Random April

Here are a few random shots from April. They didn't go with any particular group, but I still wanted to share them.

Claire loves to talk on her various pretend cell phones. She always tilts her head to the side and tries to balance it on her shoulder. I'm not sure where she learned that :)

This picture was actually taken on March 29th. This is a picture of Andrew and the birthday card he made for Natalie. He took care to include all of the family members in the drawing. I asked him what all of the dots at the bottom of the picture were and he said, "flies". WHAT??? Yes, he was serious - flies.

Danny had a tradition of racing Andrew to the bathroom to brush his teeth. Now Claire wants to race as well. Here they are in official starting position in the hallway.

This is typical Claire - eating food in a room other than the kitchen, making a big mess out it, and thinking the whole thing is really funny.

This night Andrew did not want to go to bed. He kept getting out of bed and coming into the office where I was working. He came in one last time to tell me how he was NOT tired and sat on the ground. Moments later, it turned around because it was quiet, and he was fast asleep on the carpet.

Honestly, I don't know what these are pictures of. Natalie may have signed the kids up for some sort of cult. There are a whole bunch of these pictures.


It was really hot for a couple of days in April, so the kids were playing in the water outside. It is the small things that make Andrew happy.

I bought this dress for Claire when she was a baby and it finally fits her. She looks soooo cute!

When one of the kids wears their Disneyland shirt, they both need to. Claire loves to sit by Chris, point at him and say, "Baby Criiiissss"!

Both of my kids are light sleepers, so there aren't many pictures of them sleeping. Claire always sleeps on top of her favorite blanket. She tries to say blankie, but it comes out sounds like bunny.

11 Years

We spent our 11 year anniversary at the the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay. The setting was absolutely gorgeous! Before you think that we spent the kids college fund on the night, I actually received a gift certificate for the stay. It was overcast when we arrived on Saturday afternoon, but we still enjoyed ourselves without kids! We had a wonderful dinner at the restaurant in the hotel. We had an ocean view room which also overlooked some of the golf course.

At the gazebo on the right hand side they serve hot chocolate at night for $9 per cup!

It was beautifully sunny on Sunday morning. We walked down to the beach which is a nice walk along the bluff.

A view of the golf course that Danny didn't get to play - maybe next time.

Happy 11 years honey!

Even plastic dogs need food....

Hannah's cat food is an endless source of fun for Claire and Elaina. Since they keep getting in trouble for trying to eat it themselves or dump the food into the water, they decided to put the food to good use. Why not try to feed it to the plastic dog?

Since the dog is barely taller than the bowl, each morsel must be individually fed to the dog. This causes sharing issues because there is only one dog.

Ahhh...all finished. But wait, what is this? Is it leftovers for us to share??? Now the cat food must be put away because the thrill of feeding the dog has worn off. It is now more fun to wildly splash the water all over the floor.

Country girls

First of all, I would like to say that my sister's talents are seemingly never ending. I was downloading pictures last week and I came across these lovelies that Natalie took. Claire and Elaina are either at each other's throats or happy as can be. I truly believe that they, along with Andrew, would be thrilled to live out in the country with lots of dirt, animals, water, and room to run. Me, not so much.


Here they are sitting in the dirt on the backside of our house looking at the flowers on the bush. Claire's nose is running, but that is part of the authenticity of the pictures. This is how they really are - they aren't clean, neat little girls.

Seriously - when did she get so big? She looks sooooo old to me in this picture.

Who knew flowers could be so much fun? Here they are on the side of the house hanging out like the best of friends (or best of cousins?). Elaina's scrunched up smile cracks me up.

I love her, I love her not, I love her.....

I guess we know who the daredevil is. There are no pictures of Claire doing this. I look forward to the summer when they can spend more time outside exploring and having fun together.

Easter fun

The long awaited Easter Bunny finally arrived at our house on Sunday. Andrew couldn't have been more excited. Claire didn't really get it at first, but she soon caught on.

It is really hard to get them to pose together, so this is as good as I could get. The Easter Bunny brought Claire a Barney book, a lift the flap book (since she has ripped the flaps of some of the others), and a My Little Pony. Andrew ended up with a collection of Star Wars coloring books and a bubble gun.
Claire insisted on carrying her blanket around while hunting for eggs. This slowed her down in the hunt.

Meanwhile, Andrew raced around the house looking for eggs. I kept telling him to leave some for Claire, but it was too tempting for him. Then he saw that there were eggs outside. Super cool!!!

After all of the eggs were found I tried to get them to pose next to each other again. Andrew squats down so that he is more at her level, but then Claire thinks she needs to do the same. Andrew's bucket was overflowing and Claire only had a few, but that was fine with her.

After church I tried to get her to pose next to the flowers in her Easter dress. Yeah, not going to happen. She wouldn't look at me! All she wanted to do was race around the yard in her pretty dress.

And for the finale - another attempt at a pose together. Not great, but you get the idea. We headed over to my parent's house for a huge Easter dinner. Claire only wanted to eat candy - no ham, potatoes, or anything. She really loves jellybeans. In all we had a really good Easter and I'm sure that next year Claire will give Andrew a run for his money on finding the eggs.

Flowers

We like to plant flowers in the backyard every spring. Andrew likes to help plant and, of course, water them.

Claire kept putting dirt back into the holes that Andrew made.

No one should garden without a purse! This is one of her favorite birthday presents. However, it has also been used as a weapon.

Andrew insisted on using gardening gloves, and mine happened to be outside, thus the pink gloves.

Claire is 2!

Today Claire is 2 years old. The time sure does fly by.

2007

2009

A Party for Claire and Elaina

Claire and Elaina were born exactly one month apart in March and April of 2007. We had a joint party last year and decided to continue the tradition this year. Natalie designed a super cute invitation again.

We planned a BBQ at my house for 11:30. Due to Elaina's trip to the ER in the middle of the night, the party was switched to 5:30 last Saturday night. Other than having to take Andrew to Urgent Care, the party was really fun.

Here are the girls in their matching "Birthday Girl" shirts enjoying their hot dog dinner. Everyone else had steak, but they prefer the good stuff.

We had a hard time deciding what type of cake to get for the girls. Since they are both into Barney these days, we decided to do that. I briefly thought that I could get one of those Barney cake pans and decorate it myself, but I quickly came to my senses. I purchased a plain white cake from Costco and my mom said that she could do Barney. And did she ever! They girls loved it! He was almost too cute to eat.

Claire seemed a bit overwhelmed with all of the people and what she was supposed to do with the cake.

Then they decided to take a few samples of the icing just to make sure it was okay for everyone else to eat.

Delicious! At least Claire ate the cake this year, last year she wouldn't try it. They both received lots of gifts. Her favorite gift was a ride in car. She couldn't even wait for Danny to get it all together the next day.

Sick kids

I should have realized what was going to happen. They were both coughing and had runny noses for the last week. But I didn't, and this is how I missed Claire's 2nd birthday party.

Here they are, the two lovely bottles of Amoxicillin. It started on Saturday night one hour before Claire's birthday party. Andrew started crying and wouldn't stop. He finally said that his ear hurt really bad. So I was nominated to take him to urgent care while Danny stayed behind to get out all of the food for the party. Andrew was not happy to be going to the doctor and told me that repeatedly in the car on the way there. She looked in his left ear first and said, "yep, there is an infection". I said that that wasn't the ear that he was complaining about :( So, he ended up with two ear infections. Andrew said he didn't want to take medicine and the doctor said that they could make it bubble gum flavored to which he replied (while crying) "I can't have bubble gum!" We both laughed and she said that they could make it another flavor if he wanted.

I got a call from my house saying that they were about to have the birthday cake. I said to wait because we were on the way home. Moments later Andrew threw up all over himself in the back seat. I didn't have anything to clean it up with, so he hung out in the back seat with it all over himself. I felt so bad, but I was in such a hurry to get out the door so that we wouldn't miss the party. I got him home and cleaned up and he didn't come out of his room. He went right to sleep even with the party going on in the next room.

Sunday night Claire went down hill fast and was up several times during the night. So I took her in on Monday morning. Again I heard, "Yep, there is an infection" - twice! My kids do not like to take medicine, so it has been challenging to get them to take it twice a day. Only 6 more days for Andrew and 7 for Claire. Oh, and by the way, Natalie's kids have them too. Elaina has two, but lucky Chris only has one. It has been a really long week for Natalie. I think she deserves a trip to the spa!