Birthday boy

 It is always great to choose your favorite foods on your birthday, I guess David is a lover of breakfast foods...or at least the sweet toppings that go with them.  For breakfast he wanted waffles with whip cream, strawberries and chocolate chips. Dinner "puffy pancakes" with buttermilk syrup, Brazilian lemonade and an ice cream cake. Sweet stuff!

 Of course he got some legos and a really big lego head (the only picture taken...oops)

It is great to be 8!

 Happy Birthday David! We can't believe this smart, sensitive and kind boy has been around our house for 8 years! We sure love his thoughtful questions, inquisitive nature and love for legos!

 For his birthday we celebrated as a family a day early.

After watching and cheering Aaron on for his first 5K

 Which he did really well.  We went to one of our favorite spots. David chose to go see the butterflies...and it was better than we have seen other times.  There were some very bright green ones, ones with clear wings, yellow and blue, orange and red...they were beautiful.

 I guess they liked the necks of these boys!

Play Gym

 The girls and I spent some time with some friends at a local gymnastics facility. We had such an exhausting afternoon, running, jumping, swinging and bouncing!

A saturday morning hike

 As you can see...these safety vests are a hit with the kids...at least they can always be seen!

We went to a local state park for a fun little hike. It was beautiful, but we were told we will have to go back in a month to see the wall of Rhodednrons and path lined with them for 1/2 a mile.

 We still had fun exploring and spending time as a family.

Safety First

 After learning about bikes from the children's museum, David was pretty serious that we needed to be safer while we were out biking on the street.  I had given Aaron a "glowing vest" for his early morning dark runs for Easter...and David was sure we all needed them. So when Aaron returned from his brother's wedding he had them for the WHOLE family! David and Bridget were giving them an early morning try as they attempted to run around the neighborhood. David's ear warmers slid, lucky for him he had Bridget to lead the way home.

Exploring the Ecotarium

 During April vacation we spent one day exploring the new games exhibit at our local children's museum.  We had a blast playing lots of board games, inviting our own rules and learning about bikes.

The meaning of David

David: Where does the name David come from?
Dad: It's in the Bible. It's Hebrew.
David: [thinking...] You mean I'm Hebrish!

A serious conversaton

David: Dad, would you rather have a car that runs on gasoline, electricity, fry oil, or solar panels?
Dad: Uhh... solar panels.
David: Those are expensive and break easily.
Dad: Where do you learn this stuff?
David: From a book I read at school.
Dad: Go to bed Dave!

Just some dancing

Our kids have moves!

Taking a little break

Pregnant women need breaks - cooking, watching the kids, and everything else drains the energy!

pretty pretty princess

One of Bridget's favorite games lately is 'pretty pretty princess' where you go around a board winning necklaces, a bracelet, rings, and earrings and you win if you have all these things and the crown. This particular day she found her swimsuit and was REALLY wanting to swim (even though it was 47 outside)

She is all about pink, princesses, and

sleeping in crazy positions.

sunshine=parks

We had a day of sunshine and warmer weather last week and boy did we enjoy it!
All the kids wanted to do was play outside at a few parks...
we got to three!

Then we played princesses a bit to end the day off!

Movie night

Family movie night...
the movie must have thrilled the girls as they fell asleep on dad.
David loved it and loved being silly!

a relaxing day

Our last day of vacation week we just relaxed and everyone did something they liked...David and dad spent a lot of time playing Zelda. As you can tell they were mesmerized!

Allison kept these in her ears and danced around most of the morning.

Bridget took a snooze as Zelda wasn't too exciting for her!

A trip to the children's museum

We had February Vacation week and had a lot of fun...on of the only things the kids wanted to do was ride the train into Boston to the Children's museum with some friends.

We ran into some problems when the car started making terrible sounds,
and the mechanic was late to the shop
so we ended up taking the car to another shop in town
and driving into Boston to meet our friends.

We had so much fun playing, having lunch and exploring with thousands of other kids out of school. Our dear sweet friend was willing to take them back on the train as I drove to the train station and picked them up. David was satisfied with that!

Our own little Calvin

David has really gotten into reading comic books...his latest love is Calvin and Hobbes. He came down one morning like this...
he said, "Mom, do I look fat?"
I was trying to figure out what to say when he continued,
"I have on three pair of pants, two sweaters, two shirts, a vest and coat."
My reply, "yep you do look pretty fluffy. What made you think of this?"
"Oh, I am just trying it like Calvin"

Here are all the clothes he had on.

With just one layer on: the skinny picture

He then came down and announced he was going to Mars and convinced Bridget she needed to be an alien princess. They collected a bunch of random things and put them in the wagon and went outside in the backyard...
only to read more comics!