Cousin Lexi!!

Yea!!!! Cousin Lexi is here! Mark and Lexi haven't seen each other (except in pictures) for an entire year and to a toddler that is a long time. They are having sooo much fun together. It is fun to watch them run around and squeel. Most of the pics from their first two days together are on my mom's camera so I will have to upload some of those later. But today Papa and I took the two of them to the zoo and I had my camera. It is really hard to get a picture of both of them at once, especially both faces. It was a little cooler today than it has been, but it still got really hot. We made it about 2 hours and thought that was good. We only had a few issues such as Mark touching Lexi, Lexi eating Mark's snack, and feet touching while in the wagon. You know, the normal life-ending events to a toddler.

One of the highlights of the zoo trip (for me anyway) was the swimming elephant...see below. He really is swimming, not drowning as it looks like in the picture.


Here are the munchkins looking at the elephants. Mark tried to crawl though the fence.

Another highlight was the penguins. There were about 20 of them out and about and swimming on top of and in the water. We found one right up at the glass just our size!

We spent a good bit of time inside the monkey building because it was so hot. Mark and Lexi ran around screaming following each other from exhibit to exhibit. Here is another pic of the back of them.

And last but not least I would like to introduce Mark the twerp. He figured out right away that Lexi does not like to have her head patted, hair pulled, or really to be touched in any way at all by Mark. So what is one of his main goals in life right now? To annoy her. We were playing the other day and I had just told Mark, "Mark, do not touch her." In a very stern voice I might add. And here is what happened next. Notice Lexi happily playing, You might need to enlarge the pic, but notice his one little finger touching her arm! And you can't see my mom in the picture but he is looking right at her like, "oh yeah, watch this." I think this kid is gonna need some drill sergeant like discipline when he is older!