Mini Beach Trip

We took an impromptu trip to the beach at our local metropark today. Emmett stood in the water for a few minutes, but got mad that he had to wear his floaty so he ended up spending most of our time there playing on the beach.

Annoyed about his puddle jumper floaty

Filling up his bucket with sand

 Wrecking Daddy's sand castle

Checking out a clump of wet sand

Thinking about destroying the rest of Daddy's castle

He did lots of shoveling in the sand

He also threw a lot of sand...

Shovel and a rake!

Trying to carry all of his beach tools at once

He really, really liked the beach. He should love our upcoming vacation since that will include lots of beach time!

Family Fun Fest

We headed out to the Hamburg Family Fun Fest today. It ended up raining after we had only been there for about 45 minutes, but we still managed to have some fun!

They had a butterfly exhibit where you could feed them sugar water off of q-tips. Emmett was really interested in the butterflies.

Checking out the monkey

Yet another carousel ride. I will probably lose count of how many times has rode a carousel by the end of summer. He really likes them and starts pointing at them when he sees it.

Waving and telling my "bye bye" when the ride started.

Daddy playing a game

Ready to go home! That cow thing is the prize Justin won for him. He's been calling it a "cow ball" which is technically true. :)

Strawberry Picking!

Friday we went to Degroots to pick strawberries.  I wasn't sure how it would go with a toddler in tow this year, but we had a lot of fun and got plenty of yummy strawberries.

Wagon ride back to the strawberry fields. No idea why he wouldn't smile and insisted on giving me his grumpy face.

Emmett really surprised me. As soon as we got to the spot were going to start picking I handed him a container thinking he would just play with it. He actually bent down, picked a strawberry, and dropped it in. It was adorable! He picked a handful of them and was doing great, until he realized they squish. Then he started squishing them and sucking the juice off of his fingers. :)

Found one!

Showing Daddy

Off to get some more berries!

Taking a break from all of his hard work

They had a petting zoo that we checked out for a few minutes as well. 

When we went up to pay for our strawberries, they gave Emmett a sticker!

Hartland Carnival and Outdoor Play

Hartland had a small carnival next to Target last weekend and we decided to take Emmett. He is too young for most of the rides, but he did get to ride the carousel and play a game where he picked a duck to "win" a prize. Really he picked from ducks that were all marked as winners and then we paid for his prize.

He rode the carousel twice and cried when he had to get off. He was a big fan of it this time.

Picking his duck to win a prize. When he picked the duck, the lady running the game practically screamed that he was winner and it scared him. He had a meltdown and pouted about it for probably 10 minutes.

Back at home with the giant monkey he won.

Here are some random pictures from outdoor play over the last week. He has a new found LOVE for the slide. We go down it a bajillion times when we play outside now. 

He also still loves covering himself in sand...

He recently learned to to climb the stairs to his slide all by himself.

 He got mad when Daddy helped him.

He refused to put down his bubble wands, so he set them on the platform so he could use both hands to climb up.

 And then he sent them down the slide one at a time...

Now it's his turn to go down the slide!

And then he lounged at the bottom with all of his bubble wands. :)