Aunt Kari

Aunt Kari came to visit for a few days and we had so much fun.  We went to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch one day and saw elephants!

And I got to throw some money in a crocodile's mouth!

Aunt Kari made me a fort,

and played cars.

We played lots of other stuff too, like t-ball, but the camera wasn't always around to document that.

And no one from Mom's family can come for a visit without lots of yummy cooking and baking going on.  The de Jongs plan their visits around what they will eat.  One of the new recipes they tried was this Strawberry Lime Cream Cake.

One of the days was actually really nice so we headed to the zoo.  I wasn't too interested in the animals and wanted to just play, so you'll see that we don't have many pics of animals.

Except this cool one of this gorilla.  What a balancing act!

Me in a fox den:

 
As we were getting ready to leave, this man opened up a cart full of animal skins and skulls and we got to touch all of them.  SO cool!

I love it when my family comes to visit.  Grandma and Grandpa de Jong will be here in two weeks.  Can't wait!

BOO!

Does this remind you of anyone?

Think really hard.

What would you do for a Klondike bar?

Make room for Sydney

I love to climb into things and there are plenty of things to climb into at my house.

Ty's tool bench has plenty of room once I take out all the drawers.

I can sit in a drawer AND eat the rest of the pop tart I left in there the last time I sat there.

The best way to play with toys is to get right in there with them.

If I squeeze myself into a little bin, Ty will push me around in it.

And look whose wallet I found while lounging in the shoe bin!  Dad's!

It's amazing how many places there are to play when you're little.

Seabrook

So last weekend we headed out to Seabrook for our annual trip with the McClains and the Smiths.  (Seabrook is near Ocean Shores on the coast.)  It was just as fun this year as it was last year--actually, maybe more fun for Mom and Dad because I wasn't such a grumpy terror this year like I was last year.  Plus Sissy slept great for her naps and at night!

All the kids got to sleep together in one room.  The first and last night I slept on a little fold out bed.  But the second night I got to sleep on the top bunk!!!  So fun!

This year Seabrook had a brand new indoor pool, which was really awesome because it rained almost the whole time we were there.  Last year was snow, this year was rain.  Maybe next year will be sun?  We had to bundle up just to walk a block to the pool.

But the pool was heated so we had a blast swimming in it.  And I swam all by myself with just my floaties on.  Swim lessons last summer sure paid off!

One of our favorite parts about the pool was the hot tub.  Sydney wanted to hang out in there the whole time.

We swam for a long time--right into Syd's nap time.  So she took a little rest in the pool with Dad.

The house we stayed in had THREE floors and lots of stairs.  Sydney got so good at going up and down them like all the other kids that Mom took down the stair gates at our own house when we got home.

We made and decorated sugar cookies since it was so close to Valentine's Day.

Check out these two lovebirds.  Charlotte wanted to be by Ryan's side every minute of the weekend.

I wish I'd thought of putting that much frosting on my cookie.  YUM!

Instead I made a special cookie for my Mom.

Here's a picture of part of the upstairs.  There was a whole room just for playing games and watching movies.  There were tons of kids' toys and we made sure to play with ALL of them while we were there--and all at the same time.  So Fun!

 One day we went driving ON THE BEACH!  I didn't get any pics of that because I was in the car, but it was soooo cool!

Our last day there it finally stopped raining and we got to play at the playground for a bit.

The slide was really wet, so Ryan helped dry it off for us.

Then we went on a really short, but very cool, nature walk.

Syd was napping, so she totally missed out.  Chris tried to bring out scooters and things that we brought with us to the park, but the trail was a little tricky, so he ended up having to turn around.

I love vacation!  I wish we could live there every day!

Happy Groundhog Day

If you look at the last time I posted, you'll notice I've fallen a tad behind with my New Year's resolution to post every week.  Hopefully, I'll do better in February--especially since I saw my shadow on Feb. 2 which means 6 more weeks of winter and a lot of time stuck inside because of the cold weather.

Oh, I'm sorry.  Are you confused about my shadow?  Aren't groundhogs supposed to see their shadow--not little boys?  Well, apparently you didn't realize that I was a groundhog for a day.  See, my preschool teachers taught us all about groundhogs on the day before Groundhog Day, so I decided that I wanted to be a groundhog.  I crawled around and made funny noises (which really annoyed Mom) and even built myself a den.  And since groundhogs hibernate in the winter, that's exactly what I did--I slept in my den.  Quite comfy.

Unfortunately, when I woke up the next morning, I saw my shadow.  Sorry everyone--six more weeks of winter.