Happy Birthday, Ryan!

Ryan was out of town for his actual birthday so I figured it would be a good opportunity for me to actually get him something and have it waiting for him once he got back home on Sunday.

After much pondering on what to get him, Lelaine convinced me that I should go with my original idea of making him a birthday cake.  Now let's remember that I loooooove arts and crafts.  Baking or really decorating rather is the same as arts and crafts to me.

SO...with a decision made to make a Plants vs Zombies themed birthday cake, I was off!  The baking part was easy.  Next up was the deocrations...that's another story.  Let's just say I may rethink ever wanting to make another birthday cake again :)

Anyways...in the end, I think the cake came out great!  It was kinda sad cutting it up, but I love chocolate cake almost as much as arts and crafts (probably even more) so I got over the sadness pretty quickly :-P

 

 

Happy Birthday, Ryan!

Labor Day in Naples

I've never been to Naples before, so over Labor Day weekend we packed up the Wang family car and headed over to the southwest coast of Florida for a Saturday night stay.

We made it into Naples, checked into the hotel, grabbed some dinner, and headed to a sunset cruise aboard the Naples Princess.  It's too bad it was cloudy out...not much of a sunset when it's cloudy, but it was still a nice 2 hour cruise around the canals of Naples and out into the Gulf of Mexico.  We saw lots of (empty for the summer) houses...more like mansions...and even a dolphin.




Next up was the Naples Botanical Gardens.  My parents and aunt love gardens and gardening so I thought this would be a great place to visit.   We were all impressed with the gardens and decided that we'd all have to come back again once it was a bit cooler.



Checking out the Water Garden

In the Butterfly Garden where there were definitely a lot of butterflies

The main accomplishment of the day: Determining the difference between water lillies and lotus flowers



Elephants, Giraffes, and Penguins...Oh My!

I Heart Zoos.  I have even been known to visit cities just to check out their zoo.  So how it's taken me years to visit the Indianapolis zoo is really beyond me.  Well, I finally made it to the zoo here in town a few weeks back.  It was a great day to visit.  We went in the morning and it since it was a little overcast, it made for a great not super hot day.

Turns out a baby elephant was just born at the zoo on July 21st.  Her name is Kalina and her mom's name is Kubwa.  Interesting fact: This is the third time that Kubwa has given birth to a calf via artificial insemination. Kubwa is now the first African elephant in the world to give birth successfully via artificial insemination three times in a row.

 Isn't the baby elephant soooo adorable?!?  Too cute!

 

Giraffe snack time!!!

This penguin was just too cute.  He stuck his face right in front of a jet and it was like he was swimming in an endless pool...just cruising along while not going anywhere!  He was super photogenic too.