Tulip Festival

One of the things we love about Portland is the various festivals that happen here.  In April is the Wooden Shoe Farm Tulip Festival.  We had a gorgeous Saturday with blue skies.

Of course, we had to get pictures of our kids in the wooden shoes.

Babies were really excited to be there.  They really love being outside.  It's kind of a 2-person job to get both babies smiling and looking at the camera at the same time, especially when there are colorful flowers around and lots of people watching.

When we take pictures like this one, we often get a small crowd watching the two happy little animated babies.  There was at least 1 person snapping photos along with us.  I sometimes tell people having twin babies is like bringing the traveling circus along!

Kate and Liam LOVE being thrown in the air.  Since Jacob and Claire didn't as much, I have probably thrown Kate and Liam twice as much as I regularly would.  Also, it's a good workout!

We were reminded just how sensitive to the sun our two little redheads are - even April sun in Oregon - as they both ended up with a little pink on their cheeks, even though Liam spent much of the day wearing (and trying to take off) a hat.

There were lots of different colors of tulips.  The yellow ones were the fullest and from a distance looked the most brilliant.  There were some interesting dark colored, almost black tulips.

They had a couple steam powered tractors.  Jacob was quite interested in those... okay, I thought they were pretty cool too.  All were functioning, and a few were moving around in the fields.

Kiddos got to take a little ride in the wooden shoe around the farm.  Since it was not long after Jacob's surgery, we were a little worried about the dust, but it worked out just fine and he didn't get dust in his eye.

We thought it would be funny to take a picture of babies here.  I think I'm holding both!

Both Liam and Kate don't mind sitting directly on the grass, which is a big difference from how Jacob and Claire would do anything they could to keep their feet and hands away!  Often, we'll catch Liam and Kate pulling grass and either eating it or throwing it.

Kate was really happy in her backpack

Dani was happy to have the smaller child!

 Both Jacob and Claire have new poses they were trying out that day apparently, as seen below and in other pictures.

Right before we left for the tulip festival, we found a long-lost camera in the pocket of Dani's kid-carrier hiking backpack.  The batteries still worked, so we let Jacob take the camera.  He ended up taking about 100 pictures in pretty short order.  Below are 2 of the pictures that turned out pretty good (there were a couple more).

The subjects of Jacob's pictures included people not looking, the tractor doing the hayride (there were lots of that one), the sky, the sun, the ground, Dani's hip, my hip, a 7Up cup, and other random things.  It was pretty funny to go through his pictures.