Today we took a trip to our friends' house to meet the brand new addition to their family - a little goat named Coconut. Goats are generally quite cute and to see them in miniature form is something very special.

When we arrived Rowan was very shy so he ran straight to the things he knew best - the sand box and of course his friend, Owens super cool workbench stocked full of various kinds of tools.

Later on as he settled into the visit we got to meet little Coconut and were even allowed the privilege of feeding the goats which Rowan was very excited about. I was impressed when he stuck his hand out to the goat to feed it. He did it once and surprisingly wanted to do it again. Then we also saw some ducks and chickens.

But I think the best part of the day was when he discovered their huge vegetable garden. He walked around looking for the vegetables amongst the leaves. My favourite part was when he stumbled upon a section with an absolute abundance of bright red cherry tomatoes and said: "Oh wow!" at the top of his voice. When he saw the big carrot that Jaime had just harvested he had pretty much the same reaction. I think we've got ourselves a little farmer on our hands.

One of the things I absolutely love about this country is it's commitment to education through the provision of free educational programmes and facilities. We have several of these facilities in our area. One of these is a visitor center at the lake that we visit often. This morning we drove clear past the playground that we usually go to and parked our car right in front of the visitor center. Rowan wanted to run to the playground but as soon as I told him that I wanted to show him the fish and turtles he happily entered the building with me.

I was amazed at just how much he enjoyed this center. He looked at just about everything they had on display and of course he loved the blue fish and the snapping turtles in the tanks. One of the installations was an interactive wood construction that illustrated how the locks on the river are filled and drained in order to allow barges safe passage on particularly steep parts of the river. Rowan played with this for probably about thirty minutes, loading and off-loading goods onto the little wooden barges, raising and lowering the water level inside the locks and moving the barges through them.

When we were done looking at everything inside the center we walked outside onto a huge wooden deck overlooking the lake. A small walk through the woods took us back to our car.

Rowan and I learned a lot this morning and left with more of an appreciation of our natural world and the way in which we humans interact with it.

Surprise chair for reading and rocking

Look at what people throw out in the trash on our street...

Well it was in a worse shape than this, the center cross bar on the back was missing and all the screws were loose, so it was all floppy. But a little work with a scrap piece of wood and some new screws and voila! A surprise chair for Rowan for tomorrow morning. It looks like just the type chair to sit down in with a good book about trains.

It's Tuesday today which means the garbage truck comes early in the morning to collect our trash. It also means that Rowan usually wakes up a little earlier because of the sound of that truck stopping and going as it makes it's way down our road.

This morning, however, we had an impressive thunder storm. The rain was pouring down onto our roof and the flashes of light were followed by sharp thunder claps. I thought for sure that all this commotion would wake Rowan up but instead it just seemed to drown the noise of the garbage truck and Rowan slept till much later than usual.

When he finally did wake up and looked out the window he saw all the water running down alongside the road and with much concern asked: "What did you do?"

As for the rest of our day... We spent the entire morning visiting with our friends. Rowan loved trying out all their toys and making a complete mess of their living room. When we arrived back home he was exhausted and went straight to bed for a nice long nap. Again the rain pounding down on the roof above him did not bother him one bit.

Two of Rowan's favourite stores are Lowes (a gigantic hardware store) and Target (a department store with aisles and aisles stocked with toys).

Today I needed to go to Kohls (a clothing store) and dragged my poor little guy along. It just so happens that in order to get to Kohls you have to drive past Lowes and Target. I have mentioned before how Rowan always wants me to take him to Lowes and how he moans when I don't turn into that particular parking lot. So today he did the same thing. At first sight of the hardware store Rowan's eyes lit up and as he realised that we were not going there, he just groaned a little. So now we were heading for Target, well, so he thought and once again he seemed quite excited by the idea. This time, however when he realised we were in fact driving past it, he sighed a very loud: "Oh no!" as he threw his face into both his hands in utter disgust.

You know, moms should really know better, don't you think? Next time we will leave a little earlier so that we can make a quick stop at Lowes, oh no, wait... Target before we go clothes shopping.

I asked Richard to please pour me a glass of coke. So when Richard asked: "Did you say you wanted some coke?" Rowan piped up with: "Ya! Cakie!" It took me a while to realise that Rowan thought we were talking about cookies or cake - either of which can be called cakie according to Rowan. Unfortunately we didn't have any cake so he settled for some popcorn instead.

We went for a walk at one of the lakes in our area this morning. It turned out to be quite a beautiful setting. It was nice to spend some time outdoors again after a week of strange rainy weather.

Rowan got quite tired and decided to take a break by leaning against a tree.

It is one of those pictures that I would like to commit to memory for ever. Just look at it!