oak view county park

We had a fun morning wandering around Historic Oak View County Park with friends and ended our visit with a picnic in the gazebo. The azaleas were in full bloom, as well as our favorite giant hydrangea bush.

NCMA sculpture park

I took the boys on a walk through the sculpture park at the North Carolina Museum of Art. We hadn't explored all the trails there yet and I was surprised to see that they even connect with the Raleigh greenway trail system. We love exploring all of the trail systems here. We found some fun sculptures back in the woods that we hadn't seen before. And I also nearly ran right over a copperhead snake that was in the middle of the trail. We have already found 3 different kinds of snakes hanging out by our back porch and in our garage this spring. Yikes!

The Cloud Chamber. It's like a giant pinhole camera. An opening in the roof projects an inverted image of the sky onto the floor when you go inside. Pretty cool.

Pointing out the snake.

caterpillar villages and other random happenings

The kids spend as much time as possible outside and always come up with the most interesting things to do. On this particular day there were caterpillars everywhere so they collected as many as they could and built a village for them.

Early morning bike ride in the neighborhood.

I didn't get photos of the whole book, but Amelia made this fantastic handbook for her cousins on how to be awesome. I love her creativity.

 Helping me take out the trash.

 Found Oliver getting the mail one day with a bucket on his head.

Amelia couldn't put this book down even for the playground. She read all 500 pages in 2 days. She has been obsessed with Percy Jackson and the Heroes of Olympus.  She talks about Greek mythology all the time.

ballerina elsa

Elsa finished up her ballet class last month. She loved going every week. And the best part about this 12-week class was no big recital with expensive costumes at the end! I completely missed the parent observation day when they let parents sit in on the class. But on her last day her teachers let me sit in and watch. Simon was with me and I've never seen him sit still for so long. He loved to watch her dance around.

simon turns two: cake and presents

Ben got back into town the day after Simon's birthday so we celebrated as a family with cake and presents. Simon loved opening up presents. He had to play with each item for awhile before we could move him on to the next present. He also loved blowing out candles and eating cake. I loved the kids' reaction when we cut into the cake and they saw all of the colors. Simon loves to cause trouble and destroy things and is so busy and fast and exhausting. But he's also so fun and happy and makes everyone laugh. The one thing that will make him slow down is reading books. He loves to bring us book after book and sit on our lap to read. And despite his love of destruction and wearing me out every day, he loves to help. As soon as he hears the dishwasher open, he runs to the bathroom to get his stool and brings it over to unload the dishes. He doesn't stop until everything is put away. He especially loves to sort the silverware in the drawer. He shows the same enthusiasm for doing laundry. He loves to help me move the clothes from the washer to the dryer and put the clothes away in the drawers. Sometimes he even gets them in the right spot. And he loves to help collect the garbage and wheel the big cans out to the curb. He has to hold on the whole way which takes awhile at his two-year-old pace and with our long driveway. After every task, he always yells "I did it!" His big head of curls just adds to his big personality and we are so happy to have Simon in our family.

Saying "hot" after he touched one of the candles.