you're not from my hometown of Flora, you may be perplexed, especially by "Little Toot". We went to Flora this past weekend to attend my Mom's (the Reed side) family reunion on Father's Day. I think it had been four years since I last attended; Chad and I were just dating at that point, so needless to say, it's been a while! My frustrating moment of the weekend was when we got back to Bloomington and realized all of our pictures from the family reunion were lost due to a formatting issue with our camera. So, I don't have any pictures of extended family members, but thankfully my Mom shared her pictures with me, but of course they are mainly just of Meredith. That's what Grandma is for!
Okay, so let's start with the flamingos. In Flora, there is a popular fundraiser in which groups will "flock" a yard by putting little plastic flamingos in a certain yard and in order to have them removed, the homeowner must pay a certain price. It's actually a pretty neat idea and from what I understand, a pretty successful fundraiser. My Grandma Perry called us on Saturday and said we should bring Meredith over to see the flamingos. We did, and she loved it! If I ever figure out how to post a video to the blog, the cutest video in the world will go right here. In the meantime, here are a few pictures:
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| Hmmm...not too sure about this, Mommy. |
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| Wow! This is fun!! |
One thing we do not have at our house is a deck, let alone a porch swing. That is one of the things I loved about the house I grew up in. We always could go outside to sit on the porch swing and watch the cars go by, or just enjoy a nice evening. Some of my earliest memories are of Derek and I catching lightning bugs while our parents were watching us from the porch swing. Anyway, Meredith really enjoyed the porch swing! She loves the regular swings at the park and I think she saw this as a variation of that.
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| My big girl! |
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| She loved swinging with Grandma! |
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| Being silly. |
So, onto the moment you have been waiting for: Little Toot! I'll admit that even being from Flora, I think it's kind of a silly name for it, just because it makes me giggle :) Anyway, Little Toot is a miniature train that is designed for children to ride at our local park. It was in Flora when my Mom was a child, then went away for several decades, and made it's reappearance back in the '90s I believe. Well, since I was too old then to enjoy it, I never thought too much about it, but since having a child I've been anxiously waiting until she could ride it (okay, I'll admit, so I could ride it too!). We experienced our first age disappointment with Meredith. She was one month shy of getting the "12 months and under ride free" deal. My frugal side cringed and hoped they would make us a deal, but they didn't. I would have thought the price would have at least been reduced for her, but no, we paid $4 for each of us to ride.
Pardon the pixelated pictures, as these were a copy of a copy from my mom's camera since ours messed up.
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| This isn't actually little Toot, but a landmark train that has been in the park for as long as I can remember. |
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| All aboard! Giving our tickets to the "conductor". |
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| She enjoyed the ride very much! She made a few wimpers at the end, but I think because we stopped and she wanted to go again :) |
A few other things Meredith enjoyed at my parents house were the stairs and the music. We have stairs at our home, but they are blocked off by a baby gate and actually lead upstairs. My parents have three stairs that lead to their kitchen and Meredith couldn't be happier trying to climb them. By the end of the weekend, she had mastered getting up them on her own fairly quickly, but was too scared to try going down them on her own.
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| This became the never-ending "game"! |
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| Meredith enjoyed listening to my Dad play guitar and loved messing with his amp. |
It was so funny when we got to Bloomington, because we let Meredith loose in the living room to play with her toys. Well, it turns out she only wanted to read her books. She spent a good 30 minutes just looking through all of her books, as if she had missed something from being away for a few days.
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| My little bookworm. |
