First day in Houston

For spring break we drove down to Houston to visit my cousins, Amy and Kim, and their families.  We have been wanting to visit them but haven't wanted to brave the heat and humidity of the summer.  We figured spring break would be a good time to go plus Brian and I had an extra day off (Easter Monday).  We stayed with Amy and her family first.  They have twin boys who are 3 but will be 4 in June.  Jaden and Cody loved Natalie. They always wanted to be holding Natalie's hand or playing with Natalie.  It was really cute.  Here they are playing together.

We decided to head to the zoo as my family loves visiting zoos.  Here's what we looked like walking in and various times throughout the zoo (Brian picked the right shirt for the day).  Natalie generally did a very good job keeping track of where Jaden and Cody went.  I think Cody liked holding Natalie's hand the best.  (Notice our attire-pants, shoes, short sleeve shirts and hoodies-that is what we wore most days in Houston-it didn't get warm until the weekend).

The Houston zoo has lots of cool animals although my kids did want to see the polar bears and penguins (can't imagine why the Houston zoo wouldn't have those!).  We did see quite a few elephants which is nice since we can't see elephants up here.

While we were looking at the cats we noticed some loud howling and went to investigate.  The gibbons were doing their twice daily territorial call.  It went on for quite some time.  Here's a brief snippet of what they sound like.  I have a longer video which is better but I didn't think you wanted to listen to almost a minute of it.

 The zoo had some nice things for kids to touch and play with.  One was a small African village with small huts and drums.  The kids really liked playing the drums.

 They have a nice Children's Zoo area.  Natalie, Jaden and Cody liked brushing the goats but Noah isn't huge on that so he and I went to see the Mongooses.  Noah wanted to see prairie dogs but they didn't have any so he had to settle for Mongooses and Meerkats.

Amy, Jaden and Cody headed back a little bit before we did since the boys generally have some rest time.  I think  they fell asleep in the car on the way back.  We really appreciated them staying out various times in the afternoon and forgoing nap time at home!  Brian, N2 and I went to see the rest of the animals at the zoo and then headed over to see the beach trash art exhibit.  It was neat to see what they made but it was sad to see how much trash they were able to uncover.

Texas Bluebonnets

When we were in Texas the bluebonnets were starting to bloom.  I've seen the beautiful pictures of kids in the bluebonnets so I figured I might as well try to get some.  We kind of ran out of time and this photo shoot was pretty spur of the moment.  My kids were sweaty, double doused with sunblock and not in the most ideal clothes but I tried to make the most of it.  The flowers were a little patchy and I'm not an experienced photographer of patchy bluebonnets so I don't think I got as many flowers in my pictures as I could have.  Oh well.  I do have to say that I got the best pictures of Noah that I have in a really long time!

Natalie was not as photogenic and cooperative as she normally as in pictures.

 Here are the two of them together.

At the end they really wanted to take some silly pictures.  Brian wants them to recreate the first picture in 30 years :)

Random

We took N2 to see Star Wars on New Year's Eve.  Brian had seen it already and said that it wasn't too scary.  Both of the kids were so excited!  Mom found them shirts and we had bought Brian the Star Wars shirt for Christmas.  When I saw it, I knew it was the perfect Star Wars/twin shirts!  Natalie sat on the edge of her seat the entire movie.

I know this is not the finest of pictures but we wanted to document what we ate on New Year's Eve.  We introduced our kids to chocolate fondue.  Boy, they were in heaven!  They have asked for fondue numerous times since them.  We tried lots of kinds of fruit: apples, grapes, pear (not good), bananas, clementines (which one of my kids really liked), and strawberries.  We also had marshmallows, pound cake, peanut butter rice krisipie treats (that I made), caramels, and pretzels.

Back for Thanksgiving, I made a toffee caramel cheesecake.  It looked like a Cheesecake Factory cheesecake!  It was quite delicious!

We were at the Weidner's house for Thanksgiving.  My kids took it upon themselves to make Thanksgiving hats.  Noah made a boy pilgrim hat and Natalie made a girl pilgrim hat (they must have made these at school) and then they made a headdress and wanted Charlie to wear it but instead Grandma wore it.

Every day it becomes more apparent how similar Noah is to Brian. As you can see in this picture, this is how the two of them hang out, flannel pants and no socks. :)  Natalie and I always have socks on our feet but Noah and Brian often do not.

Zoo lights

The week after Christmas we went to Lincoln Park Zoo to see their zoo lights.  We decided to go down later in the afternoon (well, public transportation was pretty slow too) which was a mistake because part of the zoo closes at 4:30 or so and we weren't able to see half the zoo.  Lesson for next year!

We stopped at the Conservatory first.  They had one greenhouse decorated for Christmas and had trains up.

 I love the variegated poinsettias!

Then we went to the zoo.  We did get to see a few animals outside which we normally don't see like the snow leopard, puma, lynx and more.  They were right up against the fence.

We did see the primate houses but that was about it.  The lights are really cool-they had lights all over trees, lights that danced to music and scenes made out of lights.  Definitely a fun thing to see!

They had ice carving demonstrations every night.  My kids were pretty fascinated by that.

By the end of seeing the lights my kids were tired, hungry and cold.  Not the best combination :)  There is really nothing to eat around the zoo so we ended up taking a bus down to Michigan Avenue and eating down there.  The street right by the zoo was a nightmare and made the buses run so slowly so we learned how to do things differently for next year.

Random Christmas

We had Brian's family over on Christmas Eve to celebrate Christmas with his family.  It was pretty chaotic opening presents with 2 six year olds, 1 four year old, 2 one year olds and a baby so I didn't get many pictures.  I did get one of Noah opening his presents from Grandma and Grandpa Weidner where Grandpa wrapped the presents.  Take a look at the box by Noah.

It got kind of late and crazy at the end for N2 so I got out some Christmas books and Brian read a little to N2 and Chloe.  Nothing says Christmas like a pirate eye patch, right?

Here are some pictures of my kids enjoying their Christmas presents (note how Natalie is wearing her footies).  You can see in the first picture Natalie's slippers.  Both kids got slippers where the opening to insert your foot is actually the mouth of the animal so that it looks like the animal is eating your leg.  Natalie got lions and Noah got bears.  They love these slippers and find them very funny.

For St. Nicholas day, they got lots of minion things including these hats (which were supposed to be in their stockings from Santa, sigh.  Santa has to share with St. Nicholas).  They wore these hats every day before they got monster hats on Christmas Eve and now they wear their monster hats.

 When we were setting up the Christmas tree Noah thought the tree skirt should be a cape.

And finally just some random pictures.  Both kids have really improved in their reading and I wanted to get a picture of them reading to someone.  You can see in this picture why Natalie needed new footies. :)

Natalie lost a top tooth before Christmas and it has been really cute because she lisps a little without that tooth.  It's too bad that the new one is going to grow in before she loses the second one :(  She got a dollar coin and it happened to be on the same day that Peanut drew on their faces which TOTALLY did not work because it all wore off while they were sleeping and they couldn't find anything in the mirror when they got up.  I woke up when they were still in the bathroom and Noah said "this is boring, nothing is there."  Peanut had left them a message to look in the mirror.  I could see the faint lines on Natalie's face so I pointed those out and then asked if I should draw over the lines that Peanut drew.  So this is a replica of what it should have looked like.  There was not face paint crayon on their sheets or pillows though so that is good.  Maybe next year Peanut should try eyeliner.