When Grandma and Grandpa Came

Ok, I am so far behind and I put about a million pictures on my computer today, so I apologize for the abundance of pictures, I actually left quite a few out!  Anyhow, my parents came to visit a couple of weeks ago for about 10 days and we had a great time.  We packed a bunch into the time they were here.
The day after they got here we left for Berlin, OH...Amish country.  I didn't actually take any pictures in Berlin, but I got a picture of the chocolate pretzel the Grandpa bought for Claire at the Outlet Mall on the way (by the way we got some great deals at the outlets).  In Amish country we ate and bought huge amounts of cheese, cream cheese, jerky, fudge, and baked goods. We also went to a bunch of the shops and ate dinner at a Swiss Chalet type restaurant.  It was Jared's birthday... wow I really am so far behind.
From Berlin we headed to Kirtland, OH so the parents could see some church history sights.  Jared and I tried to join them for the tour, but Jacob and Claire wanted nothing to do with it.  It was raining while we were there (Jacob had a little pants accident, so he is wearing pj pants).


We went to a Reds game on the Monday after our weekend trip (picture above) and the Reds actually pulled off a win, it was a good time!  We also took a trip to the zoo while they were here.  The peacock was so happy to see us!

Grandpa and Jacob, I am pretty sure they were looking at the baby rhino.

There are elephants in the background if you look real hard. It was a great day for the zoo with great weather and we saw tons of animals, Jacob and Claire really are loving the zoo now.
We also took a trip to the children's museum while they were here and we went out for dinner at a great place called 'Grand Finale'...awesome desserts.  We celebrated Mom's birthday and Jared's birthday while they were here.  My dad also finally got the chance to get the sundae he has been dreaming about since his first trip to Graeter's: a brownie, a scoop of chocolate chocolate chip ice cream and hot fudge...he says it is proof that there is no such thing as too much chocolate.
Jacob and Claire really had a great time playing with Grandma and Grandpa and looked for Grandpa every morning for a little while after they left.

It's Official

We booked the tickets last night and I am SOOOOO excited.  We are going to Cancun in September!  (Actually our hotel is in Playa Del Carmen, not Cancun). I have been to Canada once and other than that have not been outside of the country, I have my little passport just waiting for a stamp and now I will finally get one (even if it only is Mexico).  We were on the phone with our friends Jim and Mel last night for quite some time picking the best price/best vacation combo and we finally settled  on where we are going and we can't wait!  Jim and Mel live in Oregon and we haven't seen them in quite awhile so we are really excited to go on a vacation with them.  It will be short, but we decided we will pack as much as we can into our 5 day, 4 night stay, we even have the same flight into and out of Cancun so it works out perfectly.  Lets all just hope that there aren't any hurricanes in the area while we are there!!!!  I have also never stayed all-inclusive which I am really excited about.  Oh, and did I mention, we are going without our kids...I love it!

This weekend we have our trip to Red River Gorge with Matt and Camie, and Rob and Holly and all of our respective children, we are really excited and I promise I will actually post some pictures!

Now that our vacations are beginning I promise I will get out of my blogging stupor and I will post some of the things that I am so far behind on, maybe tomorrow I will get the pictures up from my parents' trip here.

Journaling

I am sooo behind on blogging because my parents came to visit for 10 days! We had a lot of fun and there are blogs to come on our activities while they were here, but until I put the pictures on the computer I need to journal a couple of little things about my kiddos. Jacob never ever ever never walks...he runs (or jumps), it is really like he is incapable of walking. He is also super affectionate and gives so many hugs and kisses, mostly unsolicited. Yesterday at the park he hugged some random mommy, it was hilarious and she just couldn't get over it. He is very high energy and very intense, lately I wake up to him screaming "NO!" at his sister from his crib every morning (and as is tradition she breaks down bawling after every "NO!"). He frequently is asking "HELP YOU" which is his way of asking for help. It is hilarious when he needs help because he starts calmly asking "help you" and it quickly gets more frantic "help you, Help you, Help You, HELP YOU", someday he will learn that it is "help me."

Claire is our little princess and she is quite sensitive to every grunt, scream, or holler made by her brother. She is sneaky too, she can provoke her brother pretty well but she always careful to look around to make sure she is clear before doing it, she also will sometimes break down crying when she thinks no one is paying attention because she can usually get Jacob into trouble. She loves to say "okay" when she knows you understand her, for example today she wanted me to "help you" (she learned it from her brother) with the "choo choo"and when I said "you want mama to help you with your choo choo?" she quickly went from frantic to a cheery "OKAY!" She also likes to say "Oh Boy" when she is excited; yesterday we went to playgroup at the park and as we were walking from the car to the playground she exclaimed "Slide, Oh Boy!"

Both of my kids scream "Fry!" (actually it is more like "fwy") every time we pass a building that resembles a fast food drive thru (I promise I don't really feed them fast food often). They love to point out every airplane they hear and they have to say "bye bye airplane" before they can move on with their day.

There are so many funny things that they are doing and so much they are discovering, they try to repeat everything and are starting to repeat us as we say family prayers. I will journal more as I think about their funny things

Close to Hooray #2

We almost had another hooray during bathtime. Claire told Dani she had to go #2 - but it 'fell' a few inches short and turned into an 'uh oh.'

We're coming to the realization that potty-training does not mean that we get to stop cleaning up messes. It just changes the form of cleanup!

Hooray and other random ramblings!

We will start with the Hooray!  Last night as always is tradition (I married into a big tradition family and my kids have already picked up on that), Claire sat on her little potty before getting in the tub.  This time she actually went peepee in the potty!  Hooray for Claire.  I am not really sure she is ready for all out potty training yet, but it was a great first victory and she was so proud of herself.

We went to an all  you can eat pizza place last week, our kids love pizza and they still eat free there.  While we were there we got the kids some balloon animals, they loved them.  Above you can see how intrigued Claire was with the balloon twisting.  Below you can see the results, a bear on a heart and a monkey on a tree.  About 30 seconds later Jacob drug his tree along the sidewalk and he suddenly only had a monkey.  On the way home Claire decided to be a pest and kept hitting Jacob with her big heart which he was really unhappy about and he couldn't really even fight back since he popped the biggest part of his balloon sculpture. (It was a little funny though because Claire was laughing really hard and Jacob was whining).
This is one of the things I did this weekend, it was for Jared's little brother's prom date, I didn't see it on her but I sure hope it ended up matching her grape colored dress and his gold tux.  
This is another thing I did this weekend.  Yep, I scraped the frosting off of almost an entire box (or package I guess) of Oreos, then I crushed the Oreos.  I only resorted to this after trips to 4 different grocery stores to find the boxed Oreo crumbs which apparently don't exist anymore since they have started making their pre-made crusts.  All of this was for that chocolate mousse cake, but despite all of the work (even outside of the crust) it was delicious and I am sure I will make it again someday.

Murder! Oh My!

It is July, 1940. The German troops are about to enter Paris. The roads south are a hopeless snarl; the trains are full and one cannot find space aboard them. Yet to remain in the city and see her brutalized by the Nazis will not be a pleasant thing. An anonymous letter arrives, offering you passage aboard a government train heading for the relative safety of Southern France. During the trip, murder is discovered and the passengers must decide who amongst them has committed the crime.


Here are the suspects:
Mary K. Trairie (the American reporter) and Malcolm R. Conntint 'Mal' (the gangster) (and their little girl, even though their characters are not connected). Mal also took on the nickname of K-Fed for the night.
Barbara Z. Enhussie(daughter of the French Perfume King) and RAF Group Captain Weyland W. Awfcorce 'Wey' (The Pilot)
Princess Idelle Chattre (Princess) and Khover T. Ageante (Secret Agent)
Duke Swazhe B. U. Klare (Duke) and Belinda Screete (American dress maker)
We are so glad that we have friends that are not opposed to getting all dressed up and pretending to be someone else for a night. (For any friends who didn't get in on this one, but would love to be someone else for a night, I am already searching for the next mystery, we may have to try a double cast party next time.) I have to point out that my amazing dress actually once belonged to Jared's Granny, it was perfect! We had quite the time trying to unravel the mystery while eating our French menu of crab quiche, french bread, salad (not so french), and chocolate mousse cake (worth all of the work). It was fun to learn the dirty secrets we all had and eventually uncover the murderer. So whodunit? ...I will have to keep that secret in case you ever have the opportunity to solve the mystery yourself, but you tell me, who do you think dunit?

Climbers

We took these videos of our kiddos climbing on their birthday at the park by the bike trail.  They  did a pretty good job and Claire's "WHOA" makes me laugh every time.  Jacob always jumps when he is excited about something.  We thought uncle T would be so proud of his climbing niece and nephew.

Holy Cow! Happy Birthday!

Ok, So I tried to post on their actual birthday but blogger was not cooperating, so we are a few days late, but here it goes!  I can't believe that this picture was 2 whole years ago, when I woke up Friday I told Jared "at this time 2 years ago I was going 'owie owie owie owie'".  

I also cannot believe that Jacob was ever this tiny, two years ago he also had the tiniest little voice (anyone who knows him now would never believe it).
Claire was tiny too, but she always had big cheeks!  
We celebrated all day on Friday; it was birthday number 2 for 2!  We started with the special breakfast sent from Aunt Peepee (my sister Kaci).  I thought it was so funny that she spent this much on shipping to send them powdered Hostess donuts for breakfast.

She insisted that we give them to Jacob and Claire for breakfast since they have NEVER had donuts, she thinks I deprive them, but they are just as happy with plain old oatmeal.
They got Go-gurts and powdered donuts for their birthday breakfast and they were all smiles because they knew it was their birthday!  These pictures are for you Kaci!
We spent the morning with Sesame Street while mom decorated cakes and Dad helped our neighbor fix our back door (that the kids broke, another story for another day), yes Dad took the day off.   We spent the late morning and early afternoon on the bike trail, so much fun and we even stopped at a park along the trail to play for awhile.
We had Nana and Papa and our friends the Browns over for the birthday party and Jacob and Claire really cleaned up (there are a lot of presents when there are 2 kids turning 2).  This wagon from Nana and Papa was a popular gift, their little friend Abigail really liked it too!
This is my birthday cake attempt and I am actually quite happy with it since I think that the characters are somewhat recognizable.  For those of you who don't recognize them, this is Bob and Larry, the tomato and cucumber from Veggie Tales.  Jacob and Claire really love Veggie Tales.
They both blew out their own candles.  Happy Birthday to are two little two year olds, we can't believe that 2 years have passed (and at the same time we really do believe it).
And today in church it was obvious that they are 2, it was like someone flipped the 2 switch (not that they were calm in church before) but they really could not sit still and were very bossy!  We sure do love them though and we have really enjoyed watching them play together and their big personalities in their little bodies.

In Case There is Any Question Who He Looks Like

Hilarious, almost scary!  Need I say more?

Leelou Blogs

My great friend made us the best blog and custom header.  I love them and she just did them out of the kindness of her heart!  She has a lot of templates, I put a link button on the sidebar, you can also order her custom headers too, I think there is a small charge because they are a big time commitment for her, but they are worth it!

Best Buddies!

Sometimes my kids actually get along really well.  This morning they spent over an hour running between rooms upstairs (the 2 rooms without doorknob covers) laughing hysterically with each other.  They made a pretty big mess too, but I got quite a bit done when they didn't need me to referee.  I think this is a cute picture of them, they love to get in this chair and go "wocky wock, wocky wocky wock"  (rocky rock, etc...).

They especially love to be naughty together.  This was one of those moments where they had be at each others' throats all day and I was just leaving them alone because they finally seemed to be getting along, when I checked on them I discovered why!
They emptied everything from both drawers of the coffee table and they were each sitting in one.  They were so proud of themselves for finding the perfect chair.
They were having quite the conversation and reading their magazines.  For me it was a get your camera or get upset moment, and you can see the choice I made.  But after the pictures were taken the kids were removed and told not to sit in the drawers, then I made them help me clean up (which makes for very messy drawers).  Speaking of which, Claire really really loves to sing the 'Clean Up' song, it is hilarious; she also seems to be getting bossier, so if she is singing a song, you are not to sing that song!
Here is the whole scene from the front.
I love this picture, they really love giving kisses (especially if Claire is in the mood for them).

More Joys of Twins

We went to get the kids' 2 year pictures taken last weekend and those experiences are always and adventure.  Getting pictures of 2 two-year olds that don't want to be too close to each other is actually very challenging.  I will save the good pictures for later when I can send them to some of you, but I thought I could share some of those priceless twin "get away from me" moments here.

This is the I just can't get up fast enough pose.
I love the look on Claire's face here, she is in the middle of a "I don't want to be close to him" squawk."  
Jacob just couldn't wrench his neck far enough away from her.
This is my very favorite though...we made of the huge mistake of trying to sit Jacob in front of Claire, you can see from the picture how well she took it.

To the credit of the photographers, there were some pretty good ones, and these two girls of taken pictures of my kids together before--they seem to have limitless energy and ideas, they are really great with my kids and so patient.

PS

I just needed to write a little P.S. to yesterday's post (if you haven't read it, read it first).  Remember how I said that they were talking quite nicely at the time...what I soon discovered was another twin phenomenon--'Partners in Crime.'  My kids were talking so nicely to each other because they were doing one of their favorite naughty activities together.  This particular instance they had unloaded an entire new container of baby wipes onto the floor and coffee table, luckily I discovered it before they got to the scattering and ripping into pieces stage.  (I know that some of you must be thinking well, why were you not supervising their every move...to you I can only stick out my tongue!)  Anyhow, I would hate for anyone to miss out on the full story of the nice talking, so it had to be posted, plus the 'Partners in Crime' moments seem to be some of their strongest bonding moments, so they should probably be documented.

P.P.S.  To those of you I was sticking my tongue out at,  you will be happy to know that they are just waking up from naps as I type the last words.

P.P.P.S  To Amber, I am sure that this post is full of punctuational (pretty sure I never have before and probably never will again type/use that word) and grammatical errors because as I was typing it I kept forgetting rules that I know I have learned and second guessing my self.  Oops!  Hopefully what you teach your students will stick better than what my teachers taught me.

The Built in Playmate: Blessing (and Curse)

My kids love playing with this door, I am always trying to remind Jared to close it when he comes through it because I am certain that someone will get smashed and it is hard on the wall.  They really have a fun time though.  I have to watch videos like this sometimes on days like this to remind myself that they don't always fight with each other.  Today the drama has been particularly high and I assume if they could speak in sentences I would be hearing things like this:

"Jacob came close to something I was playing with"

"Claire is playing with something I was thinking about playing with at some point"

"Jacob walked in my general direction"

"Claire kicked me very lightly and it was clearly on accident"

"Jacob said E-I-E-I-O when I was playing with the barn" (totally unacceptable)

"Claire told me NO"

"Jacob told me NO"

"Claire squawked at me"

"Jacob screamed at me"

and so on and so on, but instead of hearing these things today I just hear a whole lot of screaming about these things, plus witness the throwing of the body backwards followed by kicking.  Like I said, sometimes I need these videos to remind me...actually right now they are talking quite nicely to each other and it is close enough to my oboe lesson that I can start on nap time so things are looking up!

Opening Day

Today is an unofficial Cincinnati holiday.  It is opening day, the first day of baseball season.  We are lucky and since we have lived here have always been given tickets.  This year was no exception and though I am not the world's biggest baseball fan I actually really like going to Reds games, especially opening day.  I was really excited for the game today, but my kids are sick and just not getting better, we have had a rough couple of days and are headed back to the doctor today.  Wish us luck, I think it is roseola, but we are not sure and...BLAH!  Anyhow, bummer that I missed the game, but Jared got to go and he IS the world's biggest baseball fan, so at least I will have a happy husband (even though the Reds lost).  Hopefully the A's win today!  Nana got Jacob a special baseball season shirt and hat.

Anything for Cake!

Just listen to the video, it is amazing what a little mention of a word will do to a toddler!  He ran a long way!

Easter Part 2

Ok, so this picture was taken several weeks ago, but Jared wanted me to save it to post on Easter.  I got Jacob and Claire these "hats" at Target for a dollar a piece, they really like to use hats and shoes for dress up.  Happy Easter!

On Easter Day Jacob and Claire got fun surprises from the Easter Bunny.  They got a beach chair and buckets, shovels and a sandmill for the beach this summer.  They also got capsules that turn into animal shaped sponges and sticker coloring books.  Nana and Papa gave them each new swimming suits and cute backpacks too.
Here is Jacob in his adorable Easter outfit, it was actually freezing when we went to church, but I dressed him in his new shorts anyway. (We were getting ready for church, so he is brushing his teeth in all his pictures).
Claire looked very cute in her new dress and she loved the sand toys from the Easter bunny.
We took three pictures on the bench, one with neither child looking, one with Claire looking, and one with Jacob looking, I chose this one because Claire wasn't looking at the camera in the last picture.

We had our friends Trisha and Trevor and Trisha's sister and her family over for dinner since they were here to visit for Easter.  The kids all played really well together and we had a great dinner.  It was a really fun day.

Easter Part 1

We had a weekend full of celebrating Easter.  On Saturday we had a big huge Easter dinner at our friends the Browns' house.  There were several families there and it was loud, wild, and a lot of fun!  I have to admit that Jacob was a huge contributor to the loud factor.  The food was great and the adults had their own table in a different room.  Here is the kids' table.

We all walked down the street to the Williamsons' backyard and had an egg hunt.  Jacob and Claire were both much more interested in eating the candy than looking for the eggs.
Claire was very protective of her basket and ate her candy without pausing between pieces.
Here she is when we semi-forced her to try to get more eggs in her basket, she kind of caught on and eventually it seemed to click that more eggs was more candy.
Jacob had no time for hunting because there is a slide in the Williamsons' backyard.  He really loves slides.  We snuck a few eggs from Claire's basket to Jacob's basket.