Hot chocolate is delicious

Whether you like it with whipped cream on top, or whipped cream and a strawberry marshmallow.

A lazy Saturday

Banana pancakes with Daddy and monster slippers during nap. What more could one need?

Oh good

...now she can reach everything.

#stuffAvysays

Our neighbors just got back from a trip to Pennsylvania. Avy, seeing them through the window: "Jeanie is back from the Easter Coast?"

#stuffAvysays

Me: "Girls, I need you to behave."

Avy: "I am! I'm being the haeve!"

#stuffAvysays

"I don't like pineapple because it makes my throat... and my nose... and my EYEBROW hurt!"

#stuffAvysays

Avy: "Is Daddy's job to push buttons?"

Me: "I'm sure Daddy pushes some buttons, literally and figuratively, at work, yes."

Avy: "Then I can do Daddy's job! I like pushing buttons."

And yes it's true, no laptop is safe from her.

A nice day at home

Unstructured but fun :)

I turn my back for two seconds....

We love this tunnel!

The girls built a zoo. I said I was glad to see the tigers, penguins, and walruses all getting along.

A pillow fort! And reading together in quiet time.

Rainbow experiment

We've been doing some rainbow activities lately that show how new colors are combined from various other ones (and how when you add all the colors, you get brown. We get brown a lot.). The girls have little colored pellets they can add to their bath that they love. But those are only every few days and only at most two colors combined.

This experiment let them set it up then see the slow change as colors merged with each other. Easy to set up too, just water, mason jars, food coloring and paper towels, but the results were vivid.

Right after adding the colors and the paper towels. Didn't get a shot of the girls doing this since, food coloring. But they remembered which colors they'd made later!

After about a day. I was really impressed at how vivid the colors were; only purple looked a bit muddy. Green was by far the best: Ellie kept saying over and over, "Yellow, and blue.... make green!!"

Nature Pals Exchange update

Our Nature Pals' package arrived! I posted earlier what we sent, and we've been eagerly awaiting our package from Georgia. I was impressed, Avy knew where Georgia was on the map (they're little sponges now, I swear). The girls were very interested to see how different the pine cones and pine needles were from our local Douglas firs, and we had a lot of fun cracking open the black walnuts they'd included. Thanks friends!

Some days are just incandescent

We've had a rough couple of weeks here as we settle back into routine - Ellie has several times told me that she "likes it when Dad is on vacation and we go in the RV." Me too, kid. Today was one of those pockets of sun in the storm though, and gave me hope that we'll be returning to normalcy soon.

It was laundrypocalypse day, and Ellie needed to make her bed. Avy offered to help carry her sheets/blankets up from downstairs, then brought my sheets up too. I heard her talking to herself for a while and went to check on her. She was making up my bed (note the bed is already made up underneath ;):

Lily is really just good as gold. Calm girl.

Calm girl with a funny face :)

After a superb morning all around, we took the girls to their dance class while the babies and I hung out at the rock climbing wall. Auntie Maureen and Katie, I'm starting them early!

Once we got back, the babies went down for nap and the girls had their quiet time. I heard Ellie at one point say "You want to read?" which is her motto for everything these days. I cracked a peek; that's Avy "reading" to Ellie:

Trying out costumes in prep for Halloween! Theo could take or leave it.

Ellie just doesn't hold still for pictures.

Nope.

Not quite.

Still wiggley.

And blurry.

Almost!

Another funny face. It runs in the family :)

Avy holds still but, who can tell? When I asked her what she was, she told me, "a coffee dancer lamppost."

What a sweet blur I have!

#stuffElliesays

Ellie wanted to know where our neighbor's car was; I told her it was in the garage, then asked, "Do you know why we don't put our cars in our garage?"

Ellie: "Because we have so many bikes!"

Avy: "SO many bikes."

...you're not wrong kids. :)

A full day

Firstly, behold this gloriousness. This is is a diaper bag with only one size of diaper. That's right, we're potty trained! Thank goodness!

We trucked over to toddler time for a couple hours of play. They almost sorta kinda fit!

This toddler time has a bouncy house! It's hard to tell from the pic but the babies loved it.

Once home we put the babies down for nap then made cookies.

Mmm, cookies.

Dave's birthday gift to me. I have a brand now!

I love it. And it holds coffee too! It's perfect.

Ellie's a character

Holding the air compressor while Dad works on his bike. Avy was helping too but the air compressor is loud for her - she goes inside for that part.

A reader like her sisters

I walked into the living room not realizing Lily was there, it was so quiet. She had a book in front of her and kept turning the pages back and forth, back and forth with little "hmm" noises to herself. Never took a bite once!

All about rainbows

I wouldn't say it was my intention per se, but this day was all about rainbows. We read books about rainbows, we blended colors together with our acrylic blocks (love those things!), and we did several activities about rainbows.

This one came as a kit: you placed the tissue paper all over your bag and then used a dropper to get it all wet. The girls loved this.

Then we hung them out to dry. The girls wanted to use the droppers more, so...

...we did this set of experiments!

Ellie found it frustrating that the bubbles wouldn't join together in the baby oil.

Avy's solution: add more water!

Then we got to the vinegar and baking soda part. Easily the favorite :)

Even the babies had a rainbow day - we pulled out our tunnel for the first time and the babies thought it was the best thing ever.

Random picture of Avy napping because her pose cracks me up so much!