The Western Wall

Our backyard has a rock wall that sits in direct sunlight in the afternoons.  After the stones heat up, the family(ies) of lizards living behind the rocks emerge to bathe.

The twins love looking for lizards, but they have conflicting feelings about whether to try to touch them or not.  Addy dog has no such conflicts; lizards must be removed from the property forever.  Here are a few shots of the kids enjoying the wall and reminding Addy that she is still their #1 non-human around.

Easter 2014 Pictures

Family pictures are challenging for us right now.  I sometimes wonder how people get the shots that they post on Facebook.  We have the perfect mix of an 11-week old who cannot move and 2-year-old twins who do nothing but move and explore and do not fall for cheap "look at me" tricks anymore.  Our kids are relatively well-behaved (almost every parent says that), but they have little interest in sitting or standing in one place for an extended period of time.  So, here are our best efforts at showing off our Easter outfits.

We started with some solo shots of Asa:

Then we moved on to Alden, who was pushing her baby around in her shopping cart:

Finally a few of young Arthur:

We tried to get a few of all three of them on the couch.  Each child had their own agenda.  These are the best we got out of the lot:

I had the idea that we should go take pictures by the window, but we needed a snack break first:

Then, we experimented with how the light and reflections from the window would turn out:

Finally, we settled on getting some more solo shots of each of the kids:

Bonus picture--there was some outfit mixing and matching during the shoot:

Roller Coaster!

Our sweet friend Cindy gave us the roller coaster that her now-grown grandbabies used to play with when they would come visit her.  Despite the stories of this toy being well-loved, it rolls as good as new, and we look forward to the day when we can pass it to the next group of parents.  Cindy wrote her grandchildren's names on the underside of one of the pieces, and we will keep the list going.

Asa and Alden love playing with this toy.  The set is made of heavy duty plastic and is essentially a contained ramp that looks a little like a cosine graph (or sine graph, depending on where you start).  The rider sits on the cart pictured above and just rolls down the ramp to be deposited on the ground, where the cart continues to roll subject to the laws of motion.

Our kids love riding, but they also love fetching the cart.

After getting their thrills, they simply enjoyed practicing walking up and down the ramp.  I think the practice was pretty good exercise for their learning to negotiate inclines and downhill.

Most of all, we continue to have a lot of fun.  Thanks, Ms. Cindy!