Brooke and Audrey

Happy New Year

2012-01-23T12:30:00.003-05:00

We were able to ring in 2012 with some of our best friends ever, Stacy and Peter. Our visit was super short, but we had a blast! It is great to have friends where you can be apart for long periods but feel like you have not missed a step when you get together again.

Audrey is a huge fan of the sparkling cider!

Using the timer function of the camera to take pictures of us toasting in the new year. We only took about 20 pictures trying to get it right.

Cheers! Here we are toasting with our new champagne flutes that I got from Ikea for only $0.25 per flute....and they are real glass!

More Snow...or really Ice

2012-01-23T12:00:00.001-05:00

This past weekend we had our second winter weather. This time it was not the fun dry fluffy snow like last time - it was definitely mainly ice this time. But as we learned, ice makes for GREAT sledding. We usually use our little hill in the backyard. But the ground was so icy and the sledding so fast, there was not room in our yard...unless you like flying full speed into the house. Which is not as fun as it sounds!

So the girls and I loaded up and drove over to our local elementary school to sled down a giant hill - seriously at least 60 feet. It was AWESOME!! I had so much fun. So much so that when D got home from running (only 18 miles in the ice) that I made us all load up and go sled again!

Here are pics (can you tell that I am a little obsessed with the snow too!) and hopefully a video or two too:

HUGE hill. Fortunately there were steps off to the side. This was the first trek back up - and sadly when they finally got to the top and put the sled down, it flew all the way back down!

Getting ready to sled. Audrey enjoyed it just a bit more as she is our natural daredevil!

Fun in the snow!

This was their idea to ride with Daddy backwards down the hill! Crazy!!

Munching on some ice as a little snack

Here are the videos. They look a little funny cause they were taken with my camera and I guess when they are converted/uploaded they are very skinny. The first is D sledding with Audrey and the second is Brooke sledding by herself.

First Snow of the Season

2012-01-23T11:05:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, we were all shocked when it snowed. The forecast called for rain all day, but apparently the temps were low enough that it came down as snow. It started around noon and finally by 4 there was about an inch that had accumulated on the ground. So as soon as the girls got up from their nap we headed out to do some sledding down our hill in the back yard. The girls LOVE snow and have been very upset and confused as to how it can be winter and there not be any snow. So I tried to explain to them that there are lots of places (read pretty much everywhere else we have ever lived or will ever live) that don't get snow. This explanation resulted in tears...they have recently entered into a very sensitive phase.

Here are some pics of this our first snow:

Have I mentioned how much the LOVE the snow? They love to roll around in it, eat it, make snowballs and through them (usually at me!), eat it, sled in it, eat it, and build snow men. Did I mention that they like to EAT it? Favorite activity for sure!

One inch of snow is enough for sledding! The biggest limiting factor was the lack of sunlight as it did not accumulate until after 4pm and it is dark here by 5!

This is what it looked like at 1 pm when I went to pick them up at school. You can barely tell, but it is snowing.

I just think that they are so cute in all their winter gear!

My artistic shot - I always think that this looks like cotton on the bushes outside our house. I guess that is how you know that I am truly from the south.

Photographers

2012-01-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

The girls LOVE to take pictures around the house. It totally cracks me up to see what they take pictures of and how they arrange stuff and which pictures they think need to be deleted. Here are some of their pictures that I find amusing. This is very likely one of those posts that only their family (and that may be pushing it) will enjoy. You will also note how much they love their stuffed animals! We are starting to get a tad overrun by the animal friends, but their affection for them is just so super sweet. They - well really just Brooke - have now been limited to sleeping with only 10 animals each night.

Christmas

2012-01-19T20:57:00.003-05:00

This will be a super long post so be forewarned! This year was Christmas with the Hadden family. And we decided that we would do a fun family trip for Christmas this year. So way back in May, Leslie (D's sister) did lots of work to find a place for us to ski that was within driving distance of all of us and a house to rent that would accommodate 14 people. We were all set!

So of course this year there has been NO SNOW. Zip. Totally mild winter. So mild that they could not even make much snow. So we were in a panic about what to do. We were going to West Virginia and there really is NOTHING to do other than ski. So options - pay the rental and go and be stuck inside a house with no toys or pay and just not go and go to Atlanta to Leslie's house or hope that the guy who owned the house would give us a refund and go to Atlanta.

After delaying the start of the trip by one day with the hopes that the last option would happen, we were THRILLED to hear from the guy that he was giving us a refund cause the slopes were going to be awful! Hooray! So the 4 of us loaded up the car and made the 620 mile pilgrimage to Atlanta. Everyone else lives with in 3 hours so the change of venue worked for all of us.

Unfortunately I forgot my camera - shocking! but Leslie had an old one that she lent me for the visit. So here are some pics of our trip:

A pic of all 4 cousins wearing their matching Christmas pj's and their little headbands, of course with their little Christmas beanie babies (Thanks all to Aunt Connie!!)

Lots of fun driving the little jeep gator! While this is a picture of Audrey driving, Brooke actually spent more time behind the wheel....and honestly was much better at it than Audrey.

Hanging out with Papa and Weecie

The girls in their 'clubhouse'....all four kids were hilarious helping stack up the load of firewood that got delivered while we were there. This is where the girls would go when Paul would dump out a load to be stacked.

Tracking Santa on the IPad....so funny to see how excited Brooke would get. She would run around yelling "Santa's in Whales!!" with such glee and excitement, though clearly she had no idea where that actually was or how it was possibly related to where she was in Atlanta.

Our slightly crazy daughter Audrey who insisted on sleeping in a ball pit....every night. Why fight it?

Loot from Santa. As an aside, we discovered that Audrey LOVES Tootsie Rolls and they both adore eating Horseshoe Kisses (aka Hershey so funny!)

Obligatory Christmas morning family PJ photo. The girls are showing off their stuffed horse and stuffed flower that they requested from Santa. Good job big guy!

Audrey playing with her presents from Brooke. The girls were so cute this year. They asked me if they could have special alone time with me to go shopping for each other and the other one would stay home with Daddy and have special alone time with him. Melts your heart! I took the girls to a place called 5 below which as the name suggests, only has stuff that is $5 and below. Each girl could get two items for their sister. Audrey bought Brooke an elephant stuffed animal and a hula hippo game. Brooke got Audrey the kitty and wienie dog pictured above.

Brooke delivering presents during the Christmas-morning-present-opening-melee

Audrey relaxing on one of her favorite presents - her giant pink flower pillow - as Papa rubbed her feet. She clearly has a very hard life.

All 4 cousins with their Shoulder Buddies in their cute Christmas outfits.

Brooke getting some love from Papa too!

Me and the girls on Christmas

The four of us Haddens went to the Georgia Aquarium the day after Christmas. All I can say is WOW! We loved it.

The close up of the penguin after crawling through a tiny tube and popping up in a bubble while holding Brooke. She was very interested in the fact that the penguins were all wearing bracelets!

Shockingly I actually have a couple of other pics on my phone, but the transfer process is not working right now....and as this is a giant post anyway I will just call it a day.

Audrey Sings

2012-01-06T21:04:00.001-05:00

As I have put on here before, the girls love to put on little shows. All. The. Time. And now they are also obsessed with my camera and taking pictures and videos of these shows. (This is an aside, but when I went to upload my most recent set of pictures today there were about 40 or so that the girls had taken just around the house of stuff they thought was interesting.)

Here are two videos of Audrey singing with her new guitar. They are basically the same but I just could not pick one. The rock and roll (which is a little hard to understand as her r's are still very w-like) was just so funny. But then the other one is just so funny to me as it is total stream of consciousness singing. It reminds me of some weird performance art or something.

Cute Picture

2011-12-30T21:00:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, the girls wanted to get a haircut. And they always talk about the big elephant at the cartoon cuts. However, whenever I have suggested that they can get their hair washed under the elephants they both said no. But this time, Brooke was all over it. And she was so cute getting it done. Audrey watched for a while and then said she was ready for her haircut – with no washing.

Thanksgiving Part 2

2011-12-30T20:52:00.000-05:00

I love to take photos so here is what we did over Thanksgiving:

Playing their favorite card game - go fish!

Thanksgiving would not be complete without a little football

Cute cousin picture!

Family traditions - working on the topping for the sweet potatoes

Photo shoot with Granddaddy

The Hadden family photo

I love these pictures of me with my sweet nephew Will!

Brooke loved this mask and put it on CONSTANTLY!

Not sure me and my sister are actually related, but clearly that's my dad!

Thanksgiving - part 1

2011-12-30T20:30:00.000-05:00

This year for Thanksgiving we went to see my family in MS. The girls and I flew down the Saturday before Thanksgiving and then D joined us on late Tuesday night and then all 4 of us flew home on the Sunday after. All in all, it was a great family trip. Here are a few pictures of some of the activities we did while there. I will do a separate post with a focus on all of the family.

Max the cat provides plenty of entertainment...and that is the calmest cat I have ever been around

Fun at the zoo - lots of time was spent analyzing the map and determining where we should go by the girls

At the zoo with Gramma - way in the back you can maybe see the zebras. At this point in time, Audrey was obsessed with a little stuffed zebra that she bought with some money from her birthday.

Their first time fishing...unfortunately it was not successful at all. Not even a bite. Though super cute photo ops with their Granddaddy!

Fun at the Children's Museum. Putting on the velcro suit to jump and stick to the wall

Audrey stuck on the wall! She was very good at it.

A little words with friends!

Practicing their dribble with Granddaddy. Amy was obviously taking notes as she schooled us all in a game of Horse later that day.

Playing on the playground at the local elementary school...which we think was ok cause the gate wasn't totally locked. I love this picture cause I think that Brooke looks so tall and old!

Enjoying driving the lawnmower around the yard with Gary...I mean it is MS after all. This counts as entertainment!

Birthday Parties

2011-12-29T20:49:00.000-05:00

I am trying to finish up all of my 2011 posts so I can buy my annual blog book. So here are a couple of pictures from some very girly and adorable birthday parties that the girls went to back in November.

First they had a ballet party for Keira. Audrey decided that she was NOT going to wear a leotard or ballet shoes and it was all I could do to get her to put on a tu-tu over her jeans. But they both had a great time dancing and twirling around.

Here they are with their friend Lorelei

Keira was right behind them - she was extra fancy as the birthday girl

Here are all the tiny dancers. Precious!

Then they had a princess party to go to for their friend Molly. Cinderella was the special guest for this party. Unfortunately, Audrey started to get a cold/sick while we were at the party so we left before it was over. Thus only one picture of Audrey - though she was excited to be wearing her Cinderella outfit just like the "real" Cinderella.

The little princesses posing with Cinderella

Brooke - as Snow White - with her face painted as a butterfly

Company Party

2011-12-21T18:30:00.002-05:00

On December 10, D's company had their annual Holiday Party at a fancy-schmancy hotel in DC. This was our fourth year (possibly our last up here?) and it was fun as always. They have cocktails and appetizers followed by a buffet dinner. Then there is a casino and dancing - and they get a great band! Here are a couple of pics from the evening:

Me and D at dinner

Me with Amanda and Kate (mother of the much mentioned Abby)

This is actually a better picture than it looks - as my scanner is still not working I am still stuck taking pictures of pictures - and my hair looks more normal in the real picture (though still slightly weird red....I think it has something to do with the way they computer generate the background or something)

Picture with Santa

2011-12-21T16:00:00.002-05:00

Last Friday, after the girls' school party and their sing-along, we decided to head to the mall to see Santa. The Santa area has a little snow globe that you go through before you get to Santa. Adorable, but man, that snow does not come off easily. Which is not an ideal situation with black pants immediately before a photo. After the picture the girls had a ball playing at the mall play area too. It was a very full day - as evidenced by the very last picture.

Audrey enjoying the falling snow

How awesome does Santa look??

After a long day

DC Photographers

2011-12-19T13:50:00.001-05:00

This weekend we went into DC to go sightseeing, particularly at the US Botanical Garden. They are supposed to have a cool train display and a bunch of the monuments made out of plant materials and a bunch of interesting plants. Unfortunately we were not the only people with that same idea, so we did have to wait about 40 mins to see the trains - half of which was outside, in the cold. The girls were super waiters, but if we went again, I think that we would skip the train section.

Waiting in line outside - how cute are they!!

I really wanted to see all of the monuments (which was in a different section where there was no line) and was not disappointed at all. They were amazing! Made out of plant material (on top of a foam mold I think) The literature said that it took over 600 hours to make the US Capitol - crazy.

Audrey posing in front of the Supreme Court

In front of the real capitol and the plant capitol

As Audrey would say - Look the really tall sky scraper!

The thing that the girls REALLY loved was walking around taking pictures of plants and flowers. A TON of pictures. I am pretty sure they took over 80 pictures. Which D thought was hilarious as I was trying to move them along and they just kept wanting to take pictures. Hilarious because apparently that is how he always feels about me and my photo taking tendencies. I will pick out a couple of the cute or artistic ones - unfortunately there are lots that are a bit blurry as they are sometimes not completely still while taking the picture.

Brooke was so cute posing Audrey by this little yellow flower!

(and as a total aside and random piece of trivia, this was my 400th post)

Christmas Party and Sing-Along

2011-12-19T12:30:00.002-05:00

Last Friday, the girls had their Christmas party at school....it was just for the kiddos, but we signed up to make dessert. My plan was to find adorable Christmas-y food that the girls could almost do completely by themselves. Success! We made little Santa Graham crackers - all I had to do was spread the icing. And then we made little Rudolph sugar cookies. Again I spread the icing and of course cooked the cookies. Occasionally they needed little reminders about the best order to put the stuff on so that it would all fit. But they had a blast doing it and the little treats turned out cute and delicious.

Also on Friday, the girls had their Christmas Sing-Along at school. There are only two classes that go until 1pm on Friday, so it was a small group. Brooke has been singing non-stop around the house. Primarily Rudolph. Seriously she sings it no less than 8 times - completely through - each day. Audrey has now started putting her hands over her ears. Though we should not laugh, it really is hilarious. Both girls were pretty pumped - but that excitement did not really translate well into performance the actual day. They both seemed fairly bored/distracted though they did participate, it was not really with the pizzazz that I was expecting. This is a shot of their class. The kid running at the far right of the picture is the "bad" kid. And after watching this show, I don't know how the teachers can get anything done and wrangle him as well.

Videos Before Bed

2011-12-09T13:55:00.001-05:00

Brooke has been singing Christmas songs from school at home a lot recently. As her mother, I totally think it is the cutest thing in the world and wanted to get a video of it. So here she is singing some of her songs from the upcoming sing-along at school. Usually she just skips over the parts she does not remember, but I guess she wanted to make it correct for the video. Please excuse the flashing of the undies.

The girls, especially Audrey, tend to get WIRED before bed. Give Audrey some dinner and she is a crazy lady. Before dinner, about to fall asleep. After dinner, running around the house. It is insane. So here is her video - she loves to sing the more nontraditional songs that she makes up as she goes. (Though she will correct Brooke on her singing of the traditional songs.) My favorite part is the full on belly flop onto the floor. And keep in mind, this is at 9 o'clock at night!

Christmas spirit

2011-12-06T21:52:00.001-05:00

We've been getting into the Christmas spirit around here.

Each day the girls LOVE to find Elfy. Audrey was thrilled to see him watching her from her name above her bed when she woke up the other day.

Today we made our second gingerbread house. I thought this one would be easier than ours last year cause it came with pre-made icing and a little platform to assemble it on but I am not so sure.

I am certainly not Martha Stewart, but I can totally follow directions. And with the invention of Pinterest (which I am just now trying to figure out), I got some Christmas crafty handprint/footpring ideas. So here is what we were up to today:

We may add some ornaments but wanted to let the tree dry first.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2011-12-05T10:54:00.001-05:00

I am currently skipping my Thanksgiving post cause I seriously don't have the energy or mental agility to go through the roughly 300 pictures I took to find the 10 good ones. Though that may be done soon cause I have now been in McDonald's (thank you free wi-fi and delicious mocha expresso) for 2+ hours as I wait on my car to be finished next door. Darn you B1 Maintenance. Not sure what exactly that is. But my car has been furiously yelling at me to take care of it. Due soon. Due now. PAST DUE...you moron. It does not really say moron but you can tell it is thinking it.

We flew home from Thanksgiving on Sunday and immediately got out all the decorations and got to work. The girls LOVE to decorate the tree. Though when we were finished, they were moderately disappointed that most of our decorations ended up in just the den. And not their bedroom. Nevermind they have been using a strand of Christmas lights as their nightlight for the past year. Our elf Elfy has also made an appearance and they LOVE to find it every morning. Audrey has also discovered that she has a great love for snow globes. We had 2 large ones, but alas we are now down to only 1. Apparently they are not designed to be moved and played with by two four year olds.

How cute are they decorating the tree??

Posing with our new outdoors decorations. Two guesses who picked out this inflatable!

This past weekend their preschool had their annual Breakfast with Santa. There was some concern when we pulled into the parking lot and they did not see Santa's sleigh. But we determined that he must have been dropped off earlier. The breakfast was very cute as all the decorations made by the different preschool classes and the girls were very excited to see Santa. We in fact went through the line twice.

Posing for the picture...

Telling Santa their wish list. which I learned that day is a stuffed horse for A and a stuffed flower for B. hmmm.

Giving Santa hugs before getting down. Our second trip was a repeat of these events. (Santa recognized them when Brooke again asked for a stuffed animal flower. Apparently that is not a common request)

Farm and Wine

2011-12-05T10:23:00.001-05:00

A few weekends ago, we decided that the colder weather was coming so we had better get out and enjoy the outdoors before it got too cold. So we headed north a little and went to Great Country Farms for a day out in nature. And it just so happens that when you pay for admission to the farm, you get a free wine tasting at the winery just across the street. So win-win for us all. Here is an FYI that I am sure you did not know - Virginia is the 5th most popular wine destination. In the world. How is that possible? But we have taken advantage of it when possible as wineries are surprisingly family friendly up here. And most of them are west/northwest of us and there is BEAUTIFUL scenery both on the drive and around the wineries.

Looking across the street from the farm to the winery. Yes it is on the side of a mountain.

The girls and D marching through the corn maze....or shall I say the maize maze?

Brooke providing gentle, or maybe not so gentle, guidance as to which way we should all go.

The girls bouncing on this pumpkin looking bounce hill. Look at Audrey's face: Pure joy

Brooke feeding the "mean" goat. This goat was super aggressive and would head butt any of the other goats out of the way to get to the food.

Feeding tiny horses or ponies or mules or donkeys. Whatever. They were adorable.

One of these bit D a little. He did not follow his advice of keep your hand flat while feeding.

Feeding the pot-bellied pig. It was so cute!

Sliding down these extremely fast tube slides. They would have stayed forever if allowed.

Looking down at the farm from the winery across the street

Don't worry Mia...

2011-12-05T10:09:00.001-05:00

My reference to Mia Hamm may be a tad outdated (who is the new it-girl for women's soccer? Brandy Chastain? those are the only two I can even name) but we have come to the end of our first "season" of soccer. And we are taking a break. As Audrey said "I don't like soccer because you have to run too much." And while that is true - neither girl was breaking any land speed records with their efforts. I blame it on the 9am practice times, the numerous rain-outs, and the sub 40 degree temps. That and I think that they may be just a tad lazy. Which they may get from me.

But alas, I did take some pictures of their last practice (which was actually on their birthday...I am as always behind)

Assuming soccer position - not really sure why this is needed as I never did this in all my years of playing soccer.

Brooke running toward the goal

Audrey moseying toward the goal

While they may not be the next superstars of soccer, they are certainly SUPER CUTE!!

4 year stats

2011-11-30T15:18:00.001-05:00

The girls finally had their 4 year check-ups on Monday. I was worried how it was going to go cause their doctor left the practice (and really all 3 of us had a little crush on him) and it was our first time seeing a new doctor and I had heard that they got a lot of shots at 4. But all my worrying was for naught. The new doctor was great and they only got one shot - though it was two vaccines together. Brooke was nervous before the shot but did not cry at all after. Audrey was fine before but cried right after - apparently cause she did not want a band-aid on her arm. So once we pulled that off, it was all good. They got their hearing and vision checked and all good there as well.

Here are their stats - accompanied by their 4 year preschool pics (the quality is not great cause my scanner is not working so I took a picture with my phone, emailed it to myself, and downloaded to here)

Audrey is 40.5 inches (up from 37 last year). She is 35 lbs (up from 31 last year) She is the 50th percentile for weight and just between the 50th and 75th for height.

Brooke is 42 inches (up from 38.5 last year). She is 41 lbs (up from 35 last year). She is basically right on the 90th percentile for both weight and height.

Bounce of House

2011-11-28T10:13:00.001-05:00

This year the girls really wanted to have their birthday party at the Bounce of House (which is secretly the House of Bounce but they always say it backwards and it is so darn cute!) again so we decided to do a sequel. Overall we thought it was a great success. The girls were SO HAPPY to have all of their friends come to their party...with only a couple of exceptions all of their friends really were able to come. Even though I had been prepping them for weeks that there was a possibility that some of their friends might be sick and not able to make it. Which then led to assurances that regardless of whether they were sick or not, they could still go to their party. We've been very blessed to have made such great friends up here and it was fun to see them all.

My bouncing pictures were all horrible - so here are some pics of the bouncy things and the eating portion.

They have the big jumpy one, the big slide, and the obstacle course one. The girls go back and forth between the slide and the obstacle as to which is their favorite. They really love to jump up super high and fly down the slides. Audrey was quite impressive with the height she jumped this year.

The whole family - duh.

Audrey showing off her birthday crown - which she got from preschool the day before.

The birthday girls blowing out their candles on their cupcake cakes.

Brooke loves cupcakes!

The whole party - minus a couple of the little siblings. Seriously an amazing job with 30 little kids to all be so focused! Though it may have had something to do with the fact that it was 7 pm and they had been jumping for 75 minutes.

OH MY GOSH! THEY ARE 4!

2011-11-11T15:20:00.001-05:00

It is so hard to believe, but tomorrow my babies will be four. And it has been an amazing four years! I have loved (almost) every bit of it. Next week I plan to write a little post about each of them, but here are their 4 year pictures. (Audrey was a little sick the day we took the pictures, so her individual ones did not turn out quite as cute as she really is. Fortunately the girls also have their school pictures this time of year, so hoping that hers will be super cute)

D's Big Race

2011-11-11T14:31:00.001-05:00

Well after 9 long months of training, D's marathon, the Marine Corps Marathon, was October 30. It was so cold that weekend that it actually snowed on Saturday! The girls and I took the metro in and saw D at mile 17 and again at the finish. We had to nix seeing him more cause it was COLD as a spectator.

D totally rocked the marathon. He finished in sub 3 hours - which is HUGE in the running world. Here are his stats (he is such an engineer!)

Time: 2:59:04

Pace: 6:50

Overall Place: #174 out of 20,895 (top 0.8%)

Gender Place: #162 out of 12,365 (top 1.3%)

Age Group: #27 out of 1960 (top 1.4%)

Super impressive, right?

Not sure how long this link will work, but here is a link to his pictures during the race by the professional photographers. Some of them are super good cause they have such a pretty historical background. Another advantage to being in the front is that he got a ton of pictures taken of him - harder to do when you are in a huge pack. Here is the link: http://www.marathonfoto.com/index.cfm?action=site.login&RaceOID=13692011F1&LastName=HADDEN&BibNumber=14929&spMAILINGID=36518508&spUserID=MTE3MTQwMDE1NjcS1&spJOBID=117505760&spREPORTID=MTE3NTA1NzYwS0

If you click the little magnifying glass at the bottom of the picture you can see it better.

Here are the pics that I took:

Snow in October? Crazy!

Riding the Metro to go cheer on Daddy!

Waiting at mile 17 and ringing their little cow bells

Getting ready to high-five D (in the running tights and grey shirt) at mile 17. Brooke pulled her hand back right as that guy in front of D tried to high-five her. So funny!

D rounding the corner for the last 0.2 miles, uphill, to the finish line

All of us with Darren after the race was over.

Here are the girls reading the metro map as we headed home. They were so cute about looking at it and finding which dot we were at and counting how many more dots we had left.

Happy Halloween

2011-11-11T14:11:00.001-05:00

In a not-so-shocking turn of events, I am a bit behind in my blogging. So better late than never, here is our Halloween celebration. This year the girls were a bunny and a ladybug (as previously seen in the photo shoot in mid-October). The girls actually looked adorable in these costumes, but it made me sad that they had graduated from the adorable furry costumes into the little girl costumes.

Here are the girls painting their little pumpkins...unfortunately the paint peeled right off the next day. But we had fun doing it.

Marching in their Halloween parade at school.

Such concentration!

How cute is that little ladybug Brooke?

Not the best picture of Audrey, but it does show two of her best friends from class Luke (the new obsession) and Zach P

Audrey's favorite part of her costume - her little bunny tail! She hopped around all day like a bunny. So cute.

Class photo after the parade at school

Hard at work carving our pumpkin. The girls drew the face and then we worked together to carve it. They did NOT like to touch the insides of the pumpkin at all.

Ta-Da! Our Jack O Lantern.

Getting ready to head out trick-or-tricking on our street.

I think they are yelling LET'S GO!

Going through their loot

Fall Fest

2011-11-09T15:50:00.000-05:00

This year we went to a local fall festival - on a Tuesday, without Dad - rather than the big Cox Farms that we have gone to every other year. We went with my friend Heather and her daughter Tori. Overall the kids had a great time - though secretly I wish that we had gone to the big one. Maybe next year. Here are some pictures of their favorite activities: sliding, climbing in the pirate ship, rolling down the (small) hill in a tube. They also enjoyed the hayride through the spooky forest, but I did not take any pictures of that.

They would have gone on this forever!

Audrey was so funny putting her arms up and yelling on the way down!

Group shot with their friend Tori and their souvenir pumpkins

Dentist

2011-10-28T10:29:00.002-04:00

Last week the girls had their first trip to the dentist. Our pediatrician said that we needed to have them there before they turned 4, so of course I have waited all year and finally took them. And they did great! Audrey was a little leery of the whirling toothbrush thing - though in her defense the hygienist that she had did not do as good of a job as Brooke's did in explaining it and showing it to her before she started. They got a good report from the dentist - no cavities! But apparently they both have a posterior crossbite - though on opposite sides, which the dentist seemed to find very interesting. And now that the dentist has pointed it out, it is obvious. But he said that we did not need to worry about it yet, but that at 5 they would probably need a retainer. Wait. Five is in just one year. (Vallie - when you read this, can you ask Trey his opinion?)

So like all good, crazy moms, I took pictures of their first dentist appointment.

Sassy

2011-10-28T10:22:00.001-04:00

The girls have been extra sassy lately in their pictures....especially Audrey! (which I am thrilled with cause for awhile now Brooke has clearly been outshining her in pics, but Audrey has totally stepped up her game!)

Weekend with Gramma

2011-10-28T10:02:00.003-04:00

Over Columbus Day weekend, Gramma Hazel came up for a visit. We had lots of fun with here - the girls love their grandparents! We went to frying pan park (but the pics are on my phone which is not helping me now. the highlight was that there were 3 litters of baby pigs, some as young as only 2 weeks old), had our previously mentioned big races, went to two birthday parties, D and I went to the movies to see Moneyball, and played lots of games. Very good times indeed!

Play princess dominoes - Audrey's current favorite game. They are actually quite good at it and are moderately strategic about playing their doubles whenever possible.

Loving on Gramma!

Presenting Gramma with some art work that they had made for her before she came.

Birthdays

2011-10-26T15:49:00.001-04:00

I love birthdays and I love birthday parties! So here are a few pics from some birthday parties that the girls have gone to in the last month or so.

Here is a picture from Mason's birthday. Could Audrey look happier to be next to him??

Also from Mason's birthday on the train ride. They are sitting next to their friend Xander. This was the day of FSU's big game against OU - back when we still thought that our team was going to be good....thus explaining their (and our) outfits

The girls got into the swing of it at Kermit's party as they were trying to break open the rocket pinata.

Patiently awaiting the cake at Delaney's party while sitting with their friend Abby. Before each party we all discuss whether we think that there is going to be cupcakes or cake. It is the great debate and the winners are always very excited to point out that they were right and the others wrong. For the record it went cake, cupcakes, cake, and cake for these parties here.

Eating their fancy princess (though the girls had both taken off their outfits by the second picture and you can't really see that they were Snow White and Cinderella in the first one) lunch and then singing happy birthday to Abby.

The girls have their birthday in less than 3 weeks! We are getting excited! They are going to have a revival of their House of Bounce party from last year. Though they still call it Bounce of House.

Flashback

2011-10-26T10:20:00.000-04:00

Somehow I missed posting about my girls trip in September. My former college roomie Stacy, 2 of her high school friends, and I (or as Stacy likes to put it: 1 bride and 3 bridesmaids) met up in Tampa for a relaxing beach weekend. We had so much fun! Though I just could not get over how hot it was - both the pool and the ocean were warmer than any up here during the entire summer - even at the end of September!

Here are a few pics of our weekend:

Getting our toes done - so ticklish!

Lunch of champions - Publix subs! And yes we made a worker take our picture - in the grocery store.

Delicious beverages - well mine was certainly delicious!

Working on our model action shots - Sadly Stacy lost a leg in the process

How relaxing to just float around in the pool - without kids!

Not too bad for 35+ gals

Stacy and Kerry montage- apparently I surprised myself on the last picture!

Spooky House

2011-10-21T09:44:00.000-04:00

The girls have been all into Halloween and they have wanted us to make our house in to a "Spooky House." So we have been busy little bees making spooky crafts. Unfortunately our house doesn't really look spooky - it looks more like an explosion of construction paper. But here is a sampling of our work.

Handprint spiders - the big ones are mine and Gramma Hazel.

Three little pumpkins sitting on a fence. A witch (cut out by the girls) flew by and said "Ha Ha Ha. I will take you home and make a pumpkin pie" Apparently this is a song that they sing at school. And there are lots more of those pumpkins around the house!

Our footprint ghosts - lots of these hanging around as well!

The girls showing off their bats and candy corn - though they both went on record that candy corn is "not spooky mom!"

Another shot of the bats - I was so proud of myself for using toothpicks to keep the wings up (Martha Stewart I am not, but not a bad solution!)

Our salt dough ghosts - which the girls have loved playing with around the house.

Little pumpkins that the decorated at their friend Delaney's birthday party - after playing a game of find the pumpkin. So cute

Annual Halloween Photo Shoot

2011-10-19T10:03:00.001-04:00

Audrey our little bunny

Brooke our darling ladybug

So cute!!

Running Running

2011-10-19T09:53:00.002-04:00

The title of this post suggests that it will be all about Darren, but I am tricky! This is primarily about me and the girls. On October 8, the girls and I had our "big race." Which for me was my second ever 5k and for the girls it was called a "pumpkin dash." I had been training basically since the last one back in April (or maybe it was May) but my training - which really only consisted of me running twice a week - was frequently interrupted by vacations or heat and humidity. I have determined that I really need the temps to be between 50 and 70 for my optimal running. Not a huge window. Which is one of the reasons that I have joined a gym. again. I have been once so far.

Back to my story. I am super slow but am very proud of myself with my new time. I ran it in 34 minutes - over 3 minutes faster than last time! (which D did the math and that averages out to a 10:59 pace - at least it starts with a 10!)

The pumpkin dash was basically a disaster - poorly organized and very very very short. too short. We clearly had built it up WAY too much for the girls. They had even practiced by going to the track with D and running around it once. So they were up for at least a quarter mile. It was so much shorter than that. However, they did have fun wearing their bibs. And I did take a ton of pictures!

And since no running post would be complete without at least a shout out to the real runner in our family - D ran another half marathon a couple of weeks ago. And he set ANOTHER pr. He is so fast! He ran this one in 1 hour 23 minutes which averages out to a 6:21 pace. His marathon is coming up in less than two weeks on October 30. And of course he is planning to set another PR. Here's hoping that all our colds go away and the weather stays nice so that can happen!

Giving the girls a high five as I am approaching the finish line. Thanks to Gramma Hazel for taking the pics and watching the girls while I ran

Pre-race with their friends Kiera in the top picture and Kasey in the bottom picture

Grey Squirrel

2011-10-12T18:01:00.002-04:00

Here are the girls doing a show. They are singing Grey Squirrel. (A song from preschool that I posted on here last year. It is of Brooke singing and she does Grey Squirrel after Jesus Loves Me. It is CRAZY how much older they seem this year! So I am going to now try to link to that post so you can see for yourself: Grey Squirrel)

Hilarious!!

2011-10-04T20:33:00.002-04:00

Today in the car (on the way to Target, of course) we were working on our vocabulary and it ended up as something so funny:

Me: Raise your hand if you are a genius.
All 3 of us raised our hands
Me: Audrey, what does being a genius mean?
Audrey: smart

Me: Raise your hand if you are hilarious.
All 3 of us raised our hands
Me: Brooke, what does hilarious mean?
Brooke: very funny

Me: Raise your hand if you are humongous.
No one raised their hand
Brooke: Mom, raise your hand. You are humongous!
Audrey: Yeah mom. You are giant.

Though my ego may be bruised, at least they know what humongous means!

Totally unrelated picture - Me and D at our first Redskins game

Soccer

2011-09-30T11:11:00.001-04:00

The girls have been anxiously awaiting the start of soccer season. This is the one thing that they have really wanted to do. So two weekends ago it finally started!
They are in the U4 division which only practices once a week on Saturday mornings. There are 9 teams of about 10 kids each – so that is a lot of 3 year olds running around. Fortunately only 3 teams practice at a time.

Meeting the three coaches – you may not be able to tell but the girls’ soccer balls have pink swooshes on them!

They got divided up into a small group with their coach Lindsey. The little girl in the purple jacket is one of our neighbors Natalie.

Working on their soccer position

They tried to have a little scrimmage at the end of the practice. They clearly did not understand the concept of two teams going different directions.

Audrey was in tears at the end because she did not score a goal during the scrimmage. The coach did not help when she told her that she did score – as I had just told her that she did not score and that it is ok to not score. Oh dear!
Though overall they LOVED it!
We have only had one practice cause we have had so much rain here that the fields were basically underwater last weekend. Hoping that tomorrow ends better than last week!

Frying Pan Park with Friends

2011-09-30T11:02:00.001-04:00

A few Thursdays ago, we went to Frying Pan Park with our friends Kelly and “baby” Mae and Kate and Nathan and Abby. The kids had a ball! We played on the playground, took a tractor ride, saw the animals, and ate picnic lunch.

Listening to the directions before the ride

Sisterly Love

Looking at the giant pig. It was quite a treat cause they got to see the pigs both tinkle and poop. Banner day at the farm!

Petting a 2 week old cow

Audrey reaching in to pet the giant pigs

Audrey having a little conversation with the pig

Feeding the goats some grass

Riding on the pretend tractors

Audrey just really wanted her picture taken on the big rock.

Pet

2011-09-30T10:51:00.001-04:00

The girls have been asking if they could have a pet for quite awhile. I am unable to keep our house clean without the addition of fur, so their pet options are seriously limited. I told them that they could get a goldfish as soon as all our summer travels were over. They were totally happy with that outcome.

So a couple of weeks ago we decided that it seemed like a good day to get the pet. Brooke assured Audrey that she did not need to worry cause if the store did not have goldfish then we would just get a bunny instead! What??

We went to a small local pet store and after a while ended up with a (much more expensive when you add in all the other stuff you have to buy) little baby goldfish.

Here are the girls posing in front of Goldy

Well a couple of days after we got Goldy all settled the girls were delighted to see that Goldy had sparkles all over her tail and fins. And while they thought it made her look pretty, it was no good. Apparently there were several things that the pet store people neglected to tell us.

By now you probably can figure out how this all ended. Goldy only made it with us for a week. The girls were super sweet as they gave her a flush away. They both sang her songs and comforted her (it almost made me cry how caring they were being)

So now we have an empty tank but we will get a new fish.

Gymnastics

2011-09-30T10:40:00.001-04:00

After a year at little gym in a dance and gymnastics combo, we decided that this year the girls would just do gymnastics. This decision was easy to make as each week toward the end of the summer, Audrey would announce that she hated dance class. And that she would like the class if they would let her dance the way she wanted to. So clearly, we are on break from dance.

They are taking their class on Tuesday mornings at a real gym pretty close to our house. Their friend Tori (in the pink outfit below) is also in their class. So far they seem to like it a lot. Their favorite part seems to be dropping down in to the foam pit. Not sure that is really gymnastics-y, but it does indeed look fun! Also impressive (at least to me) was that after the first class they came home showing off that they can now do a seatdrop on the trampoline and pop right up to land on their feet. Fun!

First Day of School

2011-09-12T14:37:00.001-04:00

Today was (finally) the first day of preschool! The girls are going MWF from 9 – 1. And they are eating lunch there. All I can say is that the house was almost creepy quiet today.

Before school with their friends Abby and Nathan. Abby is in a different class this year :(

After school by the school sign. I took a picture here last year and it is amazing to see how much older the girls look this year.

The girls think that it is HILARIOUS to hang their bags around their necks when they walk into school from kiss and ride….which they wanted to do today. I was not ready for that, so I walked them in with the assurance that they could do kiss and ride on Wednesday.

So So Silly

2011-09-12T14:30:00.001-04:00

Yes they are in winter PJ’s and yes that is an Easter basket on Brooke’s head. All I can say is that D was working late.

Yes Audrey is wearing snow boots…and that same bunny shirt. It just will not go away.

Labor Day at Virginia Beach

2011-09-12T11:23:00.005-04:00

We had a great long weekend at Virginia Beach for Labor Day. We had never been to Virginia Beach before and so we were very excited to see what it was like. It is very much like Myrtle Beach (ie sort of red-necky.) No nice beach houses, just hotels and tourist stuff up and down the main drag. We tried to explain cruising to the girls but they didn't get it

We headed down there fairly early on Friday and came back on Monday. Here are some pictures of our trip...I am aware that it is insane that I have this many pictures devoted to one weekend at the beach, but to be honest I actually took about 180, so this is already greatly edited!

The girls on the beach, in front of the boardwalk, that ran behind all of the hotels. This is the hotel that we stayed it. Its biggest perks were that it was a suite and it was on the half-marathon course.

Audrey chasing a seagull. I am nervous (read frightened) around all birds, especially seagulls, so whenever they started to congregate, I would send one of the girls off to chase them away. Shameless, I know.

They were so so so excited to get to the water!

This one is the Baywatch shot of Brooke

Planning out the day's activity - digging a huge hole!

Say Cheese girls!

This is the life! This is also how I know that they are related to me...they loved to lie in their (pull-out couch) bed and watch TV and relax.

Rare Mom photos!

Have I mentioned how much the girls LOVE the water!

She cracks me up how she will pull her sunglasses up on her head.

My little mermaid Audrey

Our balcony was just big enough for all 4 of us to sit on and eat lunch. In conjunction with the rock and roll half marathon, there was a giant stage out on the beach - about 4 blocks down. And each night they had concerts. So we were treated to a free, and extremely loud (we can't imagine how loud it must have been in the hotels right by the stage as we could clearly hear every single word, even inside) concerts by Stone Temple Pilots and Brett Michaels.

Run Darren Run

2011-09-10T14:42:00.005-04:00

D is currently training - hard core - for the DC Marine Corps marathon that is at the end of October. So as part of his preparation, he has signed up for several half-marathons. His most recent one was over Labor Day weekend in Virginia Beach (which was nice for me and the girls as it meant one more summer hoorah - for which there will be a completely separate post devoted to their cuteness)

Basically D rocked this Rock-n-Roll half-marathon. He set a new half-marathon PR (personal record for those of us who are not hard-core) by over 4 minutes. Which is huge in running. Here are his stats:
Finished in 1:26:50 which is an average pace of 6:38 per mile
He was 10th in his age division (out of 742)
He was 120th OVERALL out of 11,275. I know. Impressive.

His cheering squad...waiting right outside the front of our hotel

Coming to give the girls high-fives at mile 3.

Coming to give the girls high-fives at mile 13, which was conveniently located outside of the back of our hotel. While D had to run 10 miles, we just sauntered through the lobby - stopping for the continental breakfast of course. The girls actually got high fives from the two guys in front of D too.

Post race on our balcony

The view of the boardwalk and the finish line (the black sign by the pier) from our balcony

Random Cuteness

2011-09-10T14:38:00.003-04:00

They were hunting Gold Doubloons with their friend Abby.

Audrey just making a super silly face. Love her little freckles on her nose and cheeks!

Playing marching band. In my opinion, the girls are pretty good at the snare drum.

Audrey feeding her baby during her “morning movie”

Brooke – she has certainly mastered the smile on command skill.

At a sprayground with Abby. As it turns out, the girls don’t actually like spraygrounds.

A picture with D and Papa during their trip to SC.

Vegas Vacation

2011-09-08T17:15:00.003-04:00

A few weekends ago, my friend Lesa and I took a girls weekend (that was extended by a day due to the Hurricane that did not hit DC at all) trip to Vegas. It was tons of fun!

D took the girls to visit his dad in South Carolina and had their own mini-vacation. All reports are that the trip went wonderful and the girls were superstars (of course!) The only glitch in the trip was that D got a ticket on the way down. Boo!

My vacation started rocky as I got confused as to which airport I was flying out of. Really, I have no excuse other than stupidity. In my mind DCA clearly stood for Dulles as that starts with the letter D and Reagan does not have any D's in it at all. (My hubby explained that DCA stands for DC area which makes much more sense now) It was not until I was at the kiosk at the WRONG airport and I could not pull up my boarding pass and the worker lady told me that my flight was out of Reagan, that I even realized something was wrong. In tears, I somehow managed to make it to the other airport in an hour and was able to make my flight. Seriously it was amazing as I was driving from 7 - 8am on the beltway on a Thursday. And my flight departed at 8:30. And I was checking my bag.

I am so far behind in my blogging, that I am shamelessly stealing from her blog to summarize our trip:

We ate some fabulous food, drank some marvelous drinks (some that acted as sledgehammers), saw a show (really hilarious), viewed the Vegas Strip from the top (in what we are going to say was a super cool club atop The Palms), lapped up some serious girl talk, reveled in lying in bed until 10am, hung out at the pool in the 100+ temps (no different for her than Texas, but considerably warmer than what I was used to), ate some more divine food and drank some more tasty adult beverages.

I was in LOVE with the Nutella brioche pastry for breakfast! So yummy!

Love these pics!

I am not a big gambler, but do enjoy a little bit of cheap slots and video poker. I am so cheap that I won’t ever put in more than $5 at a time. However, I am pleased to report that to end the trip I was up by a few bucks!

Heading out for a night on the town…which we were shocked to discover does not even start until 10:30.

Poolside with said tasty beverages!

We stayed at the Bellagio - and the fountains were still as cool as I remembered.

Volcano Day

2011-08-17T16:36:00.007-04:00

I totally stole this idea from my friend Samantha, so I will preface the post with that lest any of you think that I am actually creative. I decided to have a themed day of volcanoes since we had no plans for the day. We started off by looking at some pictures of erupting volcanoes on the internet and then some you tube videos. Then we decided to create our own volcano in our kitchen. We practiced a few times and then built our dirt volcano. The girls really enjoyed adding the dirt into the bucket. After each eruption, they added more to cover up the lava and then we did it again. Then we moved to our arts and crafts project of making a volcano - an activity that Audrey quickly tired of. Her volcano had 3 pieces of lava total. They are so funny and so different. Later in the day, I tried to have them water color paint a volcano. But that quickly turned into them just painting. Though my water color volcano turned out quite nicely!

Building the dirt volcano - not as messy as you would think.

The after picture of the eruption

Gluing on the volcano for our art project

Brooke working on adding the lava to her picture.

This is a video of the first eruption test. My favorite part is listening to how they say erupt. It is so adorable!!

Making the Letters

2011-08-17T16:04:00.002-04:00

In an effort to reduce boredom and be somewhat educational, I cut out a bunch of lines and curves so that the girls could put them together to make letters. Brooke was all over this activity. She immediately made lots of letters and then moved on to her name, then mine. Audrey decided that the strips looked like good nest making materials and made a nest for some of her guys. (And while that is super creative, she is actually the one who could use a little practice on her letters…in a fun, non-threatening way of course!) By the time that Brooke started on Audrey’s name, Audrey decided that she would participate. So Audrey did the U - Y in her name.

The next day, without any prompting at all, the girls (led by Brooke) decided to do the whole alphabet. They did a great job. I only had to help on a few of the tricky letters – like J, and S, and G. You can’t see it, but we ran out of some of the straight lines and the girls cut some out for me by following some lines I drew. It was their first cutting that actually resulted in a pretty straight line. Though Audrey only humored me and cut two lines the way I instructed and then went back to her preferred method (which totally does not work well at all!!)

We Love Our Guys

2011-08-17T15:08:00.002-04:00

The girls are really in a phase of loving their stuffed animals – whom they refer to as their guys, babies, or pets. I guess it just depends on their mood or activity. They are adorable playing with them and it totally makes me happy as I was a stuffed animal girl. I love to see how their guys bring out the nurturing side of them. They are so sweet…unless one of their guys is getting into trouble. Then you better watch out. For any infraction, the animals receive all the punishments: spanking, time out, and they give them the Talk.

On the negative, they always want to bring guys into places with them. In theory, I think this is an awful idea. In practice, it is frequently easier to just let them take an animal with them and hope that we make it home with them (the best is when they just take them into the car only with them…sometimes I can convince them that the guys want to stay in the car and take naps! ) Thus far we have not lost any guys while out and about. There was a close call with piggy in the TJ Maxx, but he was located in a box of shoes. Wheww…

Here are some cute pictures of them with their guys:

Cute pictures of the girls with their main guys.

We keep the animals that are not being played with in these boxes on a shelf in the girls' room. Here the girls are pretending to be one of their guys in their boxes.

This one is hard to see...Audrey is clutching her Little Pet Shop kitty that she was playing with at the pool while Brooke was doing swim lessons.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!

2011-08-10T15:56:00.001-04:00

D and I celebrated our 13th anniversary on 8-8-11. To celebrate we went to dinner Saturday night. Here are some pics from our night out!

Outside the restaurant after dinner

A picture of D so that we could see the name of the restaurant (and the fun new shirt that I bought for him). It was delicious!! It is on the Washingtonian’s top restaurant list and certainly deserves to be there. Plus it is in a “cool” section of DC – which is a break from our normal, not-totally-cool life.

Preschool Pool Playdate

2011-08-09T13:59:00.001-04:00

Recently we had a little reunion of sorts with the girls’ favorites from their preschool class this past year: Abby, Delaney, and of course Mason (also included were Abby’s brother Nathan and Mason’s older brother Aiden) Overall, I think that the girls had lots of fun with their friends.

Getting ready to take the plunge…

Mid-jump photo

Just relaxing with their friends in the shallow end…how tall does Brooke look next to Delaney?

Pool Party with The Envalls

2011-08-03T16:24:00.001-04:00

A couple of weekends ago, we finally were able to get the entire Hadden family and Envall family together. It was blazing outside (yes, even by TX standards) so the pool seemed to be a great idea. We played in the (finally warm) water and had a picnic lunch. Here are some shots from the day:

In the baby pool during break.

Enjoying our picnic – we eat lunch at the pool at least once a week during the summer.

With my friend Erica – I am trying to do better about getting pictures of me and my friends

The girls just look so cute in this picture

One Outfit….no problem

2011-07-30T10:21:00.001-04:00

What happens when there is only one outfit that they each want to wear for the show….

Our First Movie

2011-07-30T10:16:00.001-04:00

A few weekends ago, we took the girls to see their first ‘feature length’ movie in a movie theatre. If you look at the pictures below you can probably figure out what movie we saw: Winnie The Pooh. It was Audrey’s idea to wear their Pooh shirts and it ended up soo cute. The movie outing was very successful – they loved their individual popcorns and the movie! Audrey got a little upset toward the end when D shushed her (poor D also got upset when he realized that he was the reason little Audrey was crying)

Very excited to have their own tickets and to hand them in themselves.

Before the movie – they each got the little kids pack of popcorn, drink, and fruit snack.

Chowing down on their popcorn

Status Update

2011-07-22T13:29:00.005-04:00

Recently I have been taking the lazy route in my blogging and basically just posting pictures. But today I am going to try to remember all the little things that I think are note-worthy in our life right now.

The girls have just started getting into dress-up...which generally involves them getting dressed up and then performing a show for us.

One of my pet peeves about little kids before I had little kids was horrible pronunciation. I always thought that clearly the mom/dad/caregiver was just lazy about teaching the correct way to talk. So obviously I have two kids who have absolutely horrible pronunciation. And I correct ALL the time. Karma strikes again. The worst things for the girls are their blends, L's, and R's. The L's and R's really don't bother me that much anymore since those are super duper common and most people can still translate that. Their substitutions for the blends are totally bizarre...for TR they substitute a K sound. So tree is key and trouble is kouble. So odd. But I am so pleased to announce that all of a sudden the girls are actually saying the TR much better. Now tree is twee and trouble is twouble. so much better!! My next task is going to be their DR sounds....which currently are G's. (Let's go guy off is what they say instead of let's go dry off. so odd)

At their ballet class (Brooke is in the giant tu-tu and Audrey is to her right) demonstrating first position

There are some adorable things that they say that I hate to correct cause it will be sad when they say it correctly. My favorite one is for each other. They say "ca cover" As in, "Let's snuggle up with ca cover" I mean how cute is that!

They also are so funny with trampoline - which is pronounced "camp-o-ween-ween" Huh?

Their favorite part of ballet class - the Ben and Jerry's ice cream after. There 4 of their good friends in the class so we go next door to get our treat after each class. Did you know that you can buy a pint and they will give you cones and cups? for free? Best bargain ever!

Knock on wood, but I think that the girls are finally escaping the horrible 3's. As I have told anyone who will listen, the three's are clearly and exponentially worse than the two's. I am convinced that the terrible two's is really a cleverly orchestrated prank on all new parents (oh thank heavens that we got through those two's without much incident. let the good life begin. hah - suckers! welcome to the craziness/moodiness/whinyness of three) With that said, I still recognize that the girls even at their worst were always still in the well behaved portion on the general preschooler spectrum. But lately we seem to have turned a corner. The number of melt-downs has dramatically reduced and the temper tantrums seem to have all but subsided. Hooray!! Let's hope this continues and there is not some secret disaster waiting for us at 4.

Always with a flair for the dramatic, Brooke protesting her time-out at the beach

The girls now think it is hilarious to call anyone who passes gas (clearly not me) a stink bug. They immediately announce "I passed gas. I am a STINK BUG" And then the other one immediately crouches down to smell ca-cover's tushie. Cute when it is one of them...not as cute when it is a parent that is a stink bug and is in Target for example.

The girls are super great playmates these days. Sometimes I even feel guilty as they totally self-entertain with each other. (a popular activity is getting all of the pillows and blankets that they can find and making a giant bed to have sleepovers in with all of their animals) Of course the down side of this is that they can be exclusionary to their friends at playdates. Which always makes me feel awkward. We are working on this and talking about how they hurt other people's feelings if they don't play with them.

They have had two swim lessons and seem to really like their teacher Miss Elizabeth - as evidenced by constantly calling to her as she is trying to do her job as a life guard (Miss Elizabeth, watch this!!) She is super patient and super sweet though. They are doing once a week lessons for 30 minutes each one-on-one with Miss Elizabeth.

Audrey 's first lesson

Brooke's first lesson

Brooke Swims

2011-07-17T16:39:00.003-04:00

Brooke decided that she was ready to swim while we were on our vacation. So we took off the floaties and away she went. We were starting swim lessons the week we got back so she just got a little head start. Audrey would be a great swimmer except that she currently does not like for her ears to get wet - which clearly interferes with both floating on your back and putting your face in the water.

Here is a video (different than that on FB) of her first or second try swimming. In the subsequent days, she swam farther and she learned how to open her eyes under water and has since abandoned her goggles.

Hilton Head 2011 aka the Hadden Family Vacation

2011-07-17T16:28:00.002-04:00

For the week of Fourth of July, we went to Hilton Head for our annual beach trip with the Hadden side of the family. The weather was wonderful this year – I don’t think that it got above 90 the whole time we were there! We all had a great time and are already wishing it was next year so that we can do it again.

Here are some of my favorite pics of the trip:

Testing 1 2 3

2011-07-15T15:17:00.001-04:00

I am testing out our new computer with this post. I am in Windows Live and it looks like I can immediately add stuff to my blog. So this is a test. But HOW CUTE are the girls in this picture! They just look so relaxed.

This picture is of the 4 cousins on Fourth of July. This is also a test cause I used the photo-fuse to put a new Audrey head on the picture. I thought that I would really like the photo-fuse, from all those commercials they did it looked awesome. But the pictures have to be IDENTICAL for it to work. And seriously how can you get the kids to really stay that sill and look the same direction and not move their arms, etc. If you look over Audrey’s shoulder you can see how the beach scene does not line up.

Father's Day

2011-06-30T13:46:00.004-04:00

This year for Father's Day weekend we had Darren's dad and girlfriend (his dad's girlfriend, not Darren's girlfriend) in town for the weekend. On Saturday they went to a baseball game - that the Nationals actually won- while I took the girls to a birthday party at Frying Pan Park. Then for actual Father's Day, we went to a fancy brunch in Alexandria at a place called the Warehouse. It was scrumptious! Then we took a cruise on the Potomac up to Georgetown and then back to Alexandria. It was a fun time - though the girls enjoyed being downstairs out of the wind.

Milking a cow (which they continue to talk about all the time) at the birthday party

At Brunch

D opening his present from the girls. It is a t shirt with their hand prints on it. It is pretty adorable in my opinion.

Shots on the cruise

My attempt at an artistic shot

Cute Sayings

2011-06-24T21:06:00.002-04:00

Tonight at dinner, Brooke was being a little fussy and irritable. She said that she just woke up in a fussy mood. So I said, there is no room for fuss-a-musses at the table. She responded: But Mommy, I am right here. There is room.

I already put this on FB, but wanted it here for the book. Earlier this week I heard crying followed by both girls running into the playroom. I asked them what was wrong and Audrey replied that "Brooke hurt us both." So to calm them both down I got them some ice to hold on their injuries (this is a great trick that totally distracts them from any injury at all.) Once they were calmer I asked them again what had happened. Brooke explained: We were doing our show and the amazing part was not so good.

They say the funniest things! I hope to do better about remembering them and writing them down.

Cousins - The Older Generation

2011-06-20T20:38:00.004-04:00

As I am sure I have put on here at some point, our beach vacation is with my dad's entire side of the family...a total of 19 people. I love it and the older I get the more I appreciate the time set aside for family. And since I am printing out my blog each year, this is the easiest place to put all the pictures that I want to make sure I keep....even if they include me in a bathing suit with no make-up.

With my identical cousin Bethany...we apparently both shopped at Land's End for our swimsuits this year.

With my sister Amy. Photo credit to John David, pretty good for a 9 year old.

With my cousin Kathryn - who is pregnant with TWINS!

And of course with my sweet hubby D!

Cousins - the Youngest Generation

2011-06-20T19:59:00.005-04:00

Love the tushie pictures! Here are the girls walking up to the beach holding "Baby" Vivian's hand

Audrey with cutie Cooper

A first - a picture of all the cousins playing together on the beach! That is Brooke who is buried under the sand.

On the swing with Will and John David (and Uncle Ed)

Posing in the sand with Mitchell and John David

There is a loft bedroom in our villas and this year the kiddos decided to have paper airplane throwing competitions from the bedroom into the living area.

Beach Beauties

2011-06-18T20:54:00.011-04:00

These are just some of my favorite pictures of Brooke and Audrey from our beach trip. I am going to do another post that has them with their cousins, but this is all about them!

Adorable Audrey!!

Beautiful Brookie!!

Best Friends Forever

Swim Suits

2011-06-14T15:36:00.006-04:00

I think the girls are so cute in swimsuits and so I may have gone a little overboard with their wardrobe this year. So since I took so many suits, I want to make sure that they are all represented here...(this is especially for you Stacy!)

Day 1: Matching Green(ish) Suits...they used to be kelly green but do to an unfortunate chlorine incident and they are now a light teal

Day 2: Audrey's is purple flowers and Brooke's is pink large gingham(ish). Poor Audrey, but I have much better pics of her in this suit for later

Day 3: Brooke's is princess (D thinks it looks like PJ's) and Audrey's is a sporty tankini (which I love!!)

Day 4: Audrey's is orange and pink flowers and Brooke's is brown a-symmetrical flowers (which I love!) They looked so super pretty this day.

Day 5: Audrey's is a-symmetrical Hello Kitty and Brooke's is brown with hearts. I did not take many pictures this day.

Day 6: matching tankinis. Tons of pictures in these which is unfortunate as the tops are too big on both of them. Lots of wardrobe malfunctions on this day

Beach Photo Shoot

2011-06-14T14:54:00.003-04:00

This year we had a fantastic trip to the beach for my family's annual trip. I have not had a chance to go through the 400+ pictures that I took this year. However, it was easy to go through the mandatory beach photo shoot pics. Here are the best of those. (which in my opinion are super good - though I really didn't mean for the pictures to be so gigantic but I am too lazy to re-upload them in a smaller size)

They were yelling POOP in this picture - thus the pure unadulterated joy on their faces.

Old Friends

2011-06-14T14:50:00.003-04:00

Over Memorial day weekend, we were able to see our dear friends Griff and Tracy from college who were up in the area visiting family. It was so fun to hang out and feel like we just picked up from where we left off in college...of course slightly different with the addition of 4 kids!

The kids played together fantastically - and the girls have asked when Emily and Gavin are going to come back to play. So sweet!

Computer Issues

2011-06-02T15:24:00.000-04:00

The reason for the giant void of blog postings is my computer. It is super old and is about on its last leg. One issue is the memory is full - so full, in fact, that I have not been able to download my pictures from my camera. And I basically rely on pictures to tell our life story. So no pictures = no posts. And my email will not open on the computer so I can't even email myself some pictures from my phone.

I have temporarily solved this issue by deleting all the pictures on my computer from 2006 and earlier. We have an external hard drive, so I feel like these are saved somewhere and with some knowledge I could recover them if so needed.

Last Day of Preschool

2011-06-02T14:52:00.004-04:00

Hooray!! I am now caught up - more or less.

Today was the last day of preschool, but on Tuesday they had outdoor day and we were invited to come at the end and see the kids playing. A couple of us even packed a lunch and had a picnic after school.

Walking into school at Kiss and Ride. The girls think that it is hilarious that they can put their bags around their necks.

Here are the girls with their teacher Mrs. Barnard

Here are the girls with their teacher Mrs. Hogan

Here is the class playing in the water area. Audrey is next to her crush Mason. She tells us all the time how much she LOVES Mason.

Getting our picnic set up with Abby and Delaney

We let the three girls play with our cameras as we were finishing up the picnic. Here are a couple of shots. So funny that they were taking pictures of each other taking pictures.

Half-Birthday Cupcakes

2011-06-02T14:47:00.003-04:00

Here are the pictures of the girls experiencing their first time licking the beaters and the bowl. We had made cupcakes for the girls half birthday at school and I made some homemade icing (that seriously was delicious!)

Running Running

2011-06-02T14:38:00.004-04:00

As previously mentioned, I did the couch to 5K program. On May 1st I did my first 5k. I was absurdly proud of myself. I managed to run the entire thing (a first) and I beat my goal of 40 minutes (my actual time was 37 min 16 sec). I have a picture of the girls that I did it with, but it is currently trapped on my phone. The girls and Darren came to cheer me on in my "Big Race." Super adorable.

A few weeks later, D had his Big Race - a half marathon down in Fredericksburg. It is part of the Marine Corps Marathon training series. So the girls and I loaded up and went with him to cheer him on (and swim in the indoor pool at the hotel). He was super fast and averaged a 7:19 pace for a total time of around 1 hour 36 minutes.

Loving on their Dad at packet pick-up and outside our hotel

A picture of D running - he is in the middle of the shot in a red shirt. This was around 12 miles.

And no road trip of ours would be complete without a meal at cracker barrel.

Water Fun

2011-06-02T11:12:00.002-04:00

We have our dance/gym class on Monday afternoons. Since the beginning of May, our routine has been to go to class, then to Ben and Jerry's for ice cream cones, and then out to the fountains to play. The girls have thus far not actually gotten into the fountains, but prefer to walk around them and occasionally put in a toe or a booty.

We have also been playing in our front yard with various sprinkler toys. Though the girls seem to prefer just the plain ole hose to anything else. How adorable is Audrey's tushie!!

This activity started out as just playing in the sandbox. The next thing I knew, pants were off and they were playing with the hose.

Luray Caverns

2011-06-02T11:05:00.003-04:00

Mother's Day weekend, we decided to head out west a little to see Luray Caverns. I am a huge fan of caves and was super excited about going. We convinced two other families to go with us and we had a great day in the caves and then picnicing for lunch.

Brooke was super cute listening to the guided tour.

Audrey was also super cute listening to the audio tour.

Family shots in the caves

Getting ready to picnic. One of the dads brews his own beer and D was in heaven!

Easter (finally)

2011-05-17T15:27:00.010-04:00

We dyed Easter eggs with our friends Abby and Nathan.

Then had a picnic and ate some of those eggs!

Then later that same day, we dyed our hollowed out eggs at home since we had to be very careful not to break them!

My mom's group had a hunt the Thursday before Easter. It was extremely chilly and windy that day.

Here are the girls filling up our cascarones (using the hollowed out egg shells) with birdseed and then gluing tissue paper on top to hold the birdseed inside.

And here they are smashing them on the Saturday before Easter!

Easter morning. We love our Peeps!!

Sweet sisters posing in their adorable Easter outfits

The egg hunt that we had at the Sturgis's house.

Looking at all their loot with the Grant boys (minus one of the twins)

Taking a wild ride on the hammock.

Half-Birthday

2011-05-13T15:05:00.005-04:00

Yesterday was the girls half birthday. And yesterday I did a whole long post about it. Today I came back to the computer to add a few things that I remembered, only to find that the post is suddenly and completely gone. (that wording totally sounds like Charlie and Lola) I am beyond irritated.

Three has definitely been the most interesting year so far. Some days are fantastic. Some days are far below fantastic. Yesterday was far far below. Not sure why either. Both girls were just off. Lots of drama, attitude, and crying.

My friend Erica came over this week and she summed it up by noting that Brooke is very expressive and certainly has a flair for the dramatic. Everything is drama-filled. Lots of hands on hips. Lots of "hummmphs." Lots of NO. Lots of "well then I am not going to do ___" or an equally popular version of "then I am going to stand/stomp/scream here until ___." I feel the preteen years are going to be very trying around here. And to be fair, Audrey provides her own fair share of back talk and sassiness. Hers is just a bit less dramatic.

Now that I have that out of my system (and it really is much milder than yesterday's description as I am not in the middle of it today) I should also say that three is so super fun. They are hilarious and full of surprises and so much fun to do stuff with. The most interactive age by far.

My plan for this post was to jot down all the things that I wanted to remember about this time in our lives. My brain barely functions any more (I am grateful that I at least started out with above average intelligence since I am sure that each day I am getting slightly dumber) so this is what I have right now:

The girls wake up between 6:15 and 7:15. They take a nap about 3 days a week. They are finally in bed between 8:15 and 9:00.
They love to watch their little TV shows. Brooke always gets so excited to have her "morning movie" A recent addition into the rotation is Word World.
The girls know how to spell and write their own names and spell the other's name. Brooke's writing is better than Audrey's but that is mainly because she has shown more interest and has therefore practiced more. (Audrey is too busy drawing her machines to write that much)
They enjoy asking us to name all the words that start with a certain letter. Audrey LOVES to ask us "name all the things that start with the letter P" so that she can answer "POOP!!" She finds it so funny.
Brooke is on a strike of the color yellow. She has decided that she does not like it and wants nothing to do with it...even eating yellow candy!
For mother's day the girls made me cards at school that said I love my mom because... Brooke's card said because she reads me books. Audrey's card said because she gives me M&M's.
We have always called Audrey our little accommodater. Recently she confirmed this. When we asked her who she wanted as her teammate she said "I pick the one that Brooke does not pick."
They love to tell jokes right now. It always starts with "Who wants to hear a joke?" Their jokes are funny only because they are so ridiculous. The main format of the joke is "why did the ___ cross the ___" Their one real joke is "how did the duck learn to fly? he just winged it" Unfortunately they use that same punch line for all sorts of jokes that are totally not appropriate...thus the humor to me and D.
Favorite games are Go Fish, the Egg Game, and Mommy /Daddy. Go Fish is the standard card game. The Egg Game is where we hide Easter eggs in 3 rooms and the girls hunt them. Their staging area is to wait in the bathroom - where they apparently put on shows for each other and various toys. So funny is that during the egg game frequently whenever they find eggs they say "There you are little buddy" to the eggs! And lastly the Mommy/Daddy game is when they will pretend to be either mommy or daddy or both and either one of them or some toys will be the baby. This is an extremely popular game. And let me tell you, the babies poop a ton in this game.
They both are still obsessed with middle names and ask everyone "what your middle name is?"
They are so cute 'reading' books now. It is amazing how well they remember specific phrases as well as the story. Currently love the Tilly and Friends little books

Finally finished

2011-05-12T14:47:00.000-04:00

I finally finished the Christmas post - and therefore all of 2010. I can finally buy my 2010 blog book. Hooray! So if you really want to see what we did in MS for Christmas, feel free to travel back to 2010.

Misc Pictures

2011-05-01T14:37:00.004-04:00

The girls love to draw - especially Audrey. Here is her collection of drawings of her favorite animals. (you probably have to click the picture to see them well)

Girls just wanna have fun! Brooke looks like a little 80's diva. This was her first time to wear a ponytail and it was so adorable on her.

We went to the circus and here is Audrey giving a high 5 to one of the guys on stilts. As an aside - this bunny shirt is Audrey's FAVORITE piece of clothing ever. When I went to put away the long sleeved shirts she cried and cried. So, we cut off the white part and it is now her favorite short sleeved shirt.

Pure joy doing a train down the slide with their friend Abby

Picnic-ing outside with Granddaddy before he left (after keeping the girls) We picnic outside in our front yard at least once a week. If the girls had their way we would do it at least once a day.

New York: Part 2

2011-04-26T15:37:00.010-04:00

On Monday, we continued our bus tour but this time we did the uptown portion of the tour.

Here are my uptown touristy shots...the apple store is all glass and you can see right through it. Very cool.

We had lunch at the Carnegie Deli where they serve these grossly enormous sandwiches.

I had signed up in February for tickets to The Late Show with David Letterman and they called us in April and we got into the taping. It was very exciting because (somehow) D and I were selected to be among the 20 to 30 "cool" people that got to sit in the first two rows. We ended up in the front row directly in front of Dave's desk. His guest that night (though the taping was at 3:30) was Alec Baldwin and some random music guest that no one had heard of.

At Rockefeller Center enjoying some delicious cupcakes from Magnolia's bakery

For dinner that night we went to Red Rooster in Harlem. It is Marcus Samuelsson's (of top chef masters fame) new restaurant. It was definitely the coolest/trendiest place that we went....ie we had to wait forever for our table even though we had reservations.

But the wait was clearly worth it, as I got to get my picture taken (by his daughter) with Chevy Chase. So funny - he was wearing a baseball hat but took it off for the picture.

Tuesday was super rainy and dreary. We had planned to go to the Statue of Liberty that day, but we apparently missed getting a ticket that would actually let you go into the statue. So since it was raining and we did not want to be all huddled up on a ferry to look at the outside of the statue, we turned around and headed back up toward Central Park and the museums there. We did not get in a car during our whole trip - we did only subway and walking. We were very proud of ourselves.

On the way to the museums, we came upon this little place for lunch. Wonderful food and drinks. During this trip D decided that he loved cappuccinos.

We went to the Guggenheim museum. Is it bad that I always think of Men In Black whenever I see the museum?

Dinner that night was at Carmine's. Food was good, but it was definitely our least favorite of the trip.

Then we went to see Rock of Ages...super fun Broadway show featuring all the best 80's rock music! It was very entertaining but did not seem very Broadway-ish.

Wednesday we took the train home. Everyone was in one piece! We brought the girls these little shirts and a stuffed green (girl) M&M that they love! Thank heavens that D insisted that we get them the same M&M. I wanted to get one yellow one. Brooke is currently anti-yellow. They have named them Emmie and Emma.

New York: Part 1

2011-04-25T20:41:00.012-04:00

April 9 - 13th, D and I took a trip to New York City! My dad and D's dad came up to watch the girls. It was wonderful to get away and do some sightseeing - though it should be noted, that New York in April is still not warm. Here is our trip in pictures.

We took the train up. Very fun and relaxing (and cheap!) way to travel. Disclaimer now: I took almost all of the pictures of the two of us, so please ignore my arm in the pictures and feel free to be impressed with my abilities!

D outside our hotel - which he was not a fan of. It was a small boutique hotel (read: did not have a bar or lounge which D did not enjoy). Our room was TINY. Seriously was a rectangle and was as wide as a queen sized bed. Not an exaggeration.

Saturday, our first night there, we had dinner at Tolouche - a Mexican restaurant- and then saw Wicked at the Gershwin Theatre. This is a picture of me drinking a blueberry margarita - delish! We really enjoyed Wicked a lot.

Sunday, we started the day with a run (a very slow run) in Central Park. D was pretty geeked up about it cause he was getting to run in Central Park and it was the first time we had ever run together. It was cute. (These pics are from my phone and I don't know how to make them bigger)

We spent the rest of the day touring around downtown/lower Manhattan on one of those hop on, hop off tours. It was cold on top of that bus! I am pretty sure that we kept Starbucks in business during our trip - we ate breakfast there everyday and had numerous drinks throughout the day to keep warm.

My tourist-y pictures of the major sights.

We ate lunch at Lombardi's in Little Italy. They supposedly are the first pizza restaurant in the US. It was so delicious. One of the best things we ate.

We walked about half-way across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Dinner that night was at one of Mario Batali's restaurants, Babbo. It was super yummy Italian food.

After dinner that night we went up to the top of the Empire State's Building. It was so pretty to see the city all lit up at night. Unfortunately it was so windy that you really only wanted to stand on 2 of the 4 sides!

This is now so long that I am going to split our trip into numerous posts!

Movie Morning

2011-04-25T20:35:00.002-04:00

My friend Lanette just finished remodeling her basement and now it is this beautiful giant playroom - complete with a projector for movies...can you tell I am just a little bit jealous? Anyway, she had a playdate for the kiddos to watch a movie at her house. The kids were super cute sitting and watching the movie - as long as they had popcorn to munch on. As the popcorn ran out, so did the attention span of the kids. Brooke and Audrey were basically the only 2 to make it all the way through the movie. I was so proud.

Bear Bus

2011-04-20T15:52:00.003-04:00

My friend Arria is the master at saving money and she found a deal to have a Bear Bus come to a playdate so that the kiddos could make a teddy bear. It was adorable - though extremely fast! Apparently 3 year olds like to work quickly and without slow careful consideration of choices.

Hopping on the bus. There were 8 kids making the animals.

Attacking the poor lady with all of their choices

The finished products: Oinky and Purple Bear Stuffy (not to be confused with a small green bear who is also named Stuffy) Not sure it is visible, but they also picked out little shirts for the animals.

Zoo

2011-04-20T14:20:00.000-04:00

Since the weather is finally getting nice(ish), we decided to take a trip to the zoo with our friends (a week or two ago). We all loaded up in the van so that we could ride together, which turned out to be a wise decision considering the drive there was an adventure in and of itself. But once we arrived, the zoo was wonderful and we all had a great time.

Group picture outside of the Small Mammal House: Brooke, Audrey, Abby, and Nathan

Looking at the lemurs? meerkats? prairie dogs? Something like that

Much discussion about whether that alligator (crocodile?) is actually real or just pretend

Looking at the giant panda - this was actually the first time that we had ever been to that part of the zoo. For some reason I thought that the zoo had gotten rid of the pandas so we never went there. Clearly I was very wrong.

Excuses

2011-04-16T13:38:00.004-04:00

She looks so angelic!

But look what can happen when she gets mad!

I am so far behind it is ridiculous. I feel like all these cute sayings are just passing me by without being recorded. And the excuse that I have is this: exercise.

I have been very fortunate to have been blessed with good genes or fast metabolism or something because heretofore I have not exercised...really, none at all. I played soccer in middle school and that was probably the last time I was moderately in shape. In college I took one aerobics class. And seriously skipped all that I could and still get an A.

As 30 passed me by several years ago, it because apparent that those good genes and metabolism had taken me as far as it was going to. So when you combine that with the fact that I really have no legit excuse (ie the girls are now in preschool two days a week and we still pay to get our house cleaned) I started my "running" program back in Feb. I am doing the couch to 5K program - though it claims to be for couch potatoes, it clearly does not mean 20+ year couch potatoes. Nonetheless, I have been doing the program every Tues, Thurs, and Sat morning for about 8 weeks.

In theory I will be running my first 5K on May 1st. I am certain that I will not be able to run the whole thing - the hills here are brutal. If only I had started this back in flat TX.

So this is a long explanation about why I am so far behind. I have lost a big chunk of my free time to this ridiculous pursuit of fitness. Can you tell that I am still not a fan?

A bridge by our house that the girls LOVE to run across.

Scootering Around

2011-04-07T16:23:00.004-04:00

We have these little tiny bikes and trikes for the girls. Brooke really likes to pedal her bike around and Audrey is much less enthused. So I decided that I would get them a scooter and a big girl bike. My thought being that Audrey will scooter and Brooke ride her bike. A few weeks ago we got the scooter together and took it for a spin. As it turns out, Brooke is WAY better at it than Audrey. These pictures are from the first day and since then Audrey has hardly been on it at all and Brooke has gotten really good at it.

Brooke concentrating very hard!

Audrey scootering around the cul-de-sac.

Stopping for the all important make-up break! They love to carry their little lip glosses around in the pouch and stop frequently to reapply.

And of course for the die hard fans (grandparents mainly), I am posting the videos of them trying it out for the first time.

Audrey first and then Brooke. As you can tell by our clothes, it is still ridiculously cold up here for it to be in April. If you look closely, you may notice that the girls are wearing their ski helmets.

Princess Party

2011-04-05T15:31:00.005-04:00

The girls went to their first Princess Party for their friend Lorelei's 3rd birthday. It was too cute to see all of the girls dressed up as Princesses. They first had a little dance party, followed by "the real Snow White", then some face and fingernail painting, and then some bouncing in the jumping castle. It was quite fun! The girls like the Princesses, but they really only know the names of 4 (Snow White, Cinderella, Belle, and Ariel) and they certainly don't know the stories or any of the songs that go along with the whole princess phenomena. I did learn all of the other princesses' names so I feel much more educated now. Who knew that Sleeping Beauty has multiple names?

Pre-party line-up. We learned the name associated with Audrey's dress, but she kept calling it her Tijuana dress.

Rocking out to some dance tunes

Audrey doing her version of the limbo!

The girls were not fans of the Real Snow White. And by not fans, I mean they hid and clung to my legs...far, far away from Snow White.

What they were fans of was the cake!

They did brave some interaction with Snow White to get their hands (rather than face) painted.

Bowling

2011-03-24T15:28:00.005-04:00

My mom's group went bowling last Friday. It was AWESOME! The kids were just so adorable and they really seemed to enjoy it - though one game was clearly enough. And they did a surprisingly great job of taking turns and waiting.

Just a picture to give an overview of what it looked like with several lanes of three-year old bowlers. So funny!

Carrying their balls by themselves. They were 6 pounders - and look at the cute little bowling shoes!

Though it was also fun to help each other carry the ball.

They had these little ramps that they kids could push the balls down (to make sure that the ball was going fast enough to actually knock down pins) and they put up the gutter guards.

The girls from their lane: Audrey, Brooke, Lorelei, and Falyn (who was the winner of the 4)