Summer Party

I haven't gotten out very much since the babies were born, but I took a little break from the babies to take Nicole and Dano to a swim birthday party.

A friend had rented an inflatable water slide. Dano and Nicole jumped right in, no fear and started playing on the thing. It is quite a testament to how far Nicole has come. She is so brave in new situations and tries new things all the time as of late. I am so proud of her.

 Dano kept torturing a neighbor boy by squirting him with the squirt gun. His parents were not concerned though and kept egging Dano on to do it again, so I just let it go.

Nicole found a hula hoop and spent a good fifteen minutes trying to get it to work. She was so cute doing it though she wasn't very successful. But, she had fun doing it.

It was only an hour out of the house, but it was good to get out for a little bit. But, at the end of an hour, I was ready to get home to the babies. I find myself very nervous when I am away from them, even when they are home with Daddy. I just am not ready to be away for long periods of time.

Snow Fun!

Some time in December, it snowed... and then we played in it. That is really all I remember about this. Other than it was really cold. And I made those brimmed hats for the kids.

Dano is so photogenic no matter what face he is making.

Outside Fun

Over the summer, Nicole got really into this show called "Peep and the Big Wide World," which features kids doing various science experiments. Nicole really wanted to try this one where you freeze things in ice and then pour hot water on them to melt the ice.

I put Mr. Potato Head parts in Dixie Cups and froze them. Then I cut off the cups and we took the ice blocks outside.

The kids were interested for a few minutes but when the ice cubes weren't melting fast enough, they gave up and let the sun melt them. It wasn't as entertaining a project as Nicole wanted it to be.

So we started doing other things while waiting for the sun to melt the cubes. Like watering the tree.

And watering our brothers.

Until they finally melted... and Dan was sad.

And then we raced cars down the slide cuz that is the logical thing to do.

And we saw a snake that lives under our porch. It was a big day.

Just Couldn't Stop

One of Nicole's favorite things to do is draw and sometimes she just can't stop. Even when she is exhausted.

Pumpkin Land!

This year, we got to do Pumpkinland with Nicole's preschool class. Which means that we got in for free! It was a lot of fun going on this school field trip with Nicole and seeing how she interacts with her teachers and classmates.

For those who don't know, Pumpkinland is a local Nursery that has a halloween attraction for kids complete with corn maze, animals, and lots of pumpkins. The kids love it! We go every year.

Nicole's favorite part was the bunnies. She asks me at least every other day for a pet rabbit. She wants one so bad.

Dano liked the rabbits too, just not with the ferocity that Nicole did. She said to me, "Mommy, can we get a real rabbit? Not a pretend one?"

Here is my picture that I take every year, but I had to do it more quickly then I would have liked because Nicole's whole class was behind us.
You can see pictures from previous years at pumpkinland here.

Nicole and Dan spent a large amount of time feeding the chickens corn that had been pilfered from the corn maze. They loved it!

I really liked this baby cow. He was very friendly and kept trying to lick me when I walked by. His name was Sir Wellington. He will make a delicious meal some day.

I didn't get a whole family picture this year because we were constrained by the time table of the class, but we had a lot of fun at Pumpkinland. Like we always do.