acclimating

I'm sure some of you are wondering how the girls are acclimating to the new, cooler climate, since they've never known anything but Houston. Well, I assure you they're adjust just fine. The current tempature upstairs at our house right now is 63 degrees, they're playing downstairs, which tends to be a bit cooler and here is what they're currently wearing:

 They hid under the covers when they heard me coming, but they weren't playing under there.

Hannah exercising in her swim suit.

How are Nathan and I doing after spending eight years in Houston? I'm remembering that sunny and in the 40s only calls for a sweatshirt, but am enjoying the coolness! I think Nathan is too :-)

keeping moisturized

This keeps in theme with my last post. Yesterday Hannah, after getting a drink of water said "I'm moisturizing my mouth Mommy"

Drying out.....

Houston is humid, no one will deny that. But just how humid I did not realize. When we moved I had a couple cups of brown sugar that came with us, it dried out within a couple weeks of being here. I NEVER had brown sugar dry out on me in Houston. Today the girls were playing with play dough. We've had this same play dough for years, never had a problem with it drying out. It was getting very dry in the hour plus the girls were playing with it. Strange how that works :-) But at least they had fun, we might just have to make play dough more often or add water to it or something.   

Evie had a blast with the play dough. She made lots and lots of cars!

 

Here are the cars she made, I was really impressed, the car mold is not the easiest to use, but she did really well with it.

Hannah made a beautiful heart, which I unfortunately didn't get a picture of, but she made it without a mold or cookie cutter and it was very good. 

Cooking

Wednesday while skyping with my Grandparents, my girls decide they were going to cook for us. They got out all the pots and pans and some clementines and apples. It's amazing how many different foods we had!  

 Busy at the stove making the food (although when ever they brought it over for my grandparents or myself they always said they were "just the servers" and they didn't make the food!).

Do you see all that food? :-)

racing

 We have a long hallway in our house, it goes from the girls bedroom to the living room, and is probably two thirds of the length of the house. Today the girls were "racing" down the hallway with their "kids." Apparently it was a costume race.

There was a ninja (Evie), a princess (Evie's puppy), batman (Hannah's puppy) and a guard (Hannah).

worms for dinner?

The girls have been calling ground beef worms when I buy it at the store. I have to admit, it does look a little like worms......anyway, tonight I was cooking dinner and Evie was helping me, as the beef started turning brown she jumped up and down and ran to Hannah crying "It's meat, it's meat! It's not worms!! It's meat, it's meat, it's not worms!"
The temptation was so high to tell her that it was just cooked worms. :-) But I didn't.

Egg Hunt Picture of Evie

Like I said, I didn't get any pictures of Evie at the town egg hunt because Nathan had the camera. Fortunately for me, Evie is cute and I'm not the only one who thinks so. :-) Here's a link to a picture of her that the town newspaper got: updated 4/27 I have removed the link because the picture has been removed. 

Which is older?

I have been asked a lot how far apart my two girls are, as in, they're really close in size, so they must be really close in  age. They're 21.5 months if you weren't sure, this questioning has continued since moving to Connecticut,, however recently I've been asked if Evie is 5 or in kindergarten. And even if Evie is older (Hannah IS still taller than Evie). I often have to remind myself that Evie is only 3, but I really don't think I'd guess she's five. At least as one of my friends who asked about it this week said "She's tall and mature, that's a much better combination than tall and immature."

The BEACH!

We finally made it to the beach! We went on Monday after Becca and Lucas left, if I had thought of it we would have gone there instead of the park, but I didn't think of it. They did stop by and see the beach on their way out. The girls had fun, the water was a little cold, but not as cold as it was at my grandparents in Virgina on our way up. Hannah was brave enough to jump off the dock and enjoyed the water. Evie got in a little, but she mostly enjoyed wandering the beach and found some older girls to play with (it was Spring break week for schools so the beach was crowed!). 

 Evie making a long road in the sand

 Hannah playing in the sand

 Evie playing with the older girls at the "hot tub"

 Filling up the bucket

 In the water

 After observing the other kids running and jumping off the docks Hannah got up the courage to do it herself, here she is running down the dock....

 Sliding/jumping in

 That was fun!

 Walking around to do it again! The docks were half on the beach, so the water was very shallow all around them, which was great for all the young kids there.

A visit with Becca and Lucas

Last weekend Becca and Lucas came to visit! It was great fun, we hadn't seen them in almost two years. It took the girls about two minutes to warm up to them and then that had a blast! Saturday we went over to the Allison's for dinner with a bunch of other friends from Rochester. It was a good timing visiting and catching up with old friends (sorry, I didn't get any pictures).
Sunday was church, Nathan and I stayed for a membership class while Becca and Lucas took the girls home for lunch. There were rumors of cracker houses for lunch made by Uncle Lucas. Sunday afternoon Lucas helped Nathan put up some shelving in the playroom downstairs for the toys. They look great! I didn't take a picture of the final product, I'm sure at some point you'll see it :-) Becca read the girls lots of books, and I got my laundry down and dinner made without small children interruption.

 Nathan and Lucas working on the shelves

 Hearing books from Aunt Becca

 Monday we went to the park, it was almost 90 degrees! 

 Aunt Becca and Hannah climbing the spider web

 Evie had a blast being pushed by Uncle Lucas on the swing!

 Climbing around

 Bouncing with Aunt Becca

 Decorating the table with dandelions

 Having a snack after playing hard!

Becca, Lucas and the girls also found the video maker on our computer, here's an example of the videos they left for us :-)

Connecticut Snake Education

Yesterday I found a snake on our driveway. It was a Northern Ring-necked snake. Now that I know what it is I will probably pick it up next time to see it's belly, it's yellow or orange! Since we had not identified it yet, we just watched as it slithered across the rocks. 

 Hannah wanted to know how it could move with no legs. 

 Today the girls found a Eastern (Common) Garter snake dead on the road outside our house. I flipped this one over so the girls could see its belly. It wasn't exciting, just white, but I was able to point out a little of how it would move for Hannah.

When I grow up.....

The girls have been having "when I grow up" conversations with each other. The other day while I was making dinner they came in and said "when I grow up I can make dinner" the other said "when I grow up I can clean the kitchen!" "when I grow up I can clean the house" "when I grow up I can have kids"
Today in the car it was "when I grow up I can mow the lawn" "when I grow up I can drive a truck" "when I grow up I can go shopping"
It's so funny to hear what they're looking forward to.

Cleaning

Last week was a long not so fun week. After Nathan worked all day Sunday to get our kitchen faucet working I ran the dishwasher Monday morning only to have the kitchen flood (ok, not quite flood, but there was a lot of water) because the drainer hose for the dishwasher wasn't hooked up. Oops. But the good news is under my dishwasher is very clean now:

Doesn't everyone clean under their dishwasher when they move into a new house? Ok, maybe not. Anyway, on the cleaning note, I spent much of yesterday cleaning. I did 12 or 13 loads of laundry, Nathan wanted everything from the girls room cleaned, all their bedding/blankets/stuffed animals/pillows. I did have time to do everything yesterday, so I finished the last three loads I needed to do this morning. I also managed to get some of the bedroom picked up and the car cleaned out. The car was in desperate need of a clean out, as I hadn't cleaned it since moving here! I'm still working on finding a spot for everything in this house, but it's coming along. One day I'm hoping to have it cleaned up and organized and give you a video tour :-) We'll see if that ever really happens!

Easter

We had a quiet Easter. We went to church in the morning and came home and cleaned up a little and then made colored eggs. The girls had a little of fun dying the eggs and then eating them. They were surprised that when you took off the shell the egg wasn't colored.

While waiting for the egg dying to get setup they made a train....

 And had some fun with dress ups

 

 They both enjoyed coloring the eggs

 Some of the finish product

 Peeling them to eat! Yum!

After eggs we bunked the girls beds. They are loving the bunk beds!!!!

Easter Egg Hunts!

The girls got to do two Easter egg hunts this year. One the weekend before Easter and one Easter weekend. The first one was with the town, it was raining, so it was very short and sweet. The second one was with our church and they had lots of stuff to go with it.

 Hannah in a mod of kids, can you find her?

 On her own picking up candy...she only picked up a handful of candy. She had people coming up and giving her more because they felt sorry for her. But really, she'd just rather watch the people.

And the Easter bunny was there! 

Sorry for the lack of Evie pictures, Nathan had the camera and was with Hannah. It was broken up by age, it was three and under. Evie did a good job helping clean up the grass, before starting the announcer said the kids had to do a good job picking up all the candy because she didn't want to have to clean it up, while picking up candy at one point Evie said "I'm helping clean up! See, I'm doing good picking up" Maybe next year Easter egg hunts will not be a cleaning thing for Evie? She was very excited about doing one again this year and asked a couple of weeks ago when she saw the baskets if she'd get to do one again because she remembered the one from last year.

As I said, at church there was a lot more going on. They walked you around from room to room to learn different things about Jesus. 

This was the first room, the people were getting excited about Jesus coming to Jerusalem, they were practicing what kind of face they would have when Jesus came. And had everyone practice with them. Here's Evie's face for when Jesus comes:

In the next room they talked about sin, and had a path that you could walk with all kinds of sin written on it, you then took pebbles to put in your shoes and walk around with to remind you of your sin. 

 

The following room had "Jesus" who talked about how he had to be broken so he could be a light to the world. They gave all the kids a light stick and had them break it to make light. 

The next room had the cross and water, and they talked about how Jesus washed away our sins and they had you take the pebbles out of your shoes and leave them in the water and pray at the cross.

And the last room was the empty tomb! He is risen!

They had an egg hunt as well. 

 And each child was allowed to pick 12 eggs, this helped, as their was a goal to word towards

 Opening the eggs and seeing what they got!

 The girls also enjoyed making sand necklaces