Memorial Day

Joe hosted a Memorial Day pool party in the backyard, but given that festivities kicked off at the toddler-friendly time of 9:30am, the pool stayed deflated as the cool of the morning had not yet given way to the totally spectacular and perfect warm afternoon. The Babka ladies and Pat were over. Joe and Elise snacked at the new picnic table.* Elise impressed everyone with her climbing skills, honed at her gymnastics class. When the water table, balls, and slide-climbing-thing had run their course, we all headed off for lunch at Punch. We got Joe a bambino pizza. Julie cut it all up. Joe picked up a piece, set it back down, and said, "All done." He proceeded to announce that he was all done for the remainder of the meal. Hilarious. The day was capped with ice cream from Dairy Queen. ("Joe-Joe** ice cream, too?")

Sidebar: Dairy Queen is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard by menuing 25 old favorites, including the banana cream pie Blizzard, the Blizzard of choice at the Ekkers' household. In typical Dairy Queen fashion (which is to say poor on the execution end of things--e.g. you could age a year waiting in the drive thru line, whipped cream application is inconsistent, Julie and Ted once saw the drive thru person try to give their frozen treat to the car in front of them and then talk over it increasing the risk of spit contamination on our frosty treat before retracting it back into the window), it has not advertised how long the 25th anniversary promotion will last so we have had more than a few banana cream pie Blizzards of late.

*When we set this thing up, Joe marched right on over and settled himself right in, navigating the legs and feet over the bench like nobody's business. Julie was a little teary-eyed upon seeing this because who knew our little boy was such a big boy?

**This is Joe's moniker at daycare. We're pretty excited for Joe-Joe to learn about the wonderful world of pronouns. Especially I.