The Maxted Family

colorado

2010-07-16T19:37:00.008-04:00

We had a great trip to Colorado for a Kaylor family reunion. We were there for just about a week. We started the trip out on our own for the first day, and visited the Denver zoo.

The girls check out a mongoose and porcupine exhibit (Elizabeth is in the background).

Vanessa's favorite animal we saw were the polar bears. This polar bear had just been in the water, showing off a very nice back float. Elizabeth liked the lions best, and wanted to see them twice!

The next day was a day for meeting up with family. Elizabeth and Vanessa were so excited to see their cousins Bryn and Jadyn.

Vanessa still sometimes expresses her affection through squishing... Good thing Jadyn is so patient with little ones!

I had so many pics from so many places (thanks especially to my uncle's brother Rick), that I didn't manage to get them entirely in order. Oh well. This series of pictures is from the low ropes course at the Estes Park YMCA, about half-way through our time in CO. Vanessa was a little slow to warm up to all of the folks in my family that she didn't know yet, but by the end of our time at the ropes course, she allowed uncles and second cousins to help her over this six foot wall (the objective was to get everyone in our party over it). Here, her uncle Jake is helping Vanessa get down as my cousin Brett looks on.

One of the activities involved walking on a wire, supported by a partner and monitored by spotters. The wires that the two partners are balancing on get further and further apart as the partners progress along them. Here Jadyn and my cousins' cousin Megan are getting pretty far along the wires!

Bryn was kind enough to partner with Vanessa when Vanessa got up the courage to try out the wires for herself.

Vanessa even tried out the rope swing that was part of the most difficult of the challenges on the ropes course that day. Also in this picture are my cousin-in-law Mark, my brother Zak, and my Dad. Low ropes courses seem to be all about people supporting each other -- I had my hands kind of full so I felt like I was even more grateful for the support of all of my family there. Vanessa also thrived in all that support!

Here is the rock-climbing wall from the day before the low ropes course. James is climbing up on the left side while Jadyn is scaling the right.

Here my cousins Mark, Sean, Nick, Danielle, and Brett, interspersed with my Dad, my Aunt Teri, and Jadyn and Bryn all harnessed and waiting for their turns on the climbing wall.

Me. :)

I certainly wouldn't have been able to go up a climbing wall without several sets of hands to watch Elizabeth and Vanessa. Here Elizabeth is basking in the attention of ladies from three generations (from left to right), Oma Phyllis, Grandma K, and Hannah.

Four cousins on a rock. Because they have such great rocks for climbing in Colorado! This one overlooked a river with a few small waterfalls.

One of our last activities in Colorado was going up a cable car to the top of one of the mountains in Estes Park. Here are Jake and Bryn on the cable car ride.

Not only were there fabulous views from the top of the mountain, but they also had a large population of very tame chipmunks which were accustomed to getting fed peanuts by the tourists. This was a very great joy for Bryn, Vanessa, and Elizabeth. (Jadyn was off having fun riding a horse on this day!)

Here are Vanessa and Daddy waving from one of the rocks where we fed chipmunks. Elizabeth is busy looking for chipmunks among the lower rocks.

Here is Elizabeth feeding one of the chipmunks. If you look closely you will see that this chipmunk, like most of the others we saw, already has his cheeks crammed full of peanuts!

We had a blast in Colorado. James and I also flew to Chicago last weekend to see Paul's wedding. What a treat to have a trip just traveling by ourselves, and with adult friends to celebrate with! For now, we are quite content to be back home for a while, and finished with our big trips for the summer.

Two weeks on the move

2010-06-19T21:28:00.007-04:00

This week were are back in town after stops in Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania. The girls had a little more trouble getting to sleep than usual because of all the excitement, but when they did sleep, they slept in a cuddly pile like a couple of puppies.

Here are the girls sleeping in the hotel where James had his conference in Baltimore.

The first day in Baltimore, I took the girls to the Children's museum. The girls liked the mock-up grocery store area best. Vanessa got to choose all the cereals I don't let her choose at home...

Elizabeth took her groceries to the nearby exhibit wherein children could pretend to drive a car. I guess she wanted to pretend she was taking her groceries home. She's clutching a can of baked beans (she loves all kinds of beans!)

Vanessa knew just what to do with this jester cut-out. Behind her was a craft room where the girls played with some paint and glue later on.

But of course we went to the aquarium! This Megladon jaw never ceases to amaze me. Elizabeth seemed to like the ray and shark exhibits best. Vanessa definitely loved the dolphin show the best. Some of the other highlights were crocodiles, a frilled lizard, rainbow lorikeets, and a golden lion tamarin.

And the bubbles! These towers of bubbles are an endless source of wonder for them!

I am glad that we were in Baltimore long enough to give us an excuse to check out the science museum. It was definitely worth it! I liked it about as much as the aquarium, especially because it had such great exhibits for little kids. Here, Vanessa and Elizabeth get cozy in some dinosaur footprints.

The girls loved unearthing this dinosaur fossil. There was also a pretty cool three-dimensional skeleton of another dinosaur that they could put together like a puzzle.

The little kids area of the science museum has a really great pin board right at the beginning. The girls would have been content to play with it the whole time, I think! Except for the fact that there was an amazing water table area (I didn't get out my camera for fear of drenching it). The water table had pipes and fountains and a stream with moveable dams. Plus there were legos, trains, and rooms of a model ship and submarine to climb inside. I think we could have stayed in the little kids' area all day if we didn't have to break for food!

Next after Baltimore was our trip to New Jersey to see our fabulous grown-up friend Vanessa and her family. Not long after we arrived, we took a trip to Sesame Place just a little ways into Pennsylvania. I think Elizabeth was feeling a bit under the weather, because she seemed like she might be ready for a nap (which she rarely takes these days). But she absolutely loved this pretend store in the Sesame Street Neighborhood area. It had painted-on food and signs -- nothing real to put in any baskets like at the children's museum in Baltimore, but I think she liked it even better!

Here are Vanessa and her toddler Samantha. It was so cool to see my girls playing with Samantha -- they ran around the house and had just a fantastic time.

Elizabeth and Vanessa really loved the carousel too!

The day after we visited Sesame Place, Elizabeth was acting kind of sick, so we decided to head back home. It was definitely hard for us to say good-bye. After a day or so, though, she seemed fine, so I decided to continue on with the next part of the trip we planned -- to Princess Anne, Maryland, to visit their Grandma's house for the first time.

I decided to visit my friend Sara whom I'd really been missing, because she was vacationing in Delaware just an hour or so from my mother's house. I had the idea of going to the beach, which I think would have been a perfect idea, except for the wind... oh, and except for Vanessa spending a good portion of the time going back and forth to the potty. As it was, it was still cool to see the girls dipping their toes in the water, building sand castles, and finding interesting things in the sand.

Here are Vanessa and Elizabeth with Aryana. They were pretty patient with my beach idea, but they had a really much better time back at the house! There, they played with toys, read books, and giggled together.

The girls were all jumping up and down in the sand in this picture (well, Elizabeth hasn't quite learned how to jump yet).

Here's a picture of my friend Sara taking a picture of Adalyn. Adalyn truly is such a beautiful baby! I can't wait to see Sara and her remarkable family again soon!

Here is a picture of Elizabeth and her Grandma. Elizabeth loved Grandma's hair, and immediately decided to use the end of her braid as a paintbrush to paint Grandma's head "pink."

Grandma made lots of balloon animals for the girls to play with. Vanessa decided that this balloon flower made an excellent Grandma-bopping toy. Ah, well, I guess my kids show their affection in strange ways.

Grandma took the girls swimming and to lots of playgrounds. They also really enjoyed their hike through the cypress swamp!

I'm so glad we've had so many opportunities to spend time with people who are so important to us. It's been a busy June, and it's not over yet!

Elizabeth turns two!

2010-06-03T19:25:00.006-04:00

Elizabeth had her second birthday on Tuesday. She truly is a toddler now. She amazes me every day with all the things she can express and do!

But first, our trip to Massanutten, Virginia! Jamie and Sandra were so nice to invite us to vacation with them. We played on the playground and took a brief hike in the morning, followed by the waterpark in the afternoon. Maybe we were already a bit tired by the time we got to the waterpark, because it was something of a comedy of errors -- I forgot my swimsuit and had to go back to the cabin to get it, and James slipped on the side of the pool and fell in with a great big splash (I was busy retrieving my suit at the time or else I'm sure I would be able to further embelish that event).

But we enjoyed ourselves immensely nevertheless. Elizabeth fell in love with these yellow bouncy seats. She spent a good portion of her water park time in them. Vanessa meanwhile put her life jacket on and took it off twenty or so times. It's like dress-up, but with a safety twist!

I was able to convince Elizabeth to take a break from the bouncy seat to explore the fountain area of the kiddie pool. She liked that part too!

Sandra, Vanessa, and I took a ride down the lazy river ride. Even though Vanessa got fairly drenched, she kept a pretty cheery attitude for the ride.

Saying hi to Daddy!

Sandra said she had fun trying out the boogie board ride at the water park. So I gave it a try too. I didn't wipe out, but I still couldn't quite figure out how to stay at the bottom of the wave. Maybe next time. All the grownups also got to try out some of the big water slides, which was SO much fun!

The next day, we took the girls Frisbee golfing. They liked throwing the Frisbees, and when they were a little worn out, a deer provided further entertainment. (Although, we don't have to go to Massanutten to see deer -- James saw one in our garden the other evening, and deer have definitely been sampling our fine vegetables.)

This picture we took back at home. Elizabeth and Vanessa have both reached new stages of drawing. Vanessa has started taking an interest in coloring (notice the Cinderella). Elizabeth has taken an interest in drawing representations of objects (balloons, birthday cakes, letters of the alphabet), rather than her previous random squiggles.

Wow, don't they look grown-up in this picture? As soon as Elizabeth and Vanessa woke up on Elizabeth's birthday, they donned birthday hats and started singing "happy birthday!"

A little later in the morning, and still just excited about her birthday!

Nana and Grampa celebrated Elizabeth's birthday with us.

Elizabeth may never really know how she was able to blow out that candle all by herself.

Elizabeth tried to eat the whole cake with her fork at first.

Well, she was still SUPER excited to eat her piece of cake with red frosting.

Vanessa was almost as excited about the birthday cake as if it were her own birthday. She's pretty much ready for her birthday to be here too!

One last picture of the birthday girl! She was 33 and a half inches at her 2-year appointment and 27 pounds. She's getting to be quite independent -- she insists on climbing into her car seat by herself, she can put on some pants and other clothes by herself, and she is fully potty-trained now. She talks and sings when she is by herself too, sometimes putting on a little finger puppet show to entertain herself. But even though she is very independent, she loves to be with her sister, her parents, her extended family, and her friends!

The calm before the storm...

2010-05-10T21:03:00.004-04:00

We have so many things scheduled for the coming few weeks, I can hardly keep up with them in my head even with the use of a calendar. I'm much more used to our rather slow pace at home. We just spent a couple weeks in potty training with Elizabeth, so I've spent even more time at home than usual. But Elizabeth's doing great with the potty and now we're venturing out again. Well, even though I can't really remember exactly what we're doing when, I can't wait to do all of it! Woohoo, bring on the summer!

Elizabeth gets a turn with Dean's storytelling.

We're still in a big dress-up phase. Grace came over to join in the fun.

Just another picture of dress-up!

Elizabeth and Daddy take a cuddle break.

Trying to fill their parents' shoes.

Vanessa was excited to be able to visit with Grace for a birthday party. Vanessa wore her flower girl dress. Aside from playing with Grace and (after getting over a bit of shyness) the other kids, the best part for Vanessa was the cupcake decoration (and consumption)!

Well, and you can always win Vanessa's heart with some grapes and strawberries!

I took this picture of Elizabeth the other day just as a reminder to me why I spend so much time cleaning up under the table -- it's all for them! I mean, just look at those cute little toes!

Easter and spring

2010-04-11T21:09:00.005-04:00

Ah, spring. We are all healthy and can play outside almost every day! Elizabeth is like a little puppy, begging to go outside as soon as she wakes up in the morning, even before breakfast. And once we get outside, it is quite a tricky business getting the girls to want to come inside at all! We've definitely been enjoying playing with lots of friends and family lately, inside the house and out.

Here's Daddy dancing with the girls in their pajamas. It's one of their favorite activities to play and dance to music with their Daddy.

We had a visit from grown-up Vanessa, our friend from NJ. Her little girl Samantha is the cutie next to Elizabeth. Samantha was a very gracious sharer, taking the ride-on car for a spin while she waited for a turn on the bike. And she reminded Elizabeth of all the fun one can have throwing all the balls around and hiding in the princess castle. Elizabeth was quite happy to have a peer in our house for once, especially such a fun and friendly one!

Toddler Vanessa also had a great time with Samantha. Finally, another little girl to explain the rules to! And I enjoyed the time with grown-up Vanessa and Samantha too. I can't wait to see them next time.

Here are Vanessa and Elizabeth dressed up in their bat costumes again. I think this is the first time though that I've managed to take a picture of Vanessa in her bat girl costume. For some reason I think she thinks it's a game not to get her picture taken while she's wearing the costume. Haha, I win!

I decided quite at the last minute to take the girls to an Easter egg hunt. I'm really glad I did. They had a blast! We met up with Vanessa's friend Paige, on the left in this picture. All three girls were so excited to have so much green grass for running around on!

Vanessa found five eggs. She asked me, "Did I win?" I told her that everyone is a winner in this kind of hunt. She told me, "I didn't push anybody." I told her that made her the BEST kind of winner, and she shouted "Yay!" and ran off excitedly.

Elizabeth did a great job with her hunt, which was inside just after Vanessa's hunt ended. She found 9 eggs, but I did get to help direct her a little. I thought it was interesting that both Elizabeth and Vanessa had to learn that they couldn't pick up a second egg while still holding the first egg. Here is Elizabeth about to learn just that lesson.

There were some crafts to keep the kids busy before and after hunts. Here is Elizabeth having entirely too much fun with a purple glue stick. It took some convincing to get her to move on to something else.

There were also some white eggs to decorate with foam stickers. This is a GREAT idea. We also dyed some eggs at Nana's house on Easter the next day, but it was a little messier. The girls stayed pretty clean remarkably, but I got to be quite colorful.

Here's Vanessa just being goofy about Easter. She's wearing a scarf, mittens, and a basket.

Grace and her mommy came to visit one afternoon last week. I think it's so sweet how Vanessa and Grace love to give each other hugs. And Elizabeth and I look forward to Grace's and her mommy's visits so much too!

Dressing up!

2010-03-06T21:07:00.006-05:00

Since Valentine's Day, the snow has begun to melt and we've been sick less of the time, but we have still spent a considerable amount of time inside waiting for spring! The girls have responded with a lot of dressing up. Some days, the dressing up game lasts almost all day.

Here are the girls with their Valentine's Day balloons from Daddy.

My brother Jake taught me a cool trick of writing notes to kids when trying to convey especially difficult emotions to kids. I use notes occasionally when I'm feeling frustrated, but mostly if I'm feeling very proud of them for doing a great job. I usually put them in an envelope with a pretend stamp. Vanessa did a pretty good job at trying to write a note of her own for Elizabeth.

When the snow finally stopped enough for us to have a visit, Uncle Zak visited with his girlfriend Mary. In the eyes of our little ones, Zak = fun. If you're wondering, Vanessa is wearing part of the number mat as a tutu.

Vanessa loved learning some Spanish words with Zak and Mary. Vanessa forgot her shyness and warmed up to Mary with record speed.

OK, now on to dressing up! The girls have had oodles of fun with the purse of jewelry and hair ties that Aunt Hannah gave us. The adhesive rhinestone earrings actually last for days -- they're quite durable.

Here's a close-up of their weird little pony tails sticking straight up. One of these days they'll have longer hair that's easier to work with (a mother that knows how to do hair would probably help too).

If I've talked to you recently, I've probably mentioned that Elizabeth is obsessed with Batman. You know I'd like to claim full responsibility for her gaining this obsession, but believe it or not, there's someone else who has been instrumental in developing this love of the caped crusader... But the bottom line is, she LOVES to play with the little Batman action figures we have and she thinks that the sole purpose of a laptop is to play the theme to the 60's Batman show, as well as several other superhero jingles from that era. Vanessa likes Batgirl best because Batgirl wears purple, so we got her a Batgirl costume, but she won't let me take a picture of her in her new costume yet. We don't have a Batgirl action figure, so Vanessa improvises by playing with the Batman action figure, saying "he's changing into Batgirl."

Other costumes that have been popular this week include the swimsuits. Vanessa and Elizabeth have spent a lot of time jumping into the "pool" that is actually our exercise mat. Oh boy are these girls ready for warmer weather!

Elizabeth is 21 months old now, and Vanessa is officially 3 and a half. Every three months, I try to take a picture of them with their special Dee dolls. At 21 months, Elizabeth can count to ten and recognize several words without context -- no, yes, up, my, boots, boo, and many names, maybe including yours! The girls insists on my writing the names of their friends and family on the sides of every box of Kix that we open. That way they can look at the names of the people they care about every day. Elizabeth can climb up into her booster chair and buckle herself, and climb from the ground into her car seat. She can dress and undress herself with very little help. Vanessa at 3 and a half can defeat the child safety door knob covers (that didn't take long), repeat patterns of 3 or 4 notes that someone else plays on the piano, tie the knot on her shoe (but not the bow), and follow simple written directions. Both girls are also really great at singing, making messes, and getting into trouble. :)

Ballet time! Vanessa and Elizabeth are already anticipating the ballet class I promised we would enroll them in this summer, when their ages align such that they can take a 2-3 year-old class together. So, they've been practicing their moves and making sure their ballet clothes still fit!

Here's another picture of Elizabeth with her Dee-Dee doll.

Here's Vanessa with her Miss Dee doll.

Elizabeth tries out Vanessa's old tap shoes.

Time for a bow!

Texas and the biggest snow ever

2010-02-10T22:35:00.012-05:00

It's been quite a whirlwind of activity this month. We took a chance with some good deals on airfare to make it down to Texas to see Jake and our nieces. We made it there and back without any trouble due to snow, although some snow fell here while we were there. After we got back, of course, everything was buried in about three feet of snow! I guess snow fell in Texas shortly after we got back too. I guess we were lucky to be able to make our trip when we did!

We saw some amazing basketball played by Bryn and Jadyn's basketball teams. Bryn's game was first. That net was so high and they looked kind of small in comparison, but I vow never to underestimate 6-year-old girls playing basketball again. It was a really action-packed game, with well-executed plays and good teamwork, and with an incredible shooting percentage especially on Bryn's team. We even got to see Bryn make her first basket in a game! Here are the girls warming up for the game.

I think Bryn made this basket in warm-up.

Vanessa was a little shy around Jadyn at first, but Jadyn won her over in short order with a shiny plastic ring.

Elizabeth is equally excited about her own shiny plastic ring.

Vanessa definitely didn't take too long to warm up to Jadyn! Jadyn sure has a way with little ones!

Elizabeth is ready to make friends too!

Later at the mall, Jake was kind enough to carry a sleeping Elizabeth. Jake said he liked the baby time (and I have to say I enjoyed the break)!

Jake kindly shared some of his Build-a-Bear gift certificates with us. Vanessa went straight for the Hello Kitty doll, which she named Texas. She was SO excited to go to Texas to see her cousins! Before Elizabeth sacked out, she chose a little red purse rather than a stuffed animal.

Jadyn and Bryn discovered that if they pooled their gift certificates, they could get a very cool dalmation, which I believe they named Cutie. (I think that was Katelyn's financial advice that helped them figure out how to get more than just the basic bear.)

Here's Jadyn making one of the three baskets we saw her make in her game later that afternoon (Jadyn's best shooting of the season!). Jadyn played point guard and did a great job controlling the ball and setting up plays.

We also saw Jadyn make some great steals!

Our two girls and their three cousins make this a complete set. The best collection of girls I know!

We whisked Katelyn away for an afternoon and went to the skating rink at the mall. The first pair of skates we got for Vanessa were just too small (darn wide feet run in the family!).

Katelyn helped me get Vanessa to the ice.

When I first got on the ice with her I thought I would slip for sure! It took me a while to figure out how to balance myself AND a three-year-old! Thank goodness Katelyn was there.

And the wall helped too! Vanessa and I made it about half way around the rink before Vanessa started to get a little tired. Some encouragement and a helping hand from Katelyn helped us get all the way back around to Daddy!

Well, of course Elizabeth wasn't about to let Vanessa get away with doing something she couldn't, especially where any type of shoes were involved. So we let Elizabeth try on Vanessa's skates.

Vanessa tries very hard to let Elizabeth share the ice-skating limelight. Once Elizabeth had skates on, she had us where she wanted us... it took only a little more persistence on her part before she had convinced us that she should have a short turn on the rink!

We stayed behind the cones, and went out for just a couple of minutes, but she did pretty good!

She kind of figured out how to balance. Not bad for having oversized skates on.

Back at Uncle Jake's place, Vanessa played her own version of Superman with Uncle Jake. This version, as near as I could tell, involved pretending to fly around the house and then pretending to crash to the floor.

Bryn joined this game of Superman.

Some family time relaxing on the couch!

Jadyn's turn to join the Superman game!

Bryn and Vanessa have a little computer time.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth takes a little snooze on Jadyn's lap.

Vanessa and Jadyn played a little bowling on the Wii. Bryn observed while she waited for her turn. Jadyn and Bryn were seasoned Wii experts, and Vanessa learned quite a bit from them.

On Monday we visited the children's museum before heading out on our flight. The girls take a minute to pose in an alligator's mouth.

The girls tried to make sure that their Pooh Bears had a great time at the museum.

There was not just a train table, but a train ROOM at the museum. The girls were in heaven.

Ooh, and there was an ambulance to pretend to drive in a hospital-themed room.

Elizabeth helps one of the baby dolls wash her hands in the neonatal unit.

There was a dinosaur exhibit complete with skeletons and interactive games. The girls probably spent 20 minutes sitting in this dinosaur footprint.

We saw a 3-D movie about natural gas. Only the big energy companies could find a way to make this such an action-packed heart-thumping sequence so as to scare the heck out of Elizabeth, poor thing! Well, she did really enjoy the glasses, in any case!

There was a great exhibit for playing with engineering toys. Elizabeth made a birthday cake with candles out of some tinker toys.

Both girls enjoyed the wind tunnel that floated paper helicopters or parachutes straight up and out the top!

Elizabeth and Daddy play with some mosaic tiles.

Vanessa drags a finger through the sand on a rotating table.

Elizabeth was fascinated by this display too.

Soon we were on our flight back home. Grandma stayed with us after we got back, and the girls enjoyed some great story time with her (this time story time came with props!)

Not long after Grandma had made it safely back home, the biggest snow we had ever seen in Virginia came! And kept on coming! Our first attempt at shoveling the driveway left enough snow to have a little sledding fun on.

There's a smile!

Vanessa's favorite activity was knocking the snow back into the driveway....

We built a snow cave to keep the girls entertained and a bit warmer.

It bears noting that we didn't have to build up to make this snow cave -- James just dug a spot out of the giant wall of snow lining our driveway.

I should have tried to get a car in this picture for scale -- when James's car was parked in the driveway earlier it nearly disappeared behind the snow.

Vanessa sits on the floor of the kitchen looking out at the snow at her shoulder level outside.

Here's a picture of the high winds blowing while additional snow fell during the following day.

James was away on a business trip during a good portion of this storm, unable to get back because of canceled flights. I'm just so glad that he's back safely and I'm so glad that we were able to see our family in Texas with out any travel trouble.

Christmas and New Year 2010

2010-01-16T21:59:00.009-05:00

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and is enjoying a great new year. I'm just now getting around to posting about our holidays!

The girls enjoyed the enormous amount of snow that fell in December. They couldn't exactly go sledding -- in fact, they couldn't really leave the path that James shoveled out, because they would sink up to their waists in snow! But they enjoyed it nonetheless -- touching it with mittened hands and stomping on bits of it with booted feet.

Stockings on Christmas morning!

The girls exercised a sharing method to opening just about all their presents this year -- very sweet. This is a really great play-dough set from my friend Sara that has been entertaining them almost every day lately!

Our big gift to the girls was a train set and trains. They were just as excited about the trains as two spoiling parents could hope.

Ooh, train...

Elizabeth and Vanessa both wanted a turn "being cute" in the special kid-size rocking chair on Christmas day.

Vanessa's turn to be cute.

The girls played "going on a bus ride" with Uncle Brian. One of their favorite games!

Elizabeth was in the mood for doing a few of her tricks!

Here's Vanessa opening Candyland -- a present from Uncle Brian and Joanna -- Vanessa loves this game, despite the very hard lesson of not always winning. Winning most of the time makes up for it!

Vanessa played Santa by delivering everyone's gifts, but she was a little shy about giving presents to Uncle John and Aunt Kalena... she settled for dropping the presents at their feet and scooting quickly away! Next time she sees them I'll bet she'll be a lot less shy... she's so funny sometimes...

In my opinion, the best present Brian got this Christmas, from Kalena and John.

Vanessa evaluates the appropriateness of James's pair...

I wish I could remember exactly what Elizabeth said that made James and Nana crack up!

One holiday, four dogs. Quite a houseful!

Grampa and Elizabeth enjoy the new castle that we got from Grampa and Nana this Christmas. Hours and hours of fun have already been had in these cool castle pieces.

The girls couldn't have been more excited about Grandma visiting this Christmas. They loved playing with her, reading with her, and riding on her!

Elizabeth helps Vanessa open her new bike helmet and bell from Grampa K and Grandma K. Vanessa has had renewed interest in her bike because of her new bell especially and she can't wait until I let her take the bike outside when the weather warms up.

Vanessa and Elizabeth had a great time at Aunt Heather and Uncle Terry's house. Balloons! Pure joy.

Heather seemed to be having a blast preparing the balloons for them!

Hannah and Elizabeth (and Vanessa too, in this picture only as a shoe in the background) spent quite a while in the room at Aunt Heather and Uncle Terry's house known only as "the Lego room." Seriously, could there be a cooler place for kids to play than this house?

Vanessa goes for a ride on Hannah while Elizabeth checks out her own reflection in a mirror that Hannah gave her. The girls just love their Aunt Hannah!

Vanessa and Grampa K have a good laugh about something.

Vanessa and I are having some fun with some "homework" books that she likes to work on. I wonder for how many years she will beg to do homework!

We decided to enroll the girls in a music class. The bubbles alone definitely won them over.

And I'll end the post with a picture of our muppet puppet fun!

Thanksgiving

2009-12-22T22:24:00.010-05:00

Woohoo! I managed to post about Thanksgiving before Christmas is upon us!

Thanksgiving was just as it should be this year, full of lots of friends and family. We even got an early start on Thanksgiving, celebrating with my Mom and Heather and Terry and Zak on the weekend just prior to Thanksgiving.

Aunt Heather has many talents, but one of my favorites is making my girls laugh! Elizabeth loved playing peekaboo through Heather's hair.

Thanksgiving can be a bit of a nondisjunction of holidays, because it tends to be the beginning of the Christmas season as well as a holiday in itself. Vanessa decides to add Easter into the mix, by discovering her egg basket and pulling it out its storage place.

Now it's time for Aunt Heather to give Vanessa the giggles!

And Uncle Zak gets some good goofy giggles from Elizabeth too!

Grandma gets a big Elizabeth grin with a rubber ducky toy.

Ah, this picture is mostly to remind myself to bring a CAMERA to Thanksgiving, for Pete's sake. This picture was taken with my phone, alas, the resolution is not so great. On Thanksgiving Day, we joined James's parents and Brian and Joanna (and their dog Kyra and new dog Winston) for our big meal. Oh, and if you are wondering who Vanessa invited to the table (and carried all the way down the stairs and into the dining room), that's Nana's doll from when she was little!

Just after Thanksgiving, it was time to put up the Christmas tree. I don't think Daddy could have done it half as quickly without help from his little elves.

We were so fortunate to have a visit from our friends Janet, Ryan, Peter, and new baby Evan. I tried to take some pics of Ryan and Evan, but the red-eye was beyond touching up. But this picture of Janet and Peter is very cute, isn't it? Peter and Evan are such little sweethearts.

Can you believe that they were sharing a turn on the piano for a few minutes? See, I told you Peter is a sweetheart.

I was a week or two late with my every-three-months-with-special-doll pictures. Well, here is Vanessa at three years and three months, and Elizabeth at 18 months with their special dolls from Grammy Dee.

Elizabeth just had her 18 month appointment today. (Again a little late, but just you wait, I'm going to be much more prompt about things now that I won't be taking classes until the fall!) She weighed 23 pounds 10 ounces and she was 32 inches tall. She had an ear infection so she was given a short reprieve from her shots. For Vanessa on the other hand, our trip was a bit of a dis-appointment -- I decided to let her have the H1N1 vaccine. Ouch!

Elizabeth is doing just great developmentally -- I think my favorite skill of hers is singing, because I think she has a better memory for tune than I do, and a pretty good memory for lyrics too! The other day when I sang "Frere jacques, frere jacques" for the first time to her, Elizabeth sang out the next line "Here I am" from "Where is Thumb-kin?," which shares the same melody. And she has a good visual memory too -- when she saw the word "National" today, she pointed and said "Nana," because it starts with the same letters, I guess.

Here is Vanessa holding her Miss Dee doll.

Vanessa's new skills include being able to write letters in small spaces (she was practicing putting a few of the simpler letters inside the squares on a crossword puzzle), and writing her name and a few other words. She's finally breaking out of her "must only color with purple" phase, and just in time, because our purple paint is almost gone and our purple markers are exhausted. Vanessa has been working on her enunciation -- she can say her hard G and K sounds now and is better about her double consonants in words like "spoon" and "school."

Vanessa can now enter a password and log in to an account that James set up for her on our laptop, change her account picture icon, open up MS Paint and do some drawings, open up MS Word and type some names, and log off. She calls this "checking her email." Ah, Vanessa, how dangerous you will be soon...

The girls' great-grandmother Grandma Lou sent some light-up snowman ornaments for the Christmas tree. Elizabeth and Vanessa were both excited the minute they opened the package, and that was only just because they found the bubble wrap... they could hardly believe their luck when they discovered that there were also ornaments inside!

Now how does Grandma Lou know that red is Elizabeth's favorite color and Vanessa loves blue and purple best? I guess grandmas just make that kind of stuff their business.

After trying to make sugar cookies at a friend's house with some success, I thought I would try it out at home as one of our snowed-in activities. Only now with practice, Elizabeth and Vanessa were even faster with cutting out the cookies and even trickier to keep up with. I'll get ahead of you girls one of these years, just you wait...

Here is one picture of some of the snow that fell on our back yard this Saturday. Snow was still falling, and I think about 3 more inches of snow fell than is pictured here. I like this picture because it shows the lovely snow gumdrops that our little round backyard tables made! Right now I can hear the plow going past in our street, three days after all of this. I'm very thankful that we and everyone we know is safe and not stuck anywhere because of all this snow. Instead, it just makes for outdoor fun! The girls and I plan to attempt a snowman tomorrow. We'll see if we make it into our snow clothes and outside before someone needs to use the potty...

Mollie's wedding (and related adventures)

2009-12-20T15:03:00.011-05:00

I have two posts to get through before Christmas... let's see if I can do it!

When we traveled to the Eastern Shore just before Thanksgiving to see Mollie and Fred's wedding, we stayed in Virginia Beach. I decided to start this post with the pictures from our adventure on the day after the wedding -- we visited the beach and the aquarium in Virginia Beach. I'll save pics of Mollie and Fred for this post's big finish.

We saw turtles, sharks, and fish. Many of them about as big or bigger than Elizabeth!

Last time we saw one of these steam tornado demonstrations (possibly actually a waterspout demo), Vanessa refused to touch it and Elizabeth was the one who was interested in it. Funny how things change for no apparent reason.

Elizabeth was feeling brave enough to try to touch a ray.

Both girls loved the seal exhibit outside the aquarium. I think I could watch seals for hours, myself!

Later on the beach, the girls spent some time digging in the sand and making sand castles (really sand piles with bits of sticks in them).

Not sure why Daddy and Elizabeth were headed in opposite directions in this picture. Looks like they're running from each other! Actually, probably James is headed to check on Vanessa and Elizabeth is running to find me, I imagine.

Now Elizabeth and Daddy are holding hands. We saw a surfer accompanied by a speedboat. I think Elizabeth may have been watching them in this picture.

I just like the composition in this picture. I think this may have been just before or after I convinced Vanessa to touch the icy water with her toes.

There's something very peaceful about this picture, I think.

Vanessa is showing Elizabeth a shark or ray egg case that we found.

OK, now on to the wedding pictures from the previous day:

Bubbles. In some young hearts, the best part about weddings. By the way, Vanessa plays "getting married" quite often now (mostly involving finding some kind of bouquet). So apparently she really enjoyed Mollie's!

Uncle Zak helps Vanessa take some pictures with the cameras that Mollie and Fred distributed for the purpose of filling out their photo album. I bet they had no idea that some of their pictures would be taken by a toddler...

Fred and Mollie and Mollie's folks. Happy wedding!

Have I mentioned the joy of bubbles? Yay!

Thank you Uncle Terry for watching my girls! There were times during the reception when someone would ask, "Where's Vanessa?" or "Where's Elizabeth" and I would have absolutely no idea. Thank goodness Terry had things under control!

I thought I'd end with a picture of the happy couple dancing. What a beautiful bride!

October

2009-11-02T23:59:00.005-05:00

We had a very lovely October. The leaves changed beautifully and the weather stayed warm for the most part. We've had lots of opportunity to play outside, and we've had fun with Vanessa's school and we've seen lots of family and friends.

I think Vanessa has grown 3/4 of an inch this month. And she looks so grown up with her fancy hair ties. This was my first attempt EVER at putting up her hair, so no laughing. She wanted one of each of the six colors of hair ties I had, and it was a bit of a challenge to find enough space for all of them.

We had a great time at Clifton Day. I think one of the highlights for the girls was feeding the pony. The pony ate right from their little hands!

Later, we met up with Brian, Joanna, and Kyra. A great day, all around!

Here's another picture of the girls feeding the animals. I think this is Elizabeth's first experience with a cow. She must think they're all this size!

On Nana's birthday, Vanessa and Elizabeth got to hang out even more with Uncle Brian, Joanna, and Kyra. The girls are definitely enjoying having their uncle and soon-to-be-aunt living nearby. Aunt Kalena and Uncle John were also up for Nana's birthday. It was wonderful to see them too!

Vanessa and her Nana. Happy birthday Nana!

Elizabeth tasted her first chocolate cake, and... liked it!

For Halloween, Vanessa wanted to be Cinderella. So of course, Elizabeth did too! I happened to have this light blue dance costume on hand because I had bought it for Vanessa's dance class. Elizabeth decided it was close enough! The girls had some serious practicing to do in their costumes before Halloween.

They had to practice all their ballet moves.

Especially those arabesques! I don't know if you can tell that Vanessa's heel is reflective, but both girls' feet were completely covered in glitter by the time they finished dancing. Vanessa's dress shedded glitter all over the house. A few days later when Elizabeth danced on the mat (out of costume), she kept checking to see if her feet were getting shiny.

This is really kind of a private joke -- I'm using a lot of SQL in my database class right now. Vanessa inadvertantly combined these letters while trying to group together purple letters. Purple, by the way, is Vanessa's new favorite color. I think changing favorite colors is just a tactic to get all new clothes...

Silly girl number 1.

Silly girl number 2!

Singing and telling stories

2009-10-27T19:53:00.002-04:00

Elizabeth and Vanessa have been singing, singing, singing. I think preschool helps with the singing -- I often hear Vanessa sing "Wheels on the Bus" because they practice that one at school.

Elizabeth on the other hand has been singing "Happy birthday to you," I think because of Nana's recent birthday. Vanessa meanwhile has been playing the Happy Birthday tune on the piano (she has stickers for the letters of the notes on the piano keys to help her out). Elizabeth's other favorite parts of songs to sing are "Row, row, row your boat," "ashes, ashes, we all fall down," "moon, moon, moon," and "up above the." Incidentally, she calls stars "up above the"s.

Vanessa wrote and illustrated a new story today. Here is what she told me to write: "Stegosaurus dived into the water. He got out of the water and then he jumped! And then he turned around and scratched to make these lines."

Vanessa is here with me and she says she wants to write more. Here is what she wants to type (with only a very little bit of spelling help from me):

VANESSA CHLOE MAXTED ME AND MY BABY

Remembering Jessica

2009-10-17T23:30:00.002-04:00

My sister-in-law Jessica passed away a year ago this month. I think about her quite often. One of the most painful things about losing her is the loss of that illusion that I had since I was young, that death is too far away to worry about. The truth is that loved ones can be lost and that grief can be very real.

On the other hand, this reminds me to love life and be happy NOW, because you never know what might happen. And that the parts of my loved ones' lives that I have already shared are true gifts, never to be taken for granted.

I miss my sister, but I am so humbled and grateful to have been a part of her life. What an amazing mommy and truly outstanding friend!

October is breast-cancer awareness month, go out and make a difference!

Elizabeth wows us!

2009-10-02T21:39:00.002-04:00

The other day, James said he felt like he's been away for a week and Elizabeth grew up while he wasn't watching. I feel the same way -- it's like I turned my back and all of a sudden she's a toddler! Since I was so good about trying to use this blog as a "baby book" for Vanessa to keep track of her milestones, I will also try to keep up with Elizabeth's. Elizabeth is now 16 months old.

Elizabeth speaks in full sentences now -- not all the time, but a few times a day. Today for example, she said, "I need help" and "I'm running," and other memorable sentences have been "I see bubbles," and "I want to read book." She says ALL kinds of words, including "fountain" and "arabesque." One of her favorite words is "match" when she finds things that do, and she starts counting "one..." when she sees many things that are alike. She knows, says, and signs all her colors and she knows most of her letters. When we read "Where's Spot?" she says "No" when I point to the word "No," and she can identify the word "up" in another book.

She hugs and pretends to feed dolls and LOVES to stack duplos, drive matchbox cars and make toy airplanes fly. She loves playing dress-up, especially with shoes. She can help clean up and especially enjoys sweeping. One of her relatively new skills is blowing her nose -- I just wish she wouldn't blow her nose and then practice one of her other skills, cleaning the table (with the same tissue, argh).

She loves to be just like her big sister, whom she recently learned to call "Sessa" (previously "Yah-yah"). She really loves Vanessa's preschool and I think she would love to go. She also misses tagging along to Vanessa's dance class... I can tell because when she sees a picture of a ballerina, she says, "dance class, go!" and gets up to leave!

Preschool, Mickey, Shamu, and Radars

2009-09-24T22:38:00.016-04:00

I decided to take Vanessa Halloween costume shopping in an effort to give mommy some more free time. In a mild upset, she chose Cinderella over what I thought was a lock in Ariel. Here she models her costume for Nana in preparation for her visit to Disney World.

Vanessa has also started school! She goes to school literally a half a mile a way, so Sarah and Elizabeth can drop her off and pick her up in a stroller. Vanessa goes back and forth about being excited about school and not wanting to do it. Usually if we remind her that you have to be 3 to go to school she gets excited about it.

Elizabeth on the other hand loves school and its hard for Sarah to pull her away. She wants to be just like her older sister. Here they hang out after school on the playground.

Switching gears here, as part of my transition to new responsibilities at work, I signed up for a Basic Radar Concepts course in Orlando, Florida. It's an introductory radar course offered by Georgia Tech. I figured that since I'd be in Orlando for three days, I might as well extend my stay, bring the family, and visit some famous theme park in the area.

We stayed at the Disney All-Star Music resort. Because we were going during their "offseason", we got a great deal of $69 a night. Here we are riding the free bus to Disney's Hollywood Studios (formerly MGM Studios).

No sooner had we walked into Hollywood Studios than a Block Party Parade broke out. Vanessa decided she needed an aerial view of the festivities.

One thing about Florida during the summer/fall is that you should expect some form of rain every day and lots of sun, very little in between. Here you can see that as one smart soul heads for cover, our girls head on out to play.

They really liked playing in really warm rain. I enjoyed a nice sheltered view.

Here is a perfect example of the difficulty of taking pictures of our girls. Right now they look absolutely soaking wet and miserable outside Mickey's hat.

Just 30 seconds later they look so happy! I don't know what Sarah did to elicit that response.

Day 2 of Disney took us to the Animal Kingdom. Here the girls enjoy the tram ride from our car to the front gates.

This was my first trip to the Animal Kingdom since it had been built more recently than I had visited. As you can see, this day's weather was much more typical for Florida in the summer.

Animal Kingdom is sort of a combination zoo and theme park. Here we are on the way to check out some birds.

While waiting for our safari ride, we walked through one of the animal exhibits. We spent a good time here looking at the fish and the hippo (not appearing in this picture).

Here we are on the safari ride. This was really cool. You basically are on a Jurassic Park style ride through the wildlife reserve.

Here the girls check out some elephants. Elizabeth loves elephants.

After getting off the safari, we stumbled upon some drums. My girls are never one to pass up playing some music, so we took a break for a brief jam session.

Walking a little bit down the road, I saw a small sign that said Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger. I knew that Vanessa was just fine with meeting larger than life characters as she had previously tackled the Chick-fil-a cow. She was SO excited to meet Pooh et al. Elizabeth was a bit more tenative.

Vanessa actually smiled for the camera here. Elizabeth is still a bit unsure.

She seemed to like Eeyore a bit more. Here she gets in some peek-a-boo with him.

Once again, Vanessa snuggled up close. Elizabeth was still keeping her distance.

I think of these three, Vanessa was most excited to see Tigger.

Elizabeth also warmed up to Tigger. I suspect she'll inherit Vanessa's Tigger costume for Halloween, so this was a good meeting for her.

One thing Disney does well are their variants of Dumbo the Flying Elephant. Here Vanessa demonstrates that she knows how to make her Triceratops go up and down.

Tuesday was the first day of my class, so Sarah took the girls to the pool at the hotel and headed out to Epcot later in the day. I think they spent most of their time in the water fountains. I headed over to Epcot for dinner, but we spent the least amount of time there. It's a bit much for the youngins.

Wednesday marked the arrival of Nana to Orlando. She arrived around lunchtime and took the girls to the Magic Kingdom while I was in class.

By the time I got out of class, I found the girls playing in Ariel's grotto.

Think Elizabeth likes the water?

I decided to give Nana and Sarah a break and take Vanessa to meet her favorite little mermaid.

I think she's a bit excited and happy to be sitting next to someone special.

Ariel was very nice. Vanessa was hopping up and down so much it was difficult to get her to sit for a photo.

Elizabeth loved the extra time with Nana.

This is my favorite picture we got there. We're all smiling, looking at the camera, and you can tell where we are. Good job Disney photographer!

On Thursday, Grandma Lou drove over from Lakeland and took the girls to Magic Kingdom while I continued to get firehosed with radar range equations and electronic countermeasures. Vanessa sure loves her Nana.

Apparently Sarah couldn't get the girls away from these cactus statues of Goofy et al in Mickey's backyard.

One thing I really like about Disney is that they let you bring in your own food and drinks if you want. Sarah and the girls took full advantage of this. Just don't try to take those crackers away from Vanessa.

Vanessa enjoyed taking the family for a spin in tea cups from Alice in Wonderland. She insisted on doing the spinning all by herself.

The girls loved all the playgrounds at Walt Disney World.

Vanessa and Elizabeth loved chasing each other in a nice shaded area.

Right near by were there of the princesses. Here we are with Princess Aurora, aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty. Vanessa was a bit shy and insisted that Daddy sit with her.

That shyness completly disappeared when we met Cinderella.

Very excited. VERY excited.

By the time we had gotten to Belle, Vanessa was willing to be more open. After telling Belle her name, she also tells her how old she is. Belle shows her that there are many ways to sign three.

Vanessa really enjoyed her visit to the princesses. They were very polite, kind, and patient.

Here the girls wear their matching outfit while in line for the Jungle Cruise. Aren't they cute?

They do love each other so much.

My cousin Cynthia and her daughter McKenna drove over to see the electric parade with us. Here Grandma Lou is laughing as Vanessa decided to eat her ice cream like a cat. It was pretty silly.

On Friday we headed back to Hollywood Studios to see what we missed. Vanessa was a bit scared of the bad guy. That hasn't stopped her from continuing to ask to see him everytime we scan through these pictures.

This was part of the same Jedi Academy show. Basically they pull 12 children from the audience, put them in Jedi robes, give them a lightsaber, teach them how to swing it, and then each in turn gets to fight Darth Vader. Then they get a Padawan diploma. The family in front of us had seen the show six times because their two daughters had already gotten chosen but their son hadn't. Good thing this wasn't around when I was kid, I would have driven my parents nuts.

We finally found Mickey hiding out in the Animation gallery. The girls were very excited to meet him. This might end up being our Christmas card photo this year.

Nana agreed to get in one picture to prove to her coworkers she was at Disney and not just playing golf.

On Saturday we went to Sea World. It's hard to see, but here Vanessa and I are feeding the Dolphins. She LOVED this.

I think Elizabeth liked Sea World even more than Vanessa. She loved watching the rays and sharks whenever she got a chance.

Finally, on our last day in Florida, we went to the Magic Kingdom one last time. I had taken Vanessa on Goofy's Barnstormer the first time, but Mommy loves roller coasters. Here you can see them just coming around the bend.

Finally, on our way out we ran into Jasmine and Aladdin. Vanessa was so excited she couldn't contain herself.

I love this picture because she looks terrified. In reality, she's doing her smile combined with overstimulation because she's so excited. Overall the girls were amazing and definitely encouraged their parents to take them again in a couple of years.

I also highly recommend that Basic Radar Concepts course if you're looking to learn about radars. The professor who taught the class was one the best presenters I've seen, and trust me, I've sat through several degrees worth of college classes at this point in my life. ;)

Vanessa turns 3 and the Maryland Renaissance Festival

2009-09-24T21:14:00.007-04:00

So we're very behind on updating the blog. Hopefully we'll get caught up this week.
As Vanessa will tell you any chance she gets, she is now three. Technically this picture here is from our trip to Michigan. We asked her on the morning of the 31st before we flew back how old she was.

Vanessa is obsessed with sequences and order. Here she has arranged her numbers in the right order more or less.

Vanessa insisted that for her part that we wear hats. Elizabeth loved this part.

We had a small get together for her birthday. We had been in Michigan for the previous 5 days, so luckily our guests were willing to overlook any small messes. Here Vanessa hangs out with her friends Abigail, Isabelle, and Nickie as well as Nana and Grandpa.

Aunt Joanna and Vanessa do a little dance. Not sure which one, but it sure looks funny.

Johnny and Liz brought one of Vanessa's favorite things in the world over, Riley! You think they get along alright?

Vanessa was very excited to get a cake with candles.

What you don't see here is that she wanted Daddy to help and he was no help in trying to blow out the candles the first time. Even Daddy's get older I guess.

It wouldn't be a party without presents. Vanessa was very excited to get her own doctor kit.

Isabelle and Elizabeth were excited to help Vanessa open presents. Riley helped too.

Brian and Joanna made it too. We're so glad that they're up in the area now and we'll get to see them more often. They left Kyra at home this time as they figured it'd be too much of a party with both Kyra and Riley.

After a busy weekend of travel and a fun birthday party, Vanessa settles in for story time with Nana and Daddy.

Okay, fast forward a week. In an attempt to give Sarah some time to do school work, I took the girls out for a day trip to the Renaissance Festival in Maryland. Of course, we had to stop at Chick-fil-a. Elizabeth loved the bubble dome.

One of my favorite acts from last year was here once again. Michael Rosman is a comedian/juggler/acrobat. You definitely need to see his show if you're around. Hysterical.

The girls were entranced by his act. One of the few shows at the festival they were willing to sit through.

I think they were most excited about seeing the elephants and the ponies. Being an army of one, I figured trying to hold two girls on an elephant just isn't a good idea. But I suspect next time we go I'm going to have to pony up for the elephant ride. And get in line for the free pony rides.

Elizabeth loved going down the slide in the play area. She's at the age where she wants to be just like her big sister. I also realized here that watching two girls on a crowded playground in the middle of a festival and trying to take pictures just doesn't work all that well.

As a three year old, Vanessa enjoys showing off any skills that a three year old can do that a two year old shouldn't. She keeps this up and we'll give her a go on the rock climbing wall with the bungee cords.

Vanessa also wanted a floral "mane" like the other girls. She calls it a mane because that's what we called her headdress when she was a flower girl.

Of course, what Vanessa does, Elizabeth wants to do better.

We tried watching a sword fighting show, but Vanessa had other ideas. I decided this was "the sign" that we should leave. I think they had a good time though.

Finally, here's my wonderful family sporting some excellent colors. Well, except the oldest one, but at least that's a W&M t-shirt.

Michigan and Grandparents' 60th Anniversary Celebration

2009-09-10T21:40:00.019-04:00

My Grandma Lou and Grandpa Phil celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary this year. They decided to hold a belated family celebration up in Northern Michigan at the end of August. I wanted to go up a couple of days earlier and take my family to some of my favorite spots from when I grew up and visited up there. Our first stop was Mackinac Island. Mackinac Island is located where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. There are no cars allowed on the island and the only way to get there is via boat, helicopter, or in the winter, snowmobile.

The two girls are ready to go on the ferry to Mackinac Island.

Vanessa checks out the water from the upper deck.

Once the boat got going, it was pretty windy. You can see the Mackinac Bridge in the background.

Vanessa insisted on trying ice cream in a cone for the first time. It worked out alright.

One of the best ways to get around the island is by bike. Elizabeth gets strapped in for her first bike ride.

Daddy and Vanessa take the lead to go around the island.

Sarah wanted more of an action shot this time.

Elizabeth enjoyed the bike ride as long as she stayed warm. Luckily the trip around the island is only 8 miles and there was a restroom halfway through.

We stayed at the Boyne Mountain Resort which is about 10 miles south of Petoskey, MI. In the winter it's a huge ski resort. Attached to it is a giant indoor water park called Avalanche Bay. Vanessa decides to show Daddy her b-ball skills.

After swimming, we decided to use our free tokens. Vanessa finished in 13th place.

Not one to let her sister do something that she can do, Elizabeth goes for a spin.

The resort had some acrobats outside so they could tether guests and do some swinging. Vanessa gets some good ideas for her next trick to show us.

This is about as close as we'll get right now to all of us looking at the camera and smiling with open eyes.

We got a kite from the local toy store and showed Vanessa and Elizabeth how it works.

As I said in the last post, Elizabeth loves to play peek-a-boo.

Vanessa like having her own queen size bed. The sides were a bit rough because it was a sofa bed, but she like the game of only getting out of the bed at the base of the bed.

Grandma Lou and Grandpa Phil had a timeshare at the resort. We all got together for lunch on Saturday. Here Nana shows her great nephew Donovan how to play bowling on the Wii. I don't think he liked losing to his great aunt.

All my second cousins flocked to Sarah. I think the school teacher in her came out as they all read Chicka-Chicka-Boom-Boom. Here she reads to Vanessa, Clare, McKenna, and Elizabeth in the clockwise order.

Clare shows Sarah she knows her alphabet song really well.

Time for lunch!

After lunch it was time to play the Hokey Pokey.

The adults watch the Hokey Pokey continue.

Elizabeth sat this one out.

I'm not sure what they were doing here.

My cousins Laurie and Cynthia lead Clare, Donovan, and McKenna in a game of showing new tricks.

Elizabeth decided it was time for a snack after waking up.

My Great Aunt Jean shows her great great niece how to draw with an electronic game.

Now it was time to play Sarah's modified version of musical chairs. They play Gloria Estefan's Conga and move when its just music and sit down when she sings. It actually works pretty well.

Here everyone is scrambling for their "seat" in modified musical chairs.

McKenna was nice enough to let Vanessa color in some of her coloring books. I think both girls were excited to meet more cousins they hadn't met before.

Before the big party, we decided to feed the kids at Big Boy since they turn in to Gremlins if you don't feed them by 5:00. There was an indoor mini-golf course so we figured we'd kill some time. Elizabeth shows us how to put the balls in the hole and take them out.

Of course Vanessa had a blue ball with a blue club. She actually made this putt with that form. Nana will have to work on that with her.

We finally got to the restaurant for the celebration of my grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary. It was held in the town of Petoskey where my grandparents lived for many years before retiring to Florida. There were many family members and old friends in attendance. In this picture, Elizabeth loved meeting her second cousin Laurie.

My cousins Matthew and Cynthia play pass the Elizabeth.

I'm not sure exactly who Sarah was hiding from here.

My cousin Laurie entertained Vanessa during part of the festivities.

Aunt Kathy made a nice cake for their party.

Still together after 60 years. Very rare to see nowadays. Congrats Grandma and Grandpa!

Cutting the cake. Didn't they do this 60 years ago?

Not sure about the use of a knife as a serving tool, but whatever works.

Elizabeth had enough excitement for awhile and found a nice place to sleep in Bumpa's lap.

Grandma Lou couldn't quite follow the directions to the game of see which spouse knows the other better. She kept saying her answers aloud instead of writing them down.

This is the first wave of photos with Grandpa Phil and Grandma Lou and their great grandkids. From left to right, Sarah, Elizabeth, Great Uncle Horace, Grandpa Phil, Vanessa, Clare, McKenna, Grandma Lou, and Donovan.

The next wave of my first cousins. From left to right, Darren, Cynthia, Grandpa Phil, Melanie, Grandma Lou, Matthew, Sarah, Elizabeth, and myself.

Here's the wiser crew. From left to right, my Aunt Kathy, Grandpa Phil, Grandma Lou, Uncle Kevin, Aunt Dee, my Dad (Bumpa), and my Mom (Nana).

After leaving Petoskey, we decided to stop at the Sleeping Bear Dunes near Lake Michigan. This was always a fun stop when I was a kid. Most of the fun is climbing up the first hill and running or rolling back down. We decided to go easy on the girls and just go as far as they wanted. It was cooler up there so we left the jackets on.

You can start to see the scale of the dunes here. One of these days we'll have to make the full hike up and down to Lake Michigan.

Elizabeth loved playing in the sand.

Elizabeth loved helping Mommy build in the sand.

Vanessa still wasn't sure about this cool sand and getting our feet dirty. I showed her how you can write cool things in the sand, like her name.

I'd say Elizabeth really enjoyed this stop.

Once she got more comfortable, Vanessa showed Daddy the right way to lay in the sand.

Another great view of the dunes.

We stayed at the Great Wolf Lodge in Traverse City the night before we flew back. They had a ton of kids things to do. Here Vanessa has her PJs on and is ready for the story hour.

Vanessa seemed to enjoy the story hour well enough, though I think she liked cuddling with Daddy as much as listening to the story.

That's probably it for tonight. I'll try to post birthday pictures tomorrow before we head out to Disney World on Sunday.

Long time no post

2009-09-10T20:40:00.008-04:00

I guess we've been busy this summer. We're going to Disney World next week so I figured I'd start getting us caught up.
Vanessa has decided that she needs to help with everything now. This apparently included vacuuming Mommy's car. I don't mind if she wants to pick up this job. ;)

One of the things that has kept us busy this summer is dance class. Vanessa is a bit introverted and took a couple of weeks to warm up to the class and everyone. The first half was ballet and second half was tap. I think she liked the tap better since she could make a lot of noise. Here she is with Ms. Christina and the rest of the class in a circle.

Elizabeth liked visiting dance class as much as Vanessa did taking it. She's much more outgoing and loved chasing all the other girls. Guess we have to sign her up next year.

Vanessa shows how she can be tall like the teacher.

Bustin a tap move here.

Both our daughters loved peek-a-boo. They play it with each other ALOT. Wonder what's underneath this blanket?

It's an Elizabeth!

With all the love of dinosaurs in our house now, we decided to take a trip out to Dinosaur Land in Front Royal.

Help, a shark has swallowed my family whole!

This is Vanessa's favorite dinosaur, a Stegosaurus. In fact, if you see Vanessa, she'll probably want to know your name, your age, your favorite color, and your favorite dinosaur.

Vanessa stands next to a baby T-Rex, Daddy's favorite dinosaur. Ignore all this recent research that paints T-Rex as more of a vulture like scavenger, it was a vicious predator! ;)

Elizabeth loved running around the dinosaurs. Here she is next to a family of Triceratops, Sarah's favorite dinosaur.

Vanessa got in on the happy bouncing action.

Eventually Vanessa wanted a ride on Daddy's shoulders. Here the two of us and Elizabeth check out a Styracosaurus.

Elizabeth shows us just how tall this dinosaur is.

Mommy and Elizabeth pose in front of Mommy's favorite, the Triceratops.

One last photo in this set. Vanessa found one of my lightsabers and hasn't stopped playing with it since. I've convinced her that she can only hit the ground with it to make the clash noise, but we'll see how long that lasts.

Rachael and Edgar's wedding

2009-07-27T14:42:00.007-04:00

All the talk in our house this week is about being married. "Mommy, Elizabeth and I are married!" says Vanessa, excitedly holding her sister's hand. "Mommy, this frog, this frog, and Vanessa are married!" says Vanessa, holding up two frogs. And so on. Well, I guess Vanessa enjoyed being a flower girl! The whole family had a wonderful time at Rachael and Edgar's wedding.

But first, I just wanted to post a few pictures of happenings before the wedding. My friend Lisa came over to visit. Elizabeth was fascinated by her necklace, and made fast friends! Vanessa has been talking and thinking about Lisa's visit a lot -- she even spelled Lisa on the fridge with magnet letters this week (well, she spelled it Liza, but what the hey).

We took Elizabeth and Vanessa to a science museum in Roanoke in the morning before the wedding. They both thought it was pretty cool to play with the giant plasma ball.

I think my personal favorite exhibit was the TORNADO OF STEAM! Elizabeth thought it was pretty neat too, but Vanessa wouldn't go near it.

The girls enjoyed seeing themselves on a TV screen with a digitally inserted background.

On to the wedding! The girls both loved running around in the open spaces of the church before the ceremony started.

Vanessa and Elizabeth have been so affectionate with each other lately. My favorite is when they give each other a spontaneous kiss (usually when Elizabeth asks for one by puckering and saying "mmm?")

Vanessa made it down the aisle, no stage fright, no trip-ups! She took her job pretty seriously.

Elizabeth was mostly quiet during the ceremony, thanks to falling asleep part way through it. This is one of my favorite pictures of me and my girls!

And I'm glad to have gotten a pretty good shot of all four of us!

I can't fully express how nice it was to pass off Elizabeth to Grandpa while I went back in to prepare Vanessa for the photo shoot. That little girl is getting really heavy lately! Grandpa never seems to mind though...

A picture of the lovely couple. They both looked just radiant and happy!

I'm glad we had a chance to hang out a bit with Kalena and John! Uncle John kept Elizabeth entertained through a good part of the wedding ceremony. It was so sweet to watch Elizabeth bonding with her uncle!

At the reception (as opposed to the seriousness of the ceremony), we saw LOTS of smiles from Vanessa! Vanessa's always happy to be around her Nana!

These candles captured Vanessa's and Elizabeth's attention during the reception. They really were quite pretty.

Vanessa and her daddy do a little dancing on the sidelines, while Rachael and her dad dance the father-daughter dance.

A girl came to Rachael's wedding wearing a flower girl dress from another recent wedding. She took little Vanessa under her wing, passing the torch of flower-girl-dom.

On the way back home, we decided to stop at Luray Caverns. I think it was probably my first visit. It was definitely Elizabeth's first visit, but Vanessa had come there once before with James. In any case, both girls thoroughly enjoyed it. Vanessa said her favorite part was the formation that looked like sunny-side-up eggs. My favorite part was the "Dream Lake," where the water made a perfect mirror for the stalactites above. I think Elizabeth might have liked the stalactite organ best. This picture is one of Elizabeth running and dancing around in the open space near the organ.

Vanessa, Daddy, and Elizabeth in front of the organ (a little part of it is visible in the background).

When I watered our grass with a sprinkler last week, Vanessa decided she needed an umbrella. Of course she needed an umbrella, never mind that she was already soaking wet from playing in the sprinkler already!

Our garden produced corn this year! Yay! Squirrels 1, James 1. And very tasty corn it is. I don't know where our squirrels are this year, but I definitely don't miss them.

I wanted to end this post with a quote from the day of the wedding. James mentioned very quietly to Vanessa during the wedding ceremony that some of the writing in the hymnals was in Latin. "Daddy!" Vanessa exclaimed, "I have Aladdin on my underwear!"

Elizabeth's extra milestones

2009-07-06T23:30:00.004-04:00

Elizabeth has made some really cool progress this month. I seem to remember with Vanessa that there were a few weeks where leaps and bounds of development happened all at once. I think this must be one of those times! Elizabeth has been practicing more complicated communications of her thoughts. For example, the other day, she said, "close door," and then closed the door! Sometimes she shakes her head and raises her eyebrows, meaning, "I don't see it, where is it?" and makes a noise for a clock, or a fish, and then opens a book, finds a picture of the thing, and points to it. I love when she does this for finding her own bellybutton -- she shakes her head, says something that I guess sounds sort of like bellybutton, and then lifts her shirt to find it. She'll also play peekaboo now by covering her eyes with her hands (except for a teeny tiny space where she peeks through), and then takes her hands away.

We just took Elizabeth to the zoo for the first time -- too bad we forgot our camera! Her favorite animals were the gorillas and the elephants. I set her down just on the other side of one gorilla who had his back up against the glass. He eyes got SO wide, and she kept signing gorilla and staring. Then she got so excited she needed a hug! When we went to the elephant house, there was a little more room to maneuver, and she kept stomping around like an elephant, signing elephant, and pointing with gaping mouth and wide eyes at the ENORMOUS elephants! These ones really were huge, and they were quite close. I think I honestly have forgotten how big elephants can be! When we asked Vanessa what her favorite animal was at the zoo, she said the tiger. We didn't get to hear it make the loud "A-roo" kind of roar she was hoping for, but I guess she thought it was pretty cool anyway.

This was both girls' first time actually going to see fireworks. We went down to the Iwo Jima memorial and watched the fireworks across the river over the Washington Monument. Elizabeth was awake and in awe of the first burst of fireworks, and then promptly passed out. Vanessa stayed awake for the whole thing. Her favorites were the blue ones, of course!

Elizabeth and Vanessa with Jaeger, whom we dog-sat recently. They pretty much adored him, and kept trying to feed him his dog food.

Elizabeth and Vanessa playing dress-up in some of my clothes. Elizabeth loves dressing up just like her big sister.

Vanessa seems to be spending more and more time upside-down these days. I think this handstand of Vanessa's was part of James's motivation in getting a moon bounce for inside our house! (Well, that and Vanessa's new addition to her bedtime routine of doing 100 jumps on her bed every night.) It's a small quiet one -- the moon bounce holds the air without constantly running an air pump. I can't believe she did 100 somersaults in our moon bounce today. Maybe we need to give Vanessa gymnastics classes instead of dance classes! Vanessa has just started dance class two lessons ago, but is still too shy to try to follow along with the other kids. She gets SO excited about dance class at home between lessons (especially her noisy new tap shoes), so maybe this week she'll break out and actually do "I'm a little teapot" with the teacher this Friday evening.

Vanessa in the new moon bounce.

Vanessa in her snappy taps!

The girls and James and I have had a fun weekend celebrating my cousin Mollie's birthday! We're glad she chose us to spend it with!

Elizabeth's first birthday!

2009-06-23T22:19:00.007-04:00

My baby is a year old already! At Elizabeth's 12-month appointment, she was 29 inches long and weighed 20 pounds 14 ounces. She runs, climbs, dances, sings, signs, drums, hammers, and she can even toot on a plastic recorder. I can't hope to list all the words she can say, but they include "shark, dog, owl, door, shoe, hat, eye, ear, book, ball, bounce, mama, dada, red, purple, up, on, more." She can also make appropriate sound effects to identify a duck, owl, airplane, fish, clock, and the letters B and W. Plus she has lots of signs -- alligator, bath, book, diaper, dog, eat, hat, and music are probably the ones she signs most, but she also signs giraffe, ball, more, and gorilla sometimes. She sleeps and eats pretty much just as I would ask her too. She's a very fun and pleasant baby!

The girls love visits from Grandma! It isn't easy to read to both girls at once, because they both want different books, and the best seat in the middle of the lap, and they both want to turn the pages. Grandma does it, no sweat.

Uncle Zak was able to come to Elizabeth's birthday party! We're excited that Zak lives nearby now, and we see him more often!

Elizabeth tries to explain something about her scarf to my Aunt Teri. Elizabeth couldn't ask for a nicer great-aunt.

Elizabeth was a little daunted by the prospect of blowing out a candle. Good thing Aunt Hannah was around!

Here's part of the party. I think Elizabeth's Daddy must have been doing something silly to get them all to smile like this...

Elizabeth went right to Grandma K for a bit of a cuddle. I guess she knows her Grandma K!

Mischief makers number 1 and number 2. (Well, if Vanessa is number 1, maybe these are numbers 2 and 3.)

I had a little fun making this dress-up picture even more goofy than it already was. Daddy and Elizabeth look so glamorous, don't you think?

Elizabeth playing peek-a-boo with Uncle Terry at the party. No wonder Elizabeth stayed pleasant throughout her whole party -- she had such a wonderful playmate for a few play breaks away from the crowd.

Watch out Aunt Hannah! Someone's coming to get you!

My Dad spent some time with us on Elizabeth's birthday itself. Here he and the girls are making some pumpkin muffins (Vanessa's specialty).

And we have such lovely visits from Aunt Heather whenever she gets the chance. Thanks for always finding time, even through moving to a new home!

It was so cute -- the other day when Abigail and Isabelle came over to play, Isabelle and Elizabeth actually played with each other! I guess Elizabeth is getting to be a bit more grown up -- ready to play with friends now.

Of course, Elizabeth does love to play with her big sis.

Here's Vanessa's official "every-three-months with a special toy" picture. Vanessa's just three months shy of being three, and informs us every day about how she's almost three. She also thinks a lot about all of her relatives and friends -- if you're reading this, I bet she's asked about you recently!

This is Elizabeth's official "every three months with a special toy" picture. I had been taking pictures of her with her bunny, but now that she has a special homemade doll "Dee-Dee" from Grammy Dee, I think we'll do pics with Dee-Dee from now own.

Elizabeth loves the garden, and being outside in general. She loves to smell clover flowers in our yard and look for ripe strawberries in our strawberry beds. In this picture, she's enjoying a bite of fresh broccoli. She also loves the sugar snap peas.

I think her favorite is the strawberries!

Graduation and various celebrations!

2009-05-28T23:01:00.011-04:00

It's the night before we celbrate Elizabeth's birthday, so I have to get this post out before our pictures get way out of hand. If our lives continue to be this eventful, I'm going to have to choose a different way to post all of my pictures! Or, I'm going to have to be more punctual with posting, but that doesn't seem to likely!

We met at Dean's parents house to catch up with Dean and his family and our friends Vanessa, Jeff, and Samantha.

Vanessa brought some headbands from Easter time. I love that this picture exposes my habit of opening my mouth and opening my eyes wider and wider to elicit a smile from Elizabeth. Jeff's expression to elicit a smile is much more normal! Um... Elizabeth's still not sure about those ears though. :)

Our Vanessa pretty much attached herself to Dean the whole time!

Samantha, could I ask you to be just a little less cute when my child is in the room too?

Vanessa got a real thrill from feeding Victor, Dean's turtle.

Elizabeth liked the turtle too, and had a very nice time with everyone. She did need a mommy hug though, which suited me just fine.

This is a great reading chair, a great story, and a wonderful narrator. Vanessa really is spoiled sometimes.

Elizabeth managed to get a few stories read to her too. Thanks Jeff!

Dean's Dad made Elizabeth quite content by reading her the Foolish Tortoise again.

Elizabeth seemed like she liked being a sunflower a little better than being a bunny!

Vanessa and Daddy had a great time being bunnies though!

Elizabeth plays with the two Vanessas! We had such a great visit with Vanessa and Dean and their families. Can't wait to see everyone again!

In between weekends, we've had some opportunities to get outside just around our house. The carport makes a nice shady spot to make some chalk drawings. Elizabeth likes drawing with chalk just like she loves to draw with markers and everything else!

Then off to Williamsburg to visit with Brian and Joanna during their graduation weekend. We decided not to try to actually see the graduation with two girls in tow, but we got to do lots of playing with relatives! Elizabeth loved romping around on the soft carpet, especially when Nana chased her!

Vanessa loves her Uncle Brian! Congratulations on graduating, Brian and Joanna!

I love when the girls pile around Daddy for a story. So cute!

Vanessa helped Nana make some special cupcakes to help celebrate graduation.

Elizabeth learned how to throw a ball (sort of). She seemed to like to play fetch with herself!

Here's Elizabeth with her great grandmother, Lou. Elizabeth doesn't go to just anyone... so sweet. :)

Vanessa and her great grandfather, Phil, watch Finding Nemo together. Not sure who liked it more, haha!

Grandpa Phil sure knows how to make a baby smile!

The great-grandparents, the great-grandkids, and Nana!

It's a special time for great-grandparents in our girls' lives! We just received a package from their great-grandmother Dee (thank-you card to come, I promise)! Oh, my goodness, what a fun afternoon we had when we opened it! Elizabeth loves dress-up, and Vanessa loves to dress-up, especially when that's what Elizabeth is doing! Grammy Dee sent the most gorgeous scarves.

Did I mention that Elizabeth had fun with the scarves?

And, oh, what a doll she sent! I named her Dee-Dee, after her artistic creator Grammy Dee. Elizabeth LOVES Dee-Dee, and squashes the doll regularly with hugs.

This gave Vanessa a good excuse to get out her matching doll, Miss Dee. And we've been dressing and undressing Miss Dee, and generally playing with her more than ever lately.

I actually just love this scarf that Grammy Dee sent for me! But I guess I'll share it with Vanessa from time to time, since she likes it so much too.

Here's a picture of James and Elizabeth checking out the garden. The garden is doing just great. We have lots of fresh lettuce, which entices me to eat salad almost every day now. James is standing near the cabbages. You can just see the potatoes spilling out of their raised bed to the left, and the peas are overtaking our fence to the right.

How excited we were to host a party with long-time friends of ours, Greg and Christina, and their kids Nathan and Cora. I also got to meet a friend that James and Greg knew from middle school, Carissa, and her kids. I love this picture of Greg having a story hour with Vanessa, Nathan, and Elizabeth. It's so funny, Vanessa became fast friends with Nathan, and played with him just like she does her female friends. It seems a little different to us grown-ups that it's a boy though... kind of like a little puppy love story!

Playing music on the piano together!

Hiding in the tent together...

Wrestling on the bed together...

Um... should we draw the line somewhere? Haha! When the other kids wandered into Vanessa's room, I overheard Nathan say, "Vanessa, let's go someplace else." Sigh. Only two years old. :)

Here are most of the grown-ups and kids at the party. Carissa's kids Ian and Megan were so sweet, and mature for their age, I think! Ian is just a couple of months older than Vanessa.

They were even sharing without conflict. Cool.

Elizabeth, besides things like dressing up and playing with dolls, LOVES cars, dinosaurs, and especially sharks.

And golf? I know a certain Nana who may or may not have taught our youngest to tap a ball with a golf club...

We visited a festival in Falls Church on Memorial Day. The firetrucks were definitely a highlight of our visit.

Vanessa tries out the driver's seat of the fire truck.

At the festival, there was a bubble blower, a moon bounce, and pony rides. Vanessa was in heaven! Elizabeth loved the bubbles, but we decided she was too little for those other things. But Elizabeth had the most fun just walking up and down a little shady brick path later in the afternoon. I think she just like the freedom of walking around outside without a stroller, a privilege she doesn't often get!

Here's Vanessa riding on the biggest horse there was -- a real horse, not just a pony! I told her to smile, and she usually gives me a fabricated smile when I ask her to smile on cue, but this time it was oh so genuine!

Elizabeth has a secret... there's a parade coming! Vanessa's and Elizabeth's very first parade!

With real fire trucks! Elizabeth and Vanessa clapped along with the crowd.

Genuine smiles all around!

Finally posting about our visit from Jake and company!

2009-05-18T22:10:00.009-04:00

We had such a wonderful weekend a few weekends ago when my brother Jake brought a party to our house from Texas! Jake brought his three daughters, my amazing nieces Katelyn, Jadyn, and Bryn. He also brought his lovely mother-in-law Judy. We were excited to meet Jake's girlfriend Heidi and her son Timothy.

I'm already a bit late on my posting pictures from their visit (and I have a bunch of new pictures to post since then), but first a few pictures I had meant to post even earlier!

I decided that now Elizabeth wants EVERYTHING she sees Vanessa holding, it was time to get out a doll for her. I had two dolls from when I was very young that I still own. One of them is the little doll that Vanessa is holding, that Vanessa named Chloe after her own middle name. The other one my Aunt Suzanne named Jessica when she gave it to me when I was tiny. My Aunt Suzanne always loved the name Jessica, and later named my cousin Jessica. Now the name Jessica has even more meaning to me, and somehow that makes this doll have even more meaning. Elizabeth likes her new doll, and can find the doll's eyes, ears, and hair if you ask. Elizabeth is also able to point out some features on herself -- not eyes, but ears, teeth, tongue, head, and hair.

Elizabeth spends a good portion of her day looking at books now. The book in this picture is "A Color of His Own" by Leo Lionni, one of her favorites. Just in the past few days, if I start reading a book to Vanessa, Elizabeth will pick up one of her own books and fuss to try to get in my lap. She points at pictures in the books and can even make a few signs like "dog" to show that she understands what she sees. Often when she sees letters or written words, she makes a "w" sound, because I once showed her a written "w" in a book and made the sound for it.

Elizabeth loves Riley! John and Liz know the way to our girls' hearts -- bring a lovable dog to our house to visit!

Elizabeth has been climbing on everything lately. And she's becoming a pro on her ride-on car. I'm pretty sure part of the appeal of climbing and riding things is how much attention I give her when she is doing something a little dangerous, just so I can help keep her from getting hurt...

And when danger isn't getting my attention, loud noises work pretty well too. In addition to drumming, Vanessa has been singing so much lately! She especially likes to sing "Once upon a dream" from Sleeping Beauty. Oh, and she has just learned how to hop on one foot.

Just thought I'd post a picture of a spontaneous hug!

OK, now for the pictures from our weekend with Jake and his crew. I thought I'd open with Jake's boxing celebration pose! This picture is from our visit to the ESPN Zone in Baltimore on that Saturday. Timothy is boxing on the other side.

I thought it was great fun to watch Jadyn and Bryn playing air hockey. They did a pretty good job of it! Heidi stood at mid-court for those pucks that didn't quite make it to the other side. James and Vanessa are playing air hockey at the table to the right. Vanessa sort of figured out what to do... almost...

Vanessa and Elizabeth wanted to share my lap for this horse race game. Little ones are great to take to places like the ESPN Zone, because they have fun without even using any tokens!

Elizabeth has a turn with Daddy all to herself.

Katelyn pretty much showed everyone up on the basketball game, I think! Well, she is on a basketball team at home, so that's probably why she was so awesome at it!

Grandma is about to help Vanessa up on a motorcycle ride. Thank goodness they're not real. I know you love danger, Vanessa, but...

Jadyn really helped take care of her little cousins this trip. I definitely enjoyed the help keeping track of my children! Between Jadyn, Bryn, and their Aunt Hannah, I knew my kids were safe and having fun.

Jadyn helped Vanessa learn how to bowl! Jadyn was so patient with her. I could definitely get used to having Jadyn around!

Back at home, we celebrated Bryn's 6th birthday. When Bryn had a little trouble blowing out the candles, Aunt Heather helped out. Both of them have the same birthday, after all!

Heidi takes the candles out of the cake before we serve it around. I aim one day to have the kind of cake artistry that Heidi had in making Bryn's cake! We'll see how I do for Elizabeth's birthday on the first of June. (On second thought, maybe I'll outsource it this year!)

We had lots of amazing family come to see Jake and his girls! I'm so glad that my cousin Tasha was able to make it, despite coming from work and having just gotten back from a trip. I was really glad to have a chance to get to know her husband Mark a little better. (Tasha and Mark are in the middle of this picture.) And I wasn't sure if Heather would be able to make it, but she miraculously made it work!

We decided to make a present for Elizabeth's first birthday. We made her an alphabet book! Vanessa had a soft book made with cloth and fabric paint that we made at my baby shower, so now Elizabeth will have a special book too. I keep trying to pick out one or two artists from this table (or the other artists all over my house) to mention as being really amazing, but I can't -- they are all terrific. My mom had the idea to do another book, and brought the materials, and my stepmom had the idea to make it an alphabet book.

Vanessa had never used fabric paint before. She made a page that was pretty much, well, blue. She definitely had fun!

Uncle Zak is the kind of uncle who will always pick you up and never seems to run out of energy. Thanks for being Vanessa's and Elizabeth's uncle, Zak!

Speaking of awesome uncles, thank you Jake for making the long trip all the way to us and bringing so many fun people with you! Here Jake is reading a book to Vanessa even though it's in Spanish! No wonder Vanessa keeps asking me every day if we can go to Texas. She misses her Uncle Jake and her cousins!

Jake was even able to make friends with Elizabeth, who can be a little slow to make friends sometimes. Well, perhaps it helped that she had Heidi holding her -- Heidi seems to have a way with little girls!

We visited the Natural History Museum in DC. I think the girls liked the rocks and minerals exhibit most, especially the gems. (I stole this picture and the next one from Heidi, thanks!)

It rained during our walk down to the White House and to the Natural History Museum. The great thing about my nieces is, even though their pant cuffs were wet and their shoes were soaked, they sang and chatted and had fun in the rain! Ah... I miss them already!

Easter and too many pictures!

2009-04-23T23:55:00.013-04:00

I didn't get any good pictures of us having Easter brunch with James's parents, and still I have an abnormally large number of pictures to post from Easter time. I blame the excessive charm of our recent visitors.

Here is baby Lilly and her mommy Kim! James and I were super excited to meet Lilly for the first time. Look at her strong little legs! She's only four months old. We definitely been missing Kim and Stacey since we've moved up to nothern VA from Blacksburg.

Here's Lilly with her daddy Stacey. Lilly has such gorgeous blue eyes.

Elizabeth was a little shy, but she can sense another mommy, I think!

Vanessa shows off her big sister skills. She knows just how gently to hug a baby!

Our grown-up friend Vanessa and her daughter Samantha visited us for a little Easter egg hunt and a night on the town. We've been admiring Samantha on her blog for months, but this was the first time we got to meet her. If possible, she's even cuter in person! I think this picture is funny because everyone is looking in different directions! But I think it's cool because it has James and his daughter, as well as grown-up Vanessa and her daughter. I can't quite put into words how grateful I am to grown-up Vanessa and our friend Dean to give us a great excuse to get out of the house AT NIGHT WITHOUT CHILDREN. James and I haven't done that in more than a year! And now seems a great time to mention that I have the best in-laws I could ever have wished for -- because of course they watched Vanessa and Elizabeth for us.

All Vanessa could say while we were taking this picture was, "Dean, Dean, Dean."

Our Vanessa's not so sure about sharing her friend Dean with Samantha. Soon Samantha will be wanting Dean to read books to her too... I'm not sure what will happen the next time we get together!

Vanessa was excited about her Easter basket and her egg hunt. Daddy had put 5 different types of Vanessa's favorite snacks in them. She talked about her yummy snacks for days!

The little ones enjoyed their egg hunt too -- although instead of looking for them throughout the room, they just looked through their baskets. Elizabeth ate all of her own yummy snacks and then moved on to Samantha's.

Ooh, shiny egg.

Shiny, and full of yummy snacks. I can't blame them, that does make for interesting eggs!

And another picture of Vanessa cuddling with Dean!

"No, Mr. Owl, look this way!" Elizabeth's new obsession is our garden owl. It does, after all, have a spinny head. I'd say she spent upwards of 20 minutes playing with it the other day.

Daddy and his little sweethearts!

My cousin Mollie visited us recently for a fun few days. I very much enjoyed going shopping with her, which is saying something, because shopping and I usually don't mix too well! I'm glad Kalena came along, not just because she's great company, but because of her shopping expertise!

Mollie was just awesome with the girls. I think she did a better job of putting Vanessa to bed than I usually do. And by the end of her visit, both girls were completely enamoured with her.

Mollie and Aunt Heather taught Vanessa a fun game -- throwing tissue paper and hiding Vanessa under it!

My Dad and sister Hannah came to visit. Hannah was so sweet with both girls, gentle with Elizabeth and wacky and playful with Vanessa.

Hannah indulged the girls in some time on the swing.

My Dad spent some time showing Elizabeth all of the wonders in her backyard.

What could be more fun than bouncing on the bed with the help of Aunt Heather?

How about, bouncing on the bed with the help of Aunt Heather AND Aunt Hannah, dressed in a tunnel.

Vanessa enjoyed Heather's and Hannah's Mexican hat dance. Vanessa is tipping Heather a plastic muffin.

My girls love their Uncle Terry. And I love that he entertains them so well and gives me so much of a break! Elizabeth has become fascinated with all the sticks and leaves and flowers in the back yard, and Uncle Terry spent lots of time helping her explore them.

Elizabeth is showing signs that she is starting to enter toddlerhood rather than babyhood. For example, she's walks most of the time now. She can crawl up the stairs, and, much to my surprise, she can climb up on child-sized chairs and stand on them. Today she brought me her socks and shoes and then begged at the door to go out and play. She also really likes to put socks inside various shoes that she finds around the house. Her word recognition is rapidly increasing, and she can say a few words, including "mama," "dada," "uh-oh," "echo," and I'm pretty sure she also says "shoe." When I gave her a plastic O today and said "O," she looked at the writing on her pajama shirt and pointed out the "O" on it.

Vanessa, meanwhile, is rapidly leaving toddlerhood. She has been making me laugh so much lately, even though sometimes I shouldn't! Here is a recent conversation I had with her:

me: "Vanessa, Mommy's going to eat your French toast." (this so Vanessa would stop playing and recognize lunch time)

Vanessa: "Mommy, if you eat my French toast, I'm going to eat you up."

Here's another one with Daddy that she had while visiting Daddy at his school, George Mason University. They were passing the student life center that had an interesting drawing that looked a bit like a banana but was geared more towards family planning. :)

Vanessa: "Daddy, I see something!"

Daddy: "You see something all right."

Vanessa: "Daddy, I SEE something!"

This conversation was a bit of a stalemate, and only became more complicated when Vanessa later saw graffiti (adult pictures and words) in the men's room. I knew that reading would get her in trouble one of these days...

A walk to lake Accotink and other adventures

2009-04-07T21:22:00.007-04:00

My sister Heather and I walked the girls down to Lake Accotink a week and a half ago. It was one of those extremely marvelous trips that really deserved a blog entry all to itself, but, as always I'm running behind on my posts so I have some newer pictures to post today too.

Daddy has been trying very hard to get to work early so he can get home earlier. I'm loving the extra help while I prepare dinner (on those days I manage to plan dinner). The girls are loving it too, of course! Elizabeth and Vanessa LOVE playing piano with their Daddy. They leap up on his lap as soon as he sits down. Vanessa has been working on playing a real sheet music piece with a repeating sequence of three notes in it. Elizabeth likes to push all the buttons that play rhythms or change the sound of the notes. Elizabeth has started signing "music" (she prefers the arm-wavy kinds of signs like "music," "cold," "all done," "potty," and "where.")

Everybody tackle Daddy! I think this must be a favorite game dating back to caveman times.

Elizabeth's favorite occupation at the moment is going around the house and emptying all the drawers and cabinets. Here she is emptying all of Vanessa's pants out of her pants drawer. I think part of the reason she does this is that she sees Vanessa doing it first! The nice thing about Vanessa right now is that she usually will put the clothes back in the drawer after tossing them all out to choose one to wear. Elizabeth is at the stage where she is able to put things places, but not necessarily in useful places. For example, she has put her rattle in the kitchen trash and likes to drop toys through the gate to watch them bounce downstairs. But she also does help when we're cleaning up the legos or putting the plastic food back in the toy shopping cart. And although she makes a mess, emptying all the drawers does keep her content when I am busy!

The girls do have a cold, I think, although Vanessa seems to be just about over hers. I don't know, it's so tricky to tell. The girls have been pretty much sick with colds since November, so I'm not sure I remember exactly how they behave when they're healthy. :) But in any case, I feel like cold season is over and I'm feeling more up for visiting friends. Here's Vanessa being reunited with her friend Abigail. Awww...

And Abigail and Vanessa playing the way they most like to play together, jumping!

Abigail's little sister Isabelle is just a couple of months older than Elizabeth. I think Elizabeth is going to really enjoy having playgroups with someone her own age!

I've decided that perhaps one of the reasons that Elizabeth keeps emptying the drawer with all the markers in it is that she really wants to draw just like her big sister. So I decided that's just what washable markers are for! Elizabeth is getting the hang of it, sort of!

Other than occasionally trying to tackle Elizabeth on the hard kitchen floor (tackling is how Vanessa shows her love), Vanessa really is being such a sweet and helpful big sister. She's even sort of grasping that mysterious concept of taking turns.

And she really does look out for Elizabeth. Here she's "feeding her" some water.

On one of my mornings when I escaped to go for a weekly run, I came back to find that Vanessa and Daddy had been busy constructing towers. Vanessa helped make the tower so high!

Later, the tower became a house just the right size for Vanessa.

Elizabeth is always trying to put on her sister's clothes. Here she is trying to wear one of Vanessa's socks.

Elizabeth now officially has four teeth. I think three of them are visible in this picture. I always think that teeth really make a kid look so much more grown up.

Have I mentioned how much I like warmer weather? Ahh. Here we are out on the swings. Elizabeth seems to like them almost as much as Vanessa does.

While James was cleaning up the yard, he found a little toad! Vanessa was pretty impressed. Now in our yard we've seen a toad, an oppossum, a fox, chipmunks, black squirrels and gray squirrels, and all kinds of birds, including a pileated woodpecker.

And Elizabeth was also impressed!

Have I mentioned that Vanessa uses tackling to show her love? Here she is getting her Aunt Heather, before we set off on our walk to the lake.

I tried to time our walk just right so that we would see the passenger train go under the bridge that is on the way to the lake. It comes under the bridge at 1:50 PM on weekdays, but you'd never find that in any train schedule! We got to the bridge a few minutes early, so we took the girls out of the stroller for a rest and a little snack.

When we started to hear the train coming in the distance, Vanessa noticed a bright red cardinal flying around inside the covered bridge, unable to find his way out. Vanessa's solution to this was to run as fast as she could toward the cardinal, with her quick footsteps clanging on the metal bridge. Remarkably, it worked, and the cardinal found an escape route just before Vanessa reached him! Then the train started thundering toward us. The whole bridge reverberated when the train came and the echoes bounced off the sides of the gap that the bridge spans. The noise was tremendous! When the train came close and blew its whistle, a bald eagle lifted off from his perch and soared a little further away. The man in the picture above confirmed that it was a bald eagle and snapped a picture of it. Elizabeth and Vanessa were in awe of the train as it disappeared into the distance. A lady with her dog was passing by and gave the girls an extra excitement to meet a friendly dog.

We saw three deer, a doe and two fawns a little farther along our path to the lake. We saw the bald eagle again, this time actually diving to the surface of the lake to catch something! And the girls saw a fisherman land a fish of some kind. Oh, and we walked through a flock of Canada geese. One of the geese was making a point of honking and hissing and chasing the other geese. We saw another train rumble over a different bridge, one that overlooks the lake. This time it was a freight train with 51 cars according to Aunt Heather's count.

Most times when I go to the lake, we head to the playground. I'm so glad that this time we opted to play in the sand on the little beach. Aunt Heather built sand castles and Vanessa added some windows and a door. Elizabeth found some very interesting sticks to explore. Vanessa used a long stick to tap the surface of the lake and make ripples. Elizabeth walked very fast all over the sand, holding onto Heather's or my finger. Vanessa enjoyed chasing Heather or being chased as fast as she could.

Elizabeth stayed awake during our entire journey. Vanessa on the other hand, fell fast asleep on the ride home.