Thomas is 2!

 Happy birthday crazy boy!

 Who does NOT like to wear the birthday hat

 Unless we bribe him with a donut

 This kid is so friendly, charming and energetic. We love his smile and laugh and his crazy adventurous nature.

 Flubs seemed like the perfect way to celebrate since it is his favorite place to eat:)

More to come after I take his 2 year pictures!

Noah's special day

Noah had a special day with me a couple weeks ago! We met some friends at the museum center

 

 

And we had so much fun! He asked if we could have another special day the next day... 

Easter

This was Thomas' first Easter where he was up and ready to hunt for eggs (er...cupcakes)

 It was, apparently, to sunny to look up at me

 But we aren't going to complain about sunshine after the winter we had!

The butterfly show

Mary and I went to the butterfly show at krohn conservatory today. I have such fond memories of going when I was a kid. Krohn and the art museum always seemed like magical places to me. It was fun to share one with Mary today and I hope to take her to the art museum soon! She sat so still for a while hoping a butterfly would land on her. One landed on my stomach and she just stared and stared. 

Then a man next to us was holding a paper that one of the butterflies landed on and offered it to Mary to hold. She got a HUGE smile!

It was a special day! We were able to see where they breed the butterflies and they had butterflies at every stage from caterpillar until, obviously, adult butterflies. If any of you plan to go make sure you print the coupon from the Cincinnati parks website! 

Spring in the new house

 One fun thing about spring in the new house is seeing what everything looks like as it is growing back again! My favorite are the trees. We have three of these trees on our property

 You may think it's snow because somehow we have gotten snow this april

 

 But it's not snow it's flowers! I took a close up because they are beautiful and because I want to make a print for the kids with a verse from a children's song we like.

They are already growing leaves and the flowers are falling:( But I have enjoyed them while they've been out!

Beginnings of our garden

I went to Menards and bought all these little seed starter things and got so excited. We filled them all up with dirt and then I realized that at least half of my seeds say to sow directly into the ground...not to start them early. Soooooo I may have been a little over zealous.



 

But I'm excited that we have a start! We will probably make the raised bed soon and get a compost bin together as well! I'm excited for a butterfly garden too, but I think it will be a couple years until that is established enough to attract butterflies. We'll see!

Trip to Camp Caleb

We took a trip with some friends from church down to Camp Caleb in Kentucky to help clean up the camp to get it ready for kids this summer. It was a lot of work, but it was also a lot of fun. I took a picture of Ian doing the dishes just because I thought it was funny to see him with his arms deep in dirty water cleaning dishes:) But apparently others thought it was funny too because right after this he said, "Why does everyone think it's so unbelievable that I'm doing the dishes?!?" 

 

How I found them the first morning there.

 The kids thought it was SO exciting that they got to scrub the floors with sponges. If only I would have found out sooner that they thought this was such a cool task! I'll have them scrubbing floors in no time.

One group from our church who stayed at the camp with us had to go to another location for the day, but it was pretty dirty and not suitable for kids. So the babies stayed at the camp with us and we got to play with them all day! This is my selfie face. It never occurred to me before how terrifying it might be for babies...

We gave the kids the job of straightening the rope. Did it NEED to be done?? Probably not, but it did make it easier to roll it back up, and the kids got to run down the path with it. As Ian always says: it's the little things.

Upping his man status.