Outdoor Fun

Sharel (our babysitter) got a nice shot of our oldest pumpkinhead...I love his eyes in this one.

Here is the norm for Josiah, running away from the camera! Oh and a funny quote from him of late. When my friend Mara came to visit, they were having a conversation about how cars get energy to go and Josiah said something about milk at one point. Mara asked, "Does milk give you gas?" He said, "No....we make farts." :) Lovely...and I am reminded I have three boys...so more of these jokes to come I guess.

The twins have been taking more and more rides in the wagon of late. They absolutely love riding in it!

In our back yard, we have a little bee swing and this shot of Caleb is a classic face that he makes! He loves riding in the swing and when we try to take him out he has a death grip on the ropes.

Daniel is so pleased to be riding the bee swing also that you can see most all the molars in his mouth! He has 4 molars now, 2 on top and two on the bottom. We are waiting to see the eye teeth for both boys on top and bottom as of yet.

He is Risen!!!

After I got the boys dressed for Easter services, I attempted to capture them altogether. Little boys in suits are just the cutest, don't you think? We have been quizzing Josiah all week and even before about the Easter story. We ask him, "What is Easter about?" and we have been given a wide range of answers. One of the funniest was when he said Easter was about "knocking Jesus off the cross." Ummm....sort of, but not so much! A couple times I have been able to get him going to tell the whole story and tried to write it down soon afterward, so I will try to reproduce it here for you. Mind you, these details weren't always given every time he told it and I just basically put all the little phrases together for sequencing purposes. :)

"There was a priggely (prickley) crown on his head. The armies came with the SOLLders (soldiers) and they pushed and pushed and pushed!" I said, "What did they push?" He said, "They pushed the crown on his head." "He died on the cross with no clothes on. They wrapped him in a cold blankie and put him in a cave and moved a big rock." I asked, "How many days was he in the cave?" He answered, "He died for a long, long time....for twemty (twenty) days!" Then I said, "What did the women do when they came to look for Jesus?" Josiah said, "They said, glory and hosanna!"

So....as you can see, he is getting bits and pieces of it. I plan to keep on reviewing this with him long after the Easter season is finished anyway, so hopefully next year he will really know it well.

This is a rare spawn...a picture of the entire family altogether! It is a fairly decent shot too considering! We went to my parent's house to have dinner together after our Easter services, and so I had my Mom take a picture of all of us at my Dad's church. We actually arrived a little after their service ended, since we went to the first two services this Sunday at our church (during the 2nd hour we attend a Bible study class). Today, I also had the priviledge of helping to lead worship as a back-up singer. At one point during the service, people from our congregation brought up their "cardboard testimonies." One one side of their large cardboard sign was written something that they struggled with and/or went through in their lives and then they flipped the card to show how their lives have been changed for the good through their relationship with Jesus Christ. It was moving to see the many miracles and there were many tears as well. The entire congregation was also encouraged to come up and offer their own version of the cardboard testimony (bulletin insert page) in a basket in the front.

Caleb had fun exploring Grandma and Grandpa's house walking around and playing peek-a-boo with Grandma's living room curtains as well.

Daniel walked around quite a bit also exploring a new place at the grandparent's house. Grandpa wears suspenders many times, and as a fun game he pulls them out and lets then snap back in place and he says, "AH" in suprise to get the babes laughing. As he was playing this game with Caleb, Daniel was walking around the room pulling at his own shirt and saying "AH" as well.

Outdoor Play

On one of the nicest days we had recently (the same day as the twin visit to work incidentally), I let the boys play outside in the back yard a bit. This is one of five attempts to get a decent shot of the four of us outside. Needless to say, it is rather hard to get all four of us looking up and smiling at the same time. I chose this one to share because Josiah had such a mischievious look on his face and it appears that I am trying to corral him with my hand...such a classic shot of us! Josiah gave this one posed look and the rest of the pictures were of him trying to hide. Oh well, someday we will enjoy how these pictures captured the reality of the moment I guess!

Josiah was so proud of himself for climbing the tree that he actually smiled and let me take a picture of him. He is taking after his Daddy in that he doesn't like to have pictures taken of him.

A sweet little, classic shot of Caleb boy with "that look" he always gives us. He is very serious about things most of the time and surely is plotting all the things he plans to do in that little head of his.

Daniel took to taste-testing most of the whole yard as he crawled and tried to walk (but fell a lot due to the uneven ground). We have quite a few poses of him making very "blech" type of faces as he discovered that tree parts, grass, and such aren't very tasty afterall.

Take Your Twins to Work Day

Since it was my spring break from teaching lessons, we decided to bring the babies to David's work for a visit. Vivian (pictured above) had been asking David for some time to schedule in a baby visit and we were glad to oblige. David loaded her up with both our little bruisers and as you can see she is very amused! Josiah stayed home with a babysitter as it would have been too hard to watch all three in the work environment at the same time. Perhaps some day, I will bring Josiah up to Daddy's work by himself again too.

Daniel did his best to put as many baby germs on Naomi's keyboard as he possible could during the visit. He typed and typed and typed and had the computer been unlocked, he might have been able to reformat Naomi's hard drive or some other such thing. Daniel is definitely our button pusher! A couple of people commented that Daniel was a little Daddy in the making and would inherit his gift for technology.

Val is working here to protect her earrrings from being pulled off as Caleb is trying to find a way to grab them. She and some other folks stopped by near David's desk to visit the two newest recruits to the company.

Daniel had a blast testing out everyone's keyboards and Lane showed him how to raise his desk up and down at the push of a button, which was very popular! Lane said he is soon to be a grandparent and so he got in a little practice bouncing a little one on his knee today. Thanks to all for such a fun visit! The babes took a nice snooze on the way home after all the excitement.

Fun Outing & Surprise Visit!

My parents and I planned to have a "fun day" with the kiddos today and we had originally wanted to go to the zoo or something, but it was just too cold and dreary to be outside, so we went to the Auburn Supermall instead. Josiah needed a haircut anyway, so it worked out well. I tried to take some good pictures of Josiah, but he was moving around so fast, it was hard to get decent ones. Here he is though at the top of the mountain where you can also see his new haircut.

This is a little blurry of him, but shows him having fun climbing up the slide. As it turned out, he wanted to go to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the weekend and so after all the fun of the day, we packed a bag for him some more quality time with them.

It was awfully hard to get a shot of the two of them together facing me, so this was about the best I could do. They both wanted to turn the wheel a different way and you can see that Daniel is exerting some effort to turn it his way.

One of our nicknames for Daniel is "fuzz head" because as you see pictured here he has some fuzzy hair on the back of his head. This is really noticeable right after his hair dries a bit after being in the bath. He was enjoying climbing UP the slides in the play area. After a while of play though, he got tuckered out and wanted to be held the rest of the time.

Daniel was walking all over the place, so I was surprised I could pin him down in one place to get such a nice shot! He really enjoyed playing with all the wall toys and walking around to explore all the big toys.

Here is Caleb crawling through the tunnel under the mountain in the play area. At one point during his exploring, he crawled up the stairs of a slide and as I was looking for him I saw him sliding down the slide feet first on his tummy! When Josiah was this young, he wouldn't have ever tried something like that! Caleb has no fear once again and so thankfully this is a nice padded area for him to explore.

Our little swimmer feet Caleb boy is here pictured with the fish. His expression is so sweet with his tongue sticking out! If I could find a way to do those baby swim lessons, I am certain that Caleb would absolutely LOVE it! Likely though, he will have to wait to learn to swim until he gets older. So for now he will have to be content with water play in the bathtub.

When we were passing by the play area to get Josiah's hair cut, Mara's Dad saw me and it just so happened that Mara (who lives about one hour and a half away from us) was in the area to visit with her family and was coming to the mall at that very time frame. What a wonderful surprise! I will be seeing her again soon as we are going to do a road trip up to attend our friend Darcy's baby shower in a few weeks, so that will be fun too!

Three Cute Boys!

This is something Josiah loves to do nowadays. He does headstands on the chair (as pictured here), the couch, the floor, or wherever. Not sure what the draw is for doing them so much, but he is constantly doing this throughout the day. He went out with my parents for dinner last night and afterward Grandma wanted to take him to Walmart to look for Gordon (one of the Thomas the Tank Engine trains), and Grandpa didn't want to go and buy more toys and so they were "discussing" this in the car on the way there. At one point, Josiah chimed in to convince Grandpa that going to Walmart was the way to go and said, "Trust me, Grandpa...just try it!" Ummm...how many times have I said that to Josiah? I usually say this to him when he doesn't want to try something new and I am attempting to get him to do it. Too funny! Also, I think I have mentioned before that my parents will sometimes spell where they are going to make a decision about where they are going. Josiah will take random letters and say, "I want to go to RTV" or something like that. I told Josiah last Saturday that Daddy was going to take him to Target for some fun (while I taught a group lesson at the house) and he went in and woke Daddy up saying, "Can we go to C.R.V. also called Target?"

Here is our handsome little Caleb boy. He many times has this serious look on his face as I am sure he is devising his next adventurous move. He likes to find an object (a toy, lid or whatever) to put in his mouth and then walk around with it like just hanging out. I have to watch him though because he will get some long object in his mouth and I am always afraid he will topple over and it will be jammed back in his throat. He is walking pretty well now albeit a bit wobbly! His walking style is to throw his arms up in the air and walk or rather try to run as fast as he can. This leads to more falling down than his brother, but I am sure he will be steady at walking rather soon! Also when he doesn't get his way on something like getting the toy he wanted (either Josiah or Daniel stealing it) or if he wanted to be held and we put him down he flops on the floor in a very dramatic fashion and wails. Sometimes this backfires though and he flops himself onto a toy like a car or something like that and he hurts himself and his fake wails turn into "I hurt myself" wails. Either way, he usually gets comforted again and usually that was what he wanted. He is a sneaky one!

Daniel is also steadily walking these days and of the two seems more sturdy on his feet. He is our careful walker and so doesn't fall quite as much unless his oldest brother gets a mind to knock him over, which is of course NOT popular! He also loves to play "peek-a-boo" in his crib and will take his blanket and pull it over his head and then pop out and laugh. It is the cutest! He is still our most communicative one and tries to say words all the time. It is funny to listen to his little mumbling gibberish as he "tells" me very important things.