The One Where I Catch Up

Life has been busy the last couple weeks. Between family visits, birthdays, sick kids, strange rashes (on Charlotte), and a business trip, I've neglected my poor blog. And now, since I have a few free minutes in our hotel while Maya watches Garfield (gross, I know, but it's the ONLY cartoon on and we don't have a DVD player in the room...it was this or Dr. Phil), you get a bunch of pictures of our baby-pooling, cookie-baking, tricycle-riding, picnic-going, playground-playing, corn-holeing, swing-fighting days! :)

We'll start off with this one:

Charlotte got into a fight with the swingset at playgroup. She's quite the trooper, though! Definitely cried when it happened ~ as the days go on, though, the injury keeps looking worse and worse and she's not bothered by it.

Random picture of Isabella running:

Baby pool time. Maya has figured out that she is strong enough to use the nozzle on the hose now, and was pretty excited to fill the pool!

Clearly Charlotte liked it, too!

Splash!

We stayed outside until it was too dark and chilly for the girlies to play anymore.

At the hotel in Battle Creek:

A couple days ago, Maya and I made some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies:

"No more smiles, Mommy!"

Charlotte looked on longingly ~ one day she'll be able to help, too!

At least she got to try the finished product!

Here are some pictures from the VBC picnic at Barlow Farm Park.

Charlotte doing yoga again:

Maya on the playground:

Lunchtime!

Maya and one of the many other Mayas :)

Daddy and Maya:

Charlotte playing cornhole. As you can tell, she has perfected her technique.

On Friday, I made up snack trays for the girlies. I've read about this idea several times but this was the first time I put it into practice. Each girl had a tray, and I explained that this was their snack for the day, and if they were hungry they could go to the fridge and get their tray out (I'd obviously have to help Charlotte ~ she's too short to reach the handle! :)). Maya was so excited that she ate half of her tray right after breakfast!

Finally, some random pictures from fun times in the driveway. Charlotte is just like Maya, in that it is much more fun to push the car than it is to ride on it! :)

Although she has mastered the tricycle much faster than Maya did (well, mastered sitting on it at least! She can't quite reach the pedals!)

The One With The Black And White

Maya has been getting more and more verbal these past weeks, which I'm sure is pretty unbelievable to anyone who knows her! It's so amazing to see her transform into a little kid, full of logic and imagination and joy.

Her latest development (and I'm totally gonna brag on my girlie here!) is the ability to do really really really simple math. The other day we were baking bread, and she started telling me how many dough balls I had (4). I took it a step further and asked her how many would be left if I took 1 away...and she said 3! Apparently subtraction is easier than addition, though, because when I asked how many there would be if I added 2 more she said 2 :P So turns out I have a very normal almost-3-year-old and not a savant, but I'll take it :)

Baking bread is a very sticky and floury process, so I don't have any pictures, but here are some of our day!

The One With The Mayas

When we picked out names for our girls, we intentionally chose names that weren't extremely popular (though our boy name for Maya happened to be the #1 most popular name that year, so we didn't stick to the rule at all costs apparently! :)). So, imagine my surprise when Maya went to Vacation Bible Camp this weekend and in her class of 10 or 12 kids, there were TWO other Maya's! And there was a third other Maya in the 4 year old class! According to the SSA list of baby names, Maya is somewhere around the 60th most popular girl name. If you look exclusively at the population of 2-3 year old children at Crossroads Community Chapel VBC in 2010, however, it's #1! :)

This weekend, Penny (Michael's mom) came up to visit and to watch the girls so Michael and I could go out for my birthday (thanks, Penny!!!). He surprised me with a fun geocache scavenger hunt and we had a great time. Then we all went out for dinner together, and after dinner went to the park to play "soccer" (which basically means the girls ran around a lot on the soccer field and occasionally chased the soccer balls we kicked :)).

Here are some pictures of our weekend! :)

A friend of ours has a plot at the community garden in Ravenna. She is out of town so Michael and the girlies and I went to water it for her. Check out this amazing sunflower she has growing!

Right next to the garden is a really nice playground, so of course we had to hang out there for a bit!

"Soccer"