Sunday Evening Stroll

Last Sunday's stroll was at the always popular Huntley Meadows. The forest floor was covered with white wild flowers and there was new green growth everywhere. The evening lighting was gorgeous. My little Canon PowerShot did an okay job...

School Spirit

Last Saturday we participated in a fundraiser at Amelia's school. They had a Fun Run/Walk and I thought it was such a great idea. Much better than selling unwanted items from those catalogs. Plus it encouraged the kids and their families to be more active. The kids could get friends or family to sponsor them and then each person paid $1 to participate in the run/walk. They also had healthy foods for sale. The girls had fun walking but were mostly excited about the moonbounce afterward.

Our little man.

Oliver is almost 5 months old!

We can't get enough of his smiles and chuckles. The girls adore him. He still fusses his way through most feedings. He rolled from his back onto his stomach just before he was 4 months old. After he figured it out, he would immediately roll over when we laid him down and then cry because he hated being on his stomach. He loves being outside. He works hard to fit his whole fist in his mouth. He loves his pacifier.

We love this little man.















Enjoying his exersaucer:


He still loves his changing table:


Fun at the park:



(Not sure about the slide.)





Smiling, laughing, talking:

All about Elsa.

Elsa is at such a fun age right now. She loves to give hugs and say "I love you." She also likes to come up to us and say "Mom (or dad), I like you" and flash an irresistible smile. (Which is good because she's also going through quite a disobedient phase as well.) She hops and jumps everywhere. She is quick to say sorry (often when we're trying to get Amelia to say sorry). She is incredibly sweet and keeps us laughing.

And she LOVES nutella (she calls it tunella):



She still sucks the three fingers on her right hand. She is left-handed. (Coincidence?) She still loves her little pink blankie (neenee). (We've lost about eight. It's almost time to make another batch.) She loves doing puzzles. She survives on a diet of fruit, nutella, chocolate, milk, and chocolate milk. She is our escape artist. We have found her wandering around the front yard a few times. Naked.

She is very friendly and loves to talk to strangers. She is particularly obsessed with facial piercings on cashiers at the check-out.

A few of Elsa's current pronunciations...

Nutella: chocolate butter at first, now tunella
Amelia: mia
Oliver: Ahver, and now Ollie
Because: uh-cuz
Nu-HUH (starts to say no automatically and then realizes she wants to say yes)
Tears: sad from my eyes
Somersault: somersnault
Fruit Snacks: snoot snacks
Computer: competer
Elbow: elmo
Forehead: fourth head
DVD: dvdv
soda: sodup
remote: mote
ebelskivers: evil skibbers

If you ask her a question with "or" in it, she will always include the "or" in her answer.
Me: Do you want to do a puzzle or a game?
Elsa: or a puzzle

The other day I asked her why she came into our room in the middle of the night. Her response: "Ummm...there was a sound making a noise."


(Elsa was very excited to go to a friend's birthday party.)

She recently finished up an art class at the local rec center. She loved doing art projects and getting messy. She was very excited about this caterpillar she made:





Despite our many reprimands, she is ALWAYS coloring/painting on anything but paper:


Elsa talks. And talks. And talks...


Elsa's favorite catch phrase from one of her favorite movies, Despicable Me:


On St. Patrick's Day, leprechauns toilet papered the girls' room. Elsa had fun decorating herself in the morning:




And she is now an official toilet-user!

All about Amelia.

Amelia is such a great helper. She loves playing with Oliver. She gets sad in the morning when it's time to go to school because she doesn't want to leave him. She loves to read and sing to him.




She is also a great friend to Elsa. They definitely have their moments of fighting but for the most part they love to play together. Amelia loves to pretend to be Elsa's mom. They create all kinds of interesting games to play together. It's so much fun to see their imaginations at work. We love watching nature movies together and Amelia and Elsa have been pretending to be mudskippers lately, based on a nature movie we watched.



Amelia has been writing her name on all of her possessions lately. This declaration on the table made me laugh:


(5 allowed, 2 Not allowed...meaning Amelia is allowed and Elsa is not.)

Amelia loves to play school at home and pretend to be the teacher. She LOVES a captive audience.

One of her many games...this was some sort of score card she taped up somewhere:

(Robot was the bad team, barbie was the good team)

We recently watched Tangled, which Amelia loved. But she was beside herself when Rapunzel's hair was cut off and turned brown. She started sobbing "her hair wasn't meant to be like that!"

Amelia still enjoys school and is learning so much. Her homework is far more advanced than anything I did in kindergarten. She is learning about adverbs, adjectives, and compound words right now. I'm pretty sure I was only drawing rainbows at that age. I'm really glad that she is being challenged at school though and learning at her level. Although just like me, her favorite thing at school is art class. She loves to read and always brings a book with her in the car.

She loves to create. She is really good at pointing out all the beautiful things that surround us on a daily basis. And she loves to pick flowers for me.

Spring on the Farm

Amelia came home sick from school on Wednesday. She had a high fever and a cough. She still had the fever Thursday morning so she stayed home from school. By lunch time she was feeling better so we headed to the National Colonial Farm to enjoy a picnic and the beautiful weather. Once again we were the only people there.












(The girls were wearing matching dresses but it wasn't until we got home that I realized Elsa's dress was on backwards. I'd like to say that's a result of Elsa dressing herself. But I'm pretty sure I put it on her.)




















There was a great little ice cream place near the park that was a perfect ending for our adventure.