Weekend Update: Life's a party!

I'm linking up with Sami's Shenanigans for the Weekend Update!




There's been a lot of celebrating going on around here lately. Two weeks ago we celebrated my birthday, Saturday was Cameron's 8 Month birthday and yesterday was Father's Day!

For his 7 month birthday I let Cam pick out his cake. This month I decided to make a sort of mini cake out of cupcakes fashioned into the number 8.

Saturday we headed out to Put-in-Bay, one of three small islands located just off the shore from Sandusky, Ohio on Lake Erie. It's such a perfect day trip for those in the Cleveland area. "Day" trip is key here because at night the place (I hear) turns into the mid-west version of the Jersey Shore!

We got on the ferry at Port Clinton and took the 15 minute ride over to the island at 10 am. It was Cam's first ferry ride!

Downtown is lined with lots of touristy shops and bars/restaurants.We had lunch at the Boat House and then stopped at a shop where we picked up the cutest little Captains hat for Cameron.

 We stopped by Perry's Cave and bought a bag of dirt that we then took over to the miners sluice to pan for semi-precious stones. It was a lot of fun even though it was obvious that the semi-precious stones were just pre-mixed into a bunch of gravelly dirt. That didn't seem to ruin the fun for anyone though, there were a lot of very excited kids sluicing away. Soooo cute to see how excited they'd get when the gems and crystals would appear from the dirt, such a great activity for kids!

 

Here's the loot we panned out for Cameron.

Rose quartz, crystal, amethyst, peridot, sodalite, garnet, pyrite, obsidian are just some of the gems in our booty. The finders card also had ruby, sapphire and emerald on there but alas I don't think we have any of those in our little cache.

For Father's Day Cameron got Dada his much longed for bird feeder. (I think Cam's going to say Dada before he says Mama. He says Da, da, da, da all day long. Sigh. Oh well, hopefully Mama will be his 2nd word?) The previous owners of our house had a bird feeder right in the same spot in the back yard. I was glad when we moved in to see that they had taken it with them, Dave however was disappointed.

Since then he's been talking about getting one only to have me shoot down the idea. I've just never been a big bird person and thought that the feeder's location in the middle of the yard was too random. I also thought that kids, when running around back there, would accidentally plow into it. I finally changed my mind when I realized that we don't exactly have six kids running around back there all the time. Heck, we don't even have one that crawls yet! And because it really isn't that much in the way, there's still plenty of room for little ones to run wild.

And finally, here's a pic from my birthday featuring me in the Birthday Hat sitting on my gift- the Indonesian  Bench that I've been wanting from Cost Plus World Market! Love it so much and the pillows I purchased from Festive Home Decor on Etsy are so perfect on it. Now we're searching for complimenting chairs and a coffee table.