Smirks and Smiles

I love Emily's little smirks and smiles.  Take a look!

First road trip!

We have had a busy couple of weeks!  Last weekend we celebrated my birthday with our families.  We had a lot of fun and I can't image starting my 31st year any other way!!  We also went to the zoo to celebrate and bought a membership for the year.  Emily and I are super excited to make the zoo a regular destination as the weather gets nice!  Check out Emily's first trip by reading her blog post!

Family photo on my birthday :)

Emily: super excited for my birthday celebration!

Last week Emily got to meet my friend Laura and see Lesley and Griffin again!  It was fun to get out and have a "girls night".  (sorry Griffin: )  )

We also finally got a chance to go to uncle Greg's house and meet his kitty, Bonnie.  She and Emily got along great and it was so fun to visit with Greg.  We live close, but it seems like we all get busy and don't see enough of each other.

Bonnie loved the car seat!

Fast friends : )

Chilling at Greg's house!

Emily's "seriously, I'm done...put the camera away" look.  Ha!

Over the weekend we went to Chicago to visit aunt Karen and uncle Marcus.  We had a great time and Emily loved her first visit to Chicago.  We were able to cram a lot in to our weekend visit beginning with the drive there.  Emily did GREAT on the road.  She was a sleepy girl with a couple of happy awake times.  I, on the other hand, ended up in a Wisconsin ER.  I was driving along and started feeling weird.  The feeling increased and intensified and ended up feeling like a heart attack.  So we stopped at a hospital and got a full work up...x-rays, ultrasound, blood work, IV, you name it.  Turns out it's gall stones which can appear after pregnancy.  Luckily, it wasn't considered an emergency so after 3 hours in the ER, we were back on the road!

Emily's position for most of the ride...thankfully!

Killing time at the ER

Being discharged

After the hospital, we stopped at Culver's so all of us could eat!  Emily loved her first Culver's trip : )

"I'm as cute as a butterburger is delicious"

Once we got to Chicago, 11 hours after we left the cities, we got in some quality hang out time with Karen and Marcus before Emily went to bed.

On Saturday, we all went out for brunch at a restaurant called Tweet.

We then went to the conservatory to see lots of beautiful plants from many different places!

Pooped : )

On Saturday night Marcus made short ribs for dinner served with polenta and salad...delicious!!  I would go as far as to say they were restaurant quality!  Sunday morning we had brunch in, strolled the city a little and ended with a great meal of peking duck and fancy desserts!

Peking duck dinner.  Yum!

Our feast!

My cherry chocolate cupcake!

We has a great weekend culminating with a great drive back.  We made it back to Minneapolis in 7 hours with no stops at the ER!  Today is Valentine's Day and we look forward to spending time as a family!

I'm looking forward to spending the next 2 weeks with Emily before going back to work.

More to come!
The Harrisons

Special Edition: my first trip to the zoo by Emily Harrison

Today's blog is told by Emily...she took her first trip to the MN Zoo and loved it!  We bought a membership for the year, so we'll have many more adventures, but this first one was pretty fun!

Today I got to see lots of animals at the MN Zoo.  We started with watching the dolphin show.  Those dolphins were amazing and are trained so well, much better than mom and dad have Sammy and Maggie trained!  They were very fast and jumped very high.  The dolphins also liked to play with balls and eat fish.

Mommy and me at the dolphin show

The funny dolphin

After that we got to do look at the other water creatures.  We saw fish, sharks and sting rays!  Mom and dad said I was too young to touch the sharks this time, but I will get to do that another time.  We also saw some bright fishes that live in the coral reef.  They were very pretty!

It's a little dark, but the fish tank was bright and colorful!

From there we went to see some African penguins.  They were fast swimmers and fun to watch!

We then went to see the snow monkeys.  Lots of the snow monkeys had babies like me!  They were so cute and we even saw some babies chasing each other and playing parkour off the walls.  It was fun to watch them!

Mommy and me looking at the monkeys

We then saw a lot of other animals, but one of my favorite were the pretty flamingos.  Daddy and I liked looking at them together.

We also saw wolverines that were pretty cool.  They reminded me of honey badgers!

Then mommy and I compared our wingspans to birds.  Hers was a lot bigger than mine was, but it was still fun!

The last animals we saw were cougars and lynxes.  They were very big!

It was too cold today to see all of the animals, but I can't wait to go back to the zoo and see them.  Mom said we can go back before she has to go to work and lots when it gets warmer out!  I had a super fun day and got really tired after our big adventure. 

Mom and dad are going to go out to eat tonight so I plan on napping when grandma Val comes to babysit!
More to come!
Emily