Retro Chloe

I found this retro dress at the second hand store and knew it was perfect for a girl with fashion confidence. She wears it well!

Kari

Playing Teletubbies at the Zoo

There's this play area at the zoo that looks like a concrete version of the Teletubbies house. It's a partially underground cave/tunnel structure that you can climb on top of and jump into and run around. Sam is in the front here; Jackson is the kid in the background with the same boots and jacket. On this day, we ended up leaving the Teletubbies house with Chloe crying. When I came to her rescue, she was down on the floor crying. She either got into a rumble with another toddler or she fell and the other toddler was just looking at her crying. Either way, I'm sure we'll be back. Kari

Spider Boys

There's an area at the zoo devoted to spiders (not my favorite area). This super cool giant spider web climbing thing is located here. Chloe looks on, but doesn't yet attempt the climb.

Kari

Roasting marshmallows

Max comes over

We have one set of friends who also have 3 children- only one set of friends. And they came over this night for dinner. Max is their oldest, he is one year older than Sam & Jackson, Klara is their middle daughter and she is one year older than Chloe, then they have a little baby, about 6 months old. Anyway, the boys were super excited to have kids come over to our house. But as soon as they got here, Sam & Jackson turned into super brats! They took their garbage trucks and were driving them up and down the hall and Sam was saying to Max, "Max, you're not nice, you can't play with my garbage truck!". I was so horrified. I'd never seen the boys like this- but then again, we don't often have families over to our house. They did share their big obnoxious cars, as seen in the photo. And they did think that Max was pretty cool when he could write numbers on their MagnaDoodle (the boys can't write the numbers yet very well).

Kari

Jackson blows balloons

Jackson loves balloons! I'm not sure where this came from, but all of a sudden, he's obsessed with balloons. Maybe because they come in a pack and it's a collection, like his collection of bugs, seashells, farm animals, cars, rocks, etc. Anyway, Sam & Jackson got $10 from Traci and Peter for Easter and I said, what do you boys want to buy. "Balloons!" Jackson exclaimed. And then of course, Sam chimed in, "Balloons!" And Jackson began to name off what kind of balloons Sammy would get and what kind he would get and what color balloon every one would get to sleep with that night. Jackson and Sam get white balloons in their room, Chloe gets a pink one, Mommy gets a blue one and (I forget what color Daddy gets). So the top photo shows Jackson in one of his first successful attempts at blowing up his own balloon. Pretty cool.

Kari

Chloe and her babies

Chloe loves her babies. She is always so busy caring for them. She puts them in her little toy stroller, covers them up with a blanket, feeds them bottles, puts diapers on them and most recently, puts the babies on the potty chair (yay!) She talks to her babies, "going for a walk baby." "Baby, put on your diaper baby." "Baby's sleeping, shhhhh (as she shushes me)"

So far, only one of her babies has a name- Annie, which is Raggedy Ann. All the other babies are named, Baby. I've thought about giving them all names, but it seemed so arbitrary and I couldn't do it. For now, they'll all be Baby, until Chloe names them.

In the above photos, one day Chloe was sad or sick or something and she was sitting in this chair watching a video. Sam had the idea to bring all of Chloe's babies to sit with Chloe in the chair. Then he decided to sit with her too. He loves Chloe so much- it's so cute.

Kari

Spring weeding in the backyard

Here's the hill at the side of our backyard and Jackson running down. You can see the trail that Jeff carved into the hillside for the boys to go "hiking." It's even got a switchback down to the yard. Right now, the boys love to bring their Tonka dumptrucks up onto the hill and push them over the edge and watch them tumble down to the grass. Chloe hasn't attempted to climb up the steep terrain yet. She has too many duties in the yard- playing house, splashing in the water table, riding her car, pushing the lawnmower; her list goes on and on.
Kari

Fun with sofa cushions

Taking the cushions off the sofa and putting them on the floor- wow is that fun! Sam and Jackson do somersaults on the cushions and Chloe walks across, trying to maintain her balance. During this day, there was some cushion ramp action, with Jeff rolling Sam and Chloe down.

Kari

Dave comes to town

Top Photo: Chloe, Hudson and Traci

Bottom Photo: Jackson (pulling the candle off the cake and probably about to lick the candle), Michelle, Kari, Chloe, Hudson, Traci, Sam & Dave (with his hands crossed in the front right).

Dave visted Seattle and then out to Leavenworth to ski with Michelle and Jon. I don't remember why we're celebrating with cake, maybe just because there's guests and who doesn't like cake!

Kari