In the afternoon after Quinn's 2 1/2 hour long nap, we headed over to Heritage Park. They have a nice pond with ducks (and lots of duck poop), a path that loops around the pond and new playground equipment. Quinn especially liked the blue car there.
When we got home I made the next Blue Apron recipe for the week - Chicken and Buttermilk Biscuits. The biscuits didn't come out very pretty when I made them, but they were super tasty.

The recipe called for mayo and I absolutely refuse to eat mayo, so I substituted it with Greek yogurt which I suspect made the sandwich a little odd tasting. But not terrible. The collard greens and carrots slaw was tastier than I would have thought (I'm not a fan of vinegar or vinaigrette). Way too much vegetable for just me to eat, which Chris does not eat either of those. But tasty.

Quinn would not eat the vegetables either.

I liked the meatballs from last night more, but tonight's recipe was still pretty tasty. We even have leftovers. They sent chicken breasts and Chris and I usually eat chicken tenders, so we have a whole breast left over between the two of us.

Yesterday a shipment from Blue Apron came. I had a coupon for a free box so I used it about a week back. It's a service that basically puts together ingredients for meals and then ships you the food. Its probably perfect for couples who both work, enjoy some cooking, and have a fair amount of disposable income (subscriptions start at 60/week which is for 3 meals that feed 2 people).

So for dinner tonight after we got back from the zoo and running around, I started in on dinner.
The recipe I picked to cook first was Beef Albondigas. The first thing each recipe has you do is prepare everything at once. Chop all the vegetables, mix all the sauces, etc. Usually when I'm cooking I do it while I go and sometimes that leads to me burning something on the stove while I'm busy chopping up a veggie. Doing all the prep work ahead of time is a good habit I know I should get into.

Once of the nice things is that everything shipped is portioned to the meals for that week. So they sent a small amount of parsley, not a giant bunch of it that I wouldn't use all of. I really like that only because it's hard to get small enough amounts of some vegetables. Chris just doesn't like a lot of them but a whole bunch of spinach is too much for me to go through in a week.

Quinn was curious. Very, very curious. He's been helping me stir pancake batter and other things so he really wanted to help. But he's not quite old enough to chop things with knives.
Dinner came out much better than I thought. The recipe had a lot of onion in it and admittedly I picked a lot of it out once everything was mixed since I personally don't like onions. The meatballs has raisins in them and Chris ate them.

He even liked it.This is a victory (even if he didn't eat the squash).

I'm very impressed. This is not a recipe I thought I'd like to much and I did.

Some co-workers invited me out for lunch at a restaurant (Asian Place Restaurant) that serves pho. I've never had it before, so I thought I'd try it. It was tasty! I'm not big on soups and broths, but this was pretty cool. Everyone insisted I try the #7, which was with beef strips.

I tried to eat with chopsticks but switched to a fork pretty quickly. I'm just not that deft with them. I'll have to practice more before coming back to a soup.

Sometimes oatmeal is so tasty you can't help but drink it.

Also, Chris really likes the Prisma app, if you can't tell.

We've been leaving the door open to the lower level and Quinn has been going up and down the stairs with more and more confidence on his own. He's very good and climbing on his hands and knees but he's getting better at trying to step down like an adult does.

This is a new thing he loves to do - wear towels. Chris snapped this photo (and used the Prisma app he likes) while Quinn was wandering around after a bath.

The prisma app for Android is out so and it's an app Chris really likes so I downloaded it and played with it. Quinn was busy playing with some plastic boats my friend Lori gave us (she gave us a TON of clothing and toys again!). He really enjoyed them. They're like cars, but for water!

While we were at Target Quinn picked up this ball and carried it all over the store. He was even pretty good about me putting it back when we were getting ready to leave. Lately he's been having meltdowns when he can't have what he wants but today he fussed only a little.

With temperatures soaring into the mid-90's, we decided today was a good day to take Quinn to the beach. We took him to the beach at Millennium Park, which is just 10 minutes or so from our house.

When we arrived their the splash pad was under maintenance, but with the beach right there we let him play by the water.
He enjoyed me taking him out where it was deeper and dipping him into the water. As long as his face never got wet he was fine. I'm pretty fussy myself like that, so I understand how he feels.
He had so much fun that he didn't really want to stop to eat. He did, and was obviously hungry with how quickly he scarfed down his food, but there was no whining or fussing like usual when he's hungry.

I'm really looking forward to taking him back again.

Chris took the car and went grocery shopping this morning. He found this can of pasta with some DC superheroes on it.

I had a promo for a NatureBox (well, off of the first order for a subscription) so the snacks I ordered arrived today.

They're ok. Some are super tasty and others are kind of meh. Might be what I selected but I definitely don't think I'd spend $20/shipment for 5 bags of snacks. Things might be different if I was someone who snacked a lot.

Finally went in for a consultation to have my wisdom teeth removed. The whole time I was waiting to speak with the dentist I could hear someone in the next room moaning in pain. It was a surreal experience.

Wandered around in downtown Grand Rapids on my lunch break. There were lots of people out playing Pokemon Go. Even restaurants are getting in on it now.

After dinner we took a stroll on the path by our house. It's really hard to get a 17 month old to walk in a straight line.

Really hard.

We spent part of the afternoon wandering in the garden section at a few stores, just looking at things. I really don't enjoy trying to figure out what to do with the yard. It's just not my thing.

In the morning we went over to Frog Hollow to play. He's getting better with play structures and the idea behind them (instead of just playing with wood chips, although he does that too).

 
After dinner we went over to the Oriole Park elementary school playground. Quinn was enamored with the vehicle they had and kept saying bus over and over.

This boy loves cars.

Loves them.

A sit and spin that Chris ordered arrived today. True to Quinn, he wanted to stand and not sit on it.

Quite a few people are out and about in downtown Grand Rapids. I wandered over by Rosa Park circle on my lunch break and was amazed at the number of people milling about. There's a cluster of PokeStops where you can collect items on a corner and everyone has stopped to play.

Normally people are in a hustle to get wherever they're going. Not today and not while the servers are up for Pokemon GO.

He's pretty sure he's stealthy.

This kid is full throttle all morning every morning, then drops like a ton of bricks for a nap.

I finally had a chance to download Pokemon GO yesterday and played around with it briefly in the evening. Today was the first day I really had a chance to explore the game mechanics. The game is using the same backend as Ingress, which Chris and I played quite a bit a few years back.

The map is similar looking, but the play around capturing Pokemon (where you can have the Pokemon overlaid what you're camera is seeing) ads a whole level of complexity to the game. I can see why it's so popular so fast.

In the morning I dropped Chris off with Quinn at Tanger Outlet and I went to recycle some old computer parts and dead monitors I've had cluttering the house for a long while. I know we didn't get everything loaded into the car we should have (there are bins in the basement I'm sure have old stuff we need to toss), but it was nice to get rid of a trunkload of crap we no longer need.
After I picked up everyone from the outlet mall we went to Millennium Park to see the new boardwalk. There is a boardwalk that connects the loop around the lake and an older unpaved trail.

The boardwalk was much shorter than we thought it was going to be, but Quinn had a fun time running back and forth on it, so the trip was worth it.

Corinne gave Quinn a fun Darth Vader towel poncho, so after his bath tonight he ran around in it. He's really enjoying being wrapped up in blankets and towels, so this was a lot of fun to run around in for him.

Corinne, Adam and Comfort came over for pizza and a stroll through the park. It was refreshing to have friends over and break up the monotony of weekend evenings.

He's still afraid of the penny pony at Meijer, but will pull this thing out every other day and ride on it.

I've been pretty unimpressed so far with the Displio units we received awhile back. They were a kickstarter and took about a year to ship, which is fine (the Pebble had a similar delay).

There are two things that are frustrating. The device was hailed as standalone, and it's not. You were supposed to be able to customize it via apps, and there aren't any.

This week the Displio cloud is down and has been for several days, so the devices don't work. They had promised to release the source code so you could host your own code and have the devices point there (and there is an option in the setup process to change where the devices gets its information).

Right now they're just annoying paperweights while they do maintenance.

I will admit that they do respond to comments on their kickstarter page and it sounds like they respond to email inquires, so that's a positive thing. And while the device did launch prior to all of the features being available (like rotating for different screens) they have been adding things as the months go on. So there's promise...

I'd just really like to be able to host the code on our Raspberry Pi webserver and control things that way. That's a connection that doesn't go down.

We bought several 18 month shorts back in the winter when they were on sale at target. We figured he'd be able to wear them at some point in the summer.

At 16 months they're still way too loose. I decided to tack them real quick with some thread. I ended up taking them by about an inch, but now they fit and he can finally wear them.

I brought home a few raspberry plants that my mother gave me, so they were sitting on the deck this morning when Quinn and I went out. he spent quite a bit of time picking as many berries off as he could and stuffing them into his mouth. I'm glad he likes fruit as much as I do.

We spent the day in metro Detroit visiting Chris's mom and my parents. Quinn had a great time at both places. We spent most of the day outside at my parent's house, which meant there was an excellent opportunity to try sunglasses again. He finally wore them for more than 2 seconds so I consider that a success.

We decided to try the Toddler Time at Sky Zone this morning since today is a floating holiday at for me at work. They're open for 2 hours twice a week for just toddlers. We were there for an hour and he had a great time, although he certainly started to run out of steam at the end of an hour.

This is definitely something we will do again!