Our Kind of Baby Swing

We've never really owned a baby swing, but turns out you don't need one when the weather is nice and siblings are willing to push you!

 

Abigail's Date Night

For her first date night, Abigail came shopping at Sam's Club with me and picked out flowers and a soda for herself :). 

Shopping may not seem that fun to you or me, but for the last year and half Abigail hasn't been able to go to the store basically at all and she always begs to. So this time, she did! 

After dropping the stuff off, we went over to the lake by the Discovery Center to feed the ducks. But we explored around a little first! This is some kind of monument to helium? I can't remember the specifics.

And turns out the museum has a dinosaur exhibit right now, with a couple of huge dinos outside!

Then we went on a walk all the way around the lake (took at least 30 minutes), stopping to feed the ducks as we went. 

Some of them got pretty aggressive, mostly the geese, and started coming at us right after this picture. So on we went! 

We used the bridge to skip the last little (smelly) part of the lake since it was getting late!

 

It was a fun evening with my girl!

Hoot

The kids were playing outside one morning and came running in to tell me they'd found a bird that was super nice and would let them pet it. Needless to say, I had to check it out. 

Sure enough, there it was, just sitting in the grass. 

Cora instantly named it "Hoot" (one of Seth's favorite books; yes, it's about an owl....). 

I figured it's wing or something was broken, but could see no visible problems. It just sat there as they continued to "pet" it. I told them to stop because they were undoubtedly freaking it out. Then I tried to think of what we could do. We have several cats that prowl through our yard and I wasn't too keen on the idea of the kids watching Hoot get eaten. But what do you do with a bird that won't fly????

Answer: let Seth grab it. I tried to stop him, but wasn't fast enough and he reached out and grabbed the bird. That was all it took. Hoot took off and flew to the backyard light. He perched there for a while and we kept checking on him.  

I have no idea why he sat in the grass and let the girls touch him when he really could fly but was very relieved when he flew! We watched him sit there for a while and then he left. All's well that ends well? 

Halle has some Fun!

We decided to start doing one-on-one date nights with the kids and Eve got to go first, but apparently Andrew took no pictures. She went with him to play soccer with a group of his friends then they grabbed a bite to eat. Next up was Halle's turn and she came to Hobby Lobby with me to pick a present for her friend Lucy's upcoming birthday party! (And since she loves the store as much as I do, I managed to get some ideas for her birthday too!)

She got to pick out one thing from the store that night and she picked the elf (seen in the previous post). Then we stopped and got her a happy meal before heading home to let her stay up late and watch a movie with Dad and Mom!

The next day was her friend's party and I think she had a good time? Lucy's mom sent me these pictures. And also told me that Halle was so well behaved (sounds like everyone else was being pretty wild), that she let Halle play with their fancy dollhouse that kids normally don't get to use. 

Halle was pretty excited to tell me about it!

She wasn't the only one having fun!

And from Halle's 2nd grade class in October the teacher sent these pictures home!

Pancakes Make Everything Better

Especially when they're puffy!

And hot chocolate doesn't hurt, either....just ask the elf! (This is Halle's personal stuffed toy, NOT to be confused with a family Elf on the Shelf which we do not and will NEVER have.)

The Girls Take a lot of Pictures of Boyd….(And I do too….)

I tried to recreate a pose from Seth two years earlier....I think Boyd (second) just ended up looking like an alien compared to Seth. 

Since she's home all day, Abigail is the one who takes the most pictures of Boyd - mostly selfies with the two of them. Lots, and lots, and lots of selfies. 

Eve put Seth's cowboy hat on Boyd and said, "Howdy, folks. Today I'll be teachin' y'all to herd cattle. Yeehaw!" in her best Texan accent. It was awesome. You probably had to be there. 

We love this boy so much!!!! (And Abigail gets the credit for probably 2/3rds of these pictures.)