It's raining, it's pouring....

Sunday was a wet day, with the rain coming in bursts. It would POUR down and then just stop for a few minutes, over and over. The boys just got new rain boots (fire engines!) last week and were excited to try them out. They ran around with their umbrellas (sometimes over their heads) and got soaking wet.



They found the puddles in the lawn right away and had a great time jumping and splashing.






I put Jon down by me and he immediately did the "Mowgli crawl" across the sidewalk and sat right back into a wet bottom... Poor guy didn't get any wetter than that. Mean ol' mom (didn't really want to get wet).

And lookie here... I haven't done much (ANY) scrapbooking lately, but I thought I might try a page with these pictures. I found a super cute kit and one of the example pages was so cute that I had to make something like that. And I did!

(Click to enlarge)

Sci-Quest

We went to Sci-Quest with some of the family on Saturday, and it was fun time. We'd never been, so it was fun to try somewhere new. They were having an open house so admission was free. The kids loved all of the hands on stuff there was to do.

These mirrors were so funny. I was cracking up at the way Ben and Chris looked. I don't usually find those mirrors so hilarious, but this was seriously awesome. Especially Chris. He looked like a cute little big headed baby. I wish I could have caught it on film...


There were lots of fun things to do. Of course they loved all of music related stuff, like this big plastic instruments:


There was this "grossology" exhibit with a bunch of crazy body stuff. This was a climbing wall of zits and scars and stuff... nice.


Chris liked pushing all of the buttons on this funny guy to hear the stomach growl, the heart beat, etc.

Lots of climbing and running around and having to keep up!


They thought fog thing was pretty cool...


Chris went to town on these xylophones and Jon was boppin' away in his stroller to Chris' tunes!



Trying to escape the stroller...

But mostly content to watch all the happenings. Too bad he's not quite big enough to do very much!

Best friends

When we first found out we were having these two so close together (14 months!) I was pretty nervous. People kept telling me, "oh they'll be best friends" and when I was taking care of two babies I sure hoped they were right!


Lucky for them (and me) it's been true. They are such great buddies. They play together all day and keep each other company. I love watching them interact. Sometimes Chris depends more on Ben than me. He'll go to Ben first for help with something that he can't get to work or to open something. Ben is always helping Chris and trying to teach him things. They are so cute together. Ben is even trying to help Chris learn to go potty. Hopefully that will help him get potty trained earlier than Ben was!


They always want what the other one has. If Ben is wearing a tie like Daddy, Chris wants to wear a tie too! If Chris has a backpack, Ben wants his backpack too. If Ben wants Corn Flakes for breakfast, Chris does too- even if he had just asked for Rice Krispies before Ben made his choice.


(Funny side story- on Sunday, Ben's teacher told me that he said he must have eaten too many corn flakes because he was full of wiggles!)


Chris has always been a bad sleeper. Once he finally started sleeping through the night as a baby (I think he was past one) it was short lived. He started waking up again just randomly once or twice and as he got older it seemed to be because of nightmares. Poor guy, he still has them. He's been doing pretty well lately, but last night he was up crying over and over. After about the fourth time in an hour, I was pretty tired of going in there (he doesn't stop unless you go in). They just got new beds (bunkbeds, separated for now- Chris had been in a toddler bed) so I pushed his bed over next to Ben's and told him Ben was there so he didn't need to be scared, and what do you know? He didn't wake up the rest of the night! I'm so glad they have each other.

Sprinkler time!

I picked up a new crazy sprinkler for the kids a couple of weeks ago and when we had a nice day they tried it out. Jon was not a fan of the water spraying on him, but liked to crawl around near it and was happy to be outside half naked ;)



The boys were hesitant at first. The sprinkler is a long hose with little hoses that spray every which way. After a few minutes they really got into it.



Jon is so funny. I put him on the grass, but then he wants to be on the sidewalk for some reason. He does the "Mowgli crawl" along the walkway.... silly baby.



"Hold Jon, let me take a picture...."



And Chris ... the one who will never look when I ask him to smile for me. He'll smile and say cheese, just usually not in my direction. I was going to put my camera away and he told me to wait and "take my picture!"

Happy Birthday to Daaaaddy...

Catching up again... Dave's birthday was the 8th, and we surprised him with a little overnight trip up to Tennessee (he loves roadtrips, especially impromptu ones). We found an interesting place to go. A little backstory: A couple of months back, we were driving to Murfreesboro, TN, and we saw this CASTLE up on a hill. I tried to get a picture of it on the way back from the highway, because it looks so cool up on the hill, but this was the best I could get. You can see the top :)


We looked it up on my phone and found out it was an actual castle and someone lived there, and that they had a festival there every May... so when I thought about surprising Dave with a fun getwaway, I remembered this and looked it up again. He had said we HAD to go there when the festival came up.

But first, we headed off after Dave got off work on his birthday, and drove most of the way up (to Franklin) where we found this cool little artsy mall where this guy lives: Rusty Mechanism. The mall was converted from an old factory, and it was an amazing place.




We had dinner at a fun little Bistro there before driving over to our hotel for the night. The boys thought that alone was a really fun adventure. When we were getting ready to go on the trip, all I told them was that we were going to stay at a hotel (didn't want them to mention the castle and give away the surprise!) and Ben was really excited. I wasn't sure why, until he told me it was going to be such a fun adventure because "anything can happen at a hotel". The way he said it, I realized that he had connected it with the hotel in "Bedtime Stories" (which we have seen many times, they love it). Unfortunately, (just as I had feared) it was not a good night's sleep. We'll have to work on sleeping away from home. What a long night.

In the morning we had breakfast at the hotel and went for a swim before heading out to the festival. Dave had no clue where we were going, even when we got there (you couldn't see the castle from the festival grounds, you had to take a bus across to the castle for the tour). I had to tell him why we were at a Renaissance Festival :)

We toured the castle first, it was quite fascinating. The man who built it has been working on it for something like 30 years and it's still not finished with it. He welcomes everyone personally and tells them a little about how he came to build a castle, it's pretty interesting. He has tried to keep the design authentic and has made and collected a lot of things that he has on display as you go through. The grounds are beautiful, and the area across the way where they hold the festival is awesome.


Everything was scattered amongst the trees. The woods were beautiful and green and lush. A bit muddy since it was a rainy weekend, but we didn't get too much rain while we were there. It was fun, there were lots of people in costumes, interesting vendors, lots of music and people in costumes (as well as in character) all around us. We even saw some people who had gotten married there that day.



The boys had fun, there was so much to see. They were a little tired from our night away from our beds, but they did pretty well, all things considered. It was a fun trip!

Crazy kids...

We spent time that weekend with Dave's grandparents and Aunt Peggy, which was a lot of fun. It's always great to see them. For some reason I didn't get any pictures (although I think there are video clips somewhere). But I did snap a few of the kids at Jeremy and Rachel's (where we were celebrating Nicole's 2nd birthday). Grandma was pushing all the kids on the tire swing, they thought it was so fun.

Panoply!

The weekend after Ben's birthday, we hit the Panoply Arts Festival. The first thing we saw was this crazy tree. It's not a real tree- it was built and then covered completely in fabric, with leaves made by people all over the world. It was this huge collaborative art effort: Interdependence Tree Project. I thought it was amazing! The IFC also did a gas station project, which was equally cool.

The boys made leaves, as well as a few other fun crafts....



and got to play instruments...




Jon loved all of the instrument playing...



Caleb and Ben were watching this magician who did everything with recycled junk. After each trick, everyone would cheer...


Chris loved being able to hold this big banjo!


It was funny because we didn't plan to meet Jeanne, Steve, and Rachel there, but we saw them within five minutes and got to hang out with everyone. Nicole had fun making things...


Oliver too...


All of the kids loved the drum circle. Ben loved this a couple of years ago when we went, and Jon LOVED it. I wish someone had taken a picture of him, he was on my lap just drumming his little heart out and just completely fascinated, especially watching the guy who was leading the rhythms. He just watched him, glued!


It was a pretty fun evening, ending with fireworks over the pond. We didn't get to see as much as we would have liked, but we'll have to hit it all next year!