Good bye Summer.. sniff

This last week the weather dropped overnight from 70's with a cool breeze to 50's and rainy. Summer finally ended. :sniff sniff: I feel better knowing we had a truly great summer. I found these older pictures and remembered I wanted to have their memories in words too.. so without further ado, The Other Memories of Our Summer:

Our good friend took us to the Brookfield Zoo. We have been so blessed by friends and Katie picking us up and taking us on adventures in our car-challenged state. I hope some day soon I can do the same for someone because it has meant the world to us.
Korrali's favorite exhibit was the random birds outside the window of the pretend-to-be-a-bird area in the children's play house place. I loved that there were so many areas where  I could just let her play without coaching, because this girl loves her some space.

she really is glaring at me for taking photos. yeeps she can send dagger when she wants to. 

Usually 30 seconds is her max time limit in any one place. Here, I had to drag her away after 10 minutes of inching higher and higher into the window. She climbs when she's focused on something that interests her. 

She also loved the lemurs. She was charmed by the fuzzy outfit she got to wear, and the plastic food she could carry around. Once she spotted the furry little mammals she couldn't keep her eyes off.
We had a short visit from my gravid sister and her hubby. So fun!! Korrali loved them the moment they walked in, which is no surprise because I think they have the same effect on everyone they meet.

We learned about coloring - here she was a pencil pirate (she commandeered all of the pencils) and ran around saying raaargh

Incidentally, roaring is her favorite sound effect. And, I learned that she is not ready for coloring - because crayons are still considered a food.

We played with water on several occasions; we ended up having a lot of fun getting creative with how to bring all the things we wanted to do this summer to us
We had friends over frequently

making this little hollow bird whistle, it also made a fun cup to sip the water out of

I got to walk or run almost every morning with the stroller and Teo. It was so relaxing to run in the park, especially since Teo appreciated the exercise and behaved. We to the park almost every day to visit the ducks and geese (geese are her favorite. She loves to try to pet them. It's all I can do to encourage her not to follow them, while making sure my tone and movements are carefully controlled when she's paying attention so I scare them without scaring her..)

We ate frozen yogurt drops (they're kind of like ice cream!) And we learned the sign for frozen.. which utterly confused her when i made the sign and put in the movie Frozen hahaha..

We went to the pool almost every week - several times with our fun cousins. I didn't realize Korrali knew the word pool until this past week. I said it all summer, and then stopped saying it a few weeks ago. But she started to say it a few days ago when she asked to play with our pool noodle, and when I tried to put away her swim diapers she grabbed them and put one on her head and ran around saying pool and nodding.

  We learned about emotions - this was the tail-end of "happy!"

 We learned we looved cats. This one was hiding at the zoo. But we sure found it!

This past week we started wearing a blanket sleeper with cats on it. She points to legs and toes and yells "MOW!" it cracks me up every time

 She learned to help mommy. She loves the illusion of mopping, also the illusion of vacuuming (i let her pull the plug when we are done, because if she knows she gets a turn she doesn't unplug it in the middle as often), and she loves to get me potatoes to scrub, and to help me unload the dishwasher.

I just realized my dog looks like the big bad wolf here.. hunting my little janitor down .."all the better to clean you with, my dear!"

What else? We spent a lot of time with Daddy too - but he and Korrali move so fast when they play it's impossible to get a picture. There are tons of hysteric giggles though. I will miss the warm (and hot) weather, but I admit I really do love light sweaters and fuzzy socks.. so I'm looking forward to Fall and Winter even too.