The little one was up early again today, so we headed out around 7am to take a walk on a nearby nature trail.

It's been a long day, but at least the sky was blue and not overcast.

 A fun afternoon assembling some creatures out of Legos.
My favorite part is the building but his is the playing!

It's time for the 2018 Detroit Maker Faire. It's in such a good location since there are so many other fun things for the little one to see.
 Like cars!
 There are always plenty of robots, doing all sorts of different things (like a dragon blowing bubbles!).
 And of course a fire breathing dragon, which has become a staple at this event.
 He had a lot of fun with the Magformers and these E-Blox.
After a few hours we stopped by for a little at my parents house. My mom brought up my brother's old cache of micromachines, which Quinn adored.
 And then we stopped at Grandma Karath's house, which features two new trucks!
Chris and I snuck away for some quiet time while Grandma and Quinn played with cars.

He has a lot of fun reading books in bed, which I absolutely love to see. I have so much fun reading with him.

It's been a fun evening of assembling puzzles with the little one.

I rarely go out with co-workers for lunch, but when I do, I go for Chinese buffet.

I met up with some old co-workers and one of the women brought her beautiful twins. They're getting so big!

This is how cats roll.

 Today we put together a little terrarium.
 It came with little figures and stickers to decorate with.
It even has light that you can turn on. It will be fun to watch things grow over the next several days and see the little one's reactions.

He's so close to being able to push the cart without standing on tiptoes.

Today he woke up at the normal early time, came into our bedroom and crawled up. He passed out shortly thereafter and slept in for once.

This week just keep getting out of the house super early. He's really enjoying it.

This morning we went over to the park and enjoyed the sunrise together. This kid is an early riser.

The little one and I took a walk early this morning and startled this racoon in a tree.

Had a run down a trail. It was a peaceful morning.

We went for an early morning walk and ran into a family of deer.

Today is my cousin Ashely's high school graduation party. We spent part of the afternoon at my aunt and uncles house, letting the little one run around with his cousins. He had a blast.

It's going to be a fun weekend.

I went running this morning before the rest of the house was up. It was a great time to go - there was so much wildlife out and about.

Adam, Comfort and Corinne came over this evening to hang out and catch up. They also read some articles and did some searching in the little one's latest Highlight's magazine.

When I learned you could move your save from the Octopath Traveler demo to the full game, I decided this was my activity for the next week until it arrived on Friday.

I really enjoyed the demo from awhile back and I'm looking forward to a nice classic Square turn-based RPG.

The last several months I haven't been able to get out and enjoy a lunch break consistently. Honestly I haven't been able to get out much at all since things have been so busy. Today, even though everything was still crazy, I forced myself to leave. It was hot but it was worth it to just sit in the shade for a bit.

We had a pretty active day. We headed out to the zoo before it was too hot. The little one enjoyed seeing all of the animals and kept insisting, even after he was clearly exhausted, that he wanted to see more.
In the evening when Chris was out at the movies we made some cookies together.

We have some poison ivy growing on the outskirts of our yard. It hasn't been an issue up until I realized our little one is going to start exploring and get into it soon.
So I spent the late afternoon spraying a few plants down. Here's hoping they die quickly and don't continue to come back year after year...

In the morning we drove over to Canada to check out the Sault Sainte Marie boardwalk.
Back on the US side we went to a few parks. At Rotary Park I was able to watch a large ship go by and watch the water a bit.
We also hiked a little at Algonquin Park.

We are on our way up north for a few days and stopped at Mackinac Island for some touristy fun.
It was a pretty hot day, but not over 90 so I was glad for that. The little one had so much energy it was hard to keep up.

It's the 4th of July!
 And we've had a pretty full day! We did some crafts, played some games...
...and in the evening I tried out Pillars of Eternity. So a pretty fun 4th!

A chance of rain is in the forecast tomorrow so we decided to set off some fireworks tonight. Quinn had a great time watching everything go off.

I was picking up some supplies at Target and decided to look and see what they had that was Incredibles-themed.

They had this - the three boy characters from the movie on a boys shirt. This is not the first time I've encountered the lack of girls on boys clothes. It's frustrating.

The only shirt I've come across that had a girl on it that was marketed to boys was a cute Moana shirt. Everything else has been pretty boy-character-only focused.

We are not doing our children any favors when we segregate out the characters they're "allowed" to like.

It's another day with a heat advisory. By 9am it was already in the 80s. We decided to try a movie - Incredibles 2. There was a long slog of previews and then a short in front of the movie, so we ended up being in the theater much longer than the already long 2 hour movie. But the 3 year old was silent and enjoyed standing off to the side and watching the movie. He did well for his age and absolutely loved the movie. We also picked the earliest time on a Sunday to go, so of course there were tons of other little kids there.
In the afternoon we did more painting. We picked up some paints to use instead of watercolors and everything went much better. A little messier but he was far less frustrated.