Outside supper- Henry.

Spring is quickly coming to an end. The weather forecast for this weekend is 90 degrees. That is officially the temperature when mama closes the blinds and retreats to her cold basement- arg! It's going to be a long summer in our above ground house. And the pool doesn't open for another month!

So we're trying to make the most of the last few remaining days before the paint starts to blister and are spending as much time outside as possible. I didn't want to go down for a nap today without my nuk. So mama bargained with me and said if I took a nap, we could eat supper outside. I did settle down, so we got to enjoy a feast of chili dogs, edamame in the shell (my favorite!) and strawberries.

Mama was in a particularly good mood and let us eat cupcakes that she froze after Juner's birthday party. They were still delicious. Eating her cupcake, June was business on top...

...and party on the bottom. Check out that bare skin. We're also calling this the "seedy underbelly of the Piedmont" or the "Thunder Down Under."
Today at school, my classmate Brock was hugging a kissing June and ended up tackling June and knocked her over. I guess this is the kind of girl guys like.

We didn't bother washing hands or faces after that red dye was smeared in, because June was probably just going to go eat dirt anyway. So the red stains head to toe plus this outfit really made Juner look ridiculous.

She spent a good amount of time pushing the big wheel in a circle.

Then moved on to pushing the army truck. Check out Juner's favorite accessory- the necklace I made at the EggStravaganza. I'm not in any of the pictures because it took me a hour to finish supper tonight. Most of the time I instantly decare that I don't like mama's cooking and then sit until everyone is done. Tonight, I wanted to eat everything, but just took my sweet time.

Papa found a caterpillar.

It was very exciting for two reasons. First, we have a Little Einsteins DVD that focuses entirely on a caterpillar's journey to become a butterfly. Second, our computer has a screensaver that cycles through pictures saved on our hard drive. Henry's favorite is one of Evie with a caterpillar on her arm. He wouldn't put it on his arm, but did let papa try it out.

Here's another video.

Meanwhile, June made some more crazy faces.

We heard some commotion over at the high school and decided to head over to watch a girls soccer game. We took the wagon and both liked getting pulled by papa. Grandma Seibert, we need you to come cut our hair.

The Spartans were being demolished by RJ Reynolds High School. Yes, that's actually the name of the school. Our town exists solely for tobacco.

I climbed the stands while mama tried to ignore the looks of other parents wondering how two kids were so poorly dressed and so filthy. I really like my rain boots because I can put them on myself, so I wear them alot.

Why would anyone think we're weird?

Per the leg warmers, they were supposed to stay up on June's knees to protect her when she crawled ont he concrete. Mama thought it was funny that June was wearig her necklace like a holster and couldn't figure out how she got it on like that.

Then we spent some time leaning over the bars looking down at the four foot drop onto hard concrete.

We're risk-takers.

Mama and I decided to walk around the track. I spent my time looking for more caterpillars. I found one that mama thought had been stomped and tried to wake him up from his nap, but no amount of blowing or yelling helped. Then I found a really big one in the pole vault pit.

Best friends.

Papa pulled us home and mama threw us straight into the bathtub. We left a ring that will have to be scrubbed.

On the bedtime front, mama and papa have decided that maybe they need to spend more time helping me calm down at night. This means that bedtime has an extra 30 minutes of stories and cuddling. Today there were no tears, but there were still about 10 trips to return me to bed. And I was even asleep by 10pm. Maybe we're turning a corner.

Rulebreaker- June.

Now that Henry has his train set, I've lost half of my toy room.

So I try to keep myself occupied with our other toys.

Unfortunately for mama, my favorite way to keep busy is to climb on the train table.

And I am pretty pleased with myself.

Henry has been surprising us with his backseat driving. He always informs us which way to go (because he knows the directions to all our local destinations). He also keeps an eye on the traffic lights and tells us "green means go" and "red means stop." (And even noticed when mama sped up to make it through a yellow light. Seriously, the red lights here are three minutes long here). Tonight he made mama laugh when she was waiting at a stop light to turn left. She was waiting for oncoming traffic to pass. As the last car went by, Henry told her "It's clear now, you can turn left."

An update on the nukie situation: last night Henry finally settled down at 11pm and was up again at 7am. At naptime today, he was really dragging after little sleep and a big day at school (it was pajama day with pizza!). He cried for about 20 minutes then fell asleep for only an hour. This evening we went on campus for a spring festival (including festival rides and festival food). Henry and TJ ran everywhere and even went on a spinning carnie ride and through an inflatable obstacle course 15 times that Henry normally would have cowered at.

Tonight there was no crying at bedtime. Instead, Henry took the sweet approach. He came out of our room about 15 times. Each time he had a new way to try and sweet talk mama and papa. "I want you to come and cuddle me." "I love you so much." "I can't sleep by myself." "When you leave I cry alone in my room" (He seriously said this.) It's 9:50 and he's still popping out of his room. At least he's not crying.

The worst decision we've ever made- mama.

A while back, Aunt Jenni was looking to unload a huge lot of Geotrax she got for next to nothing on Craigslist. Naturally, we snatched them up for Henry and decided it was a good super present to give him when he gave up his nukie. Around the same time, we found out that our old friends from Wisconsin were expecting a new baby, so we told Henry that when Hucky's new baby sister was born she wouldn't have any nuks. Maybe he could send his to hers and she could send him a new present. It seemed like a long way off at the time, so we mentioned it periodically and everyone was pretty happy.

Well that baby had to go and be born today. And while we are glad to announce that Gabriella Tess was born this morning at 11:38 am and weighs 8 pounds 8 ounces, we were to nervous to tell Henry that today was the big day. But after Henry's nap, he came down stairs and must have known something was going on because he seemed pretty eager to try it.

Here's the video. What a happy little guy. Even wishing his nukies a safe trip to Wisconsin.

And what a present he got in return. GeoTown has never looked so good.

We all played with the train set for a good hour and then the cold hard truth set in. Before supper, Henry started asking if we could put the train away and get his nukies back. Not a good sign.

Add on the fact that we left the kids home with a babysitter tonight while we went to see Ron Paul speak, Henry had to try and talk our babysitter into giving his nuks back. She didn't fall for it either.

Now it's 10:30 pm and Henry is upstairs screaming his head off. Luckily, June is immune to his voice and has slept through all of it. It's pretty sad. Henry's pleading to go to Wisconsin and get his nukies back. She can have his trains. The phrase "I'm still small" has been repeated about 10,000 times. And there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. Looking back, this is the worst decision we've ever made. I wish we would have let him keep the nuk until he's 21.

Trip to SC- Sunday- Henry.

This morning, we decided to take it easy and stay close to home. The Turners were up bright and early and let Miss Leah sleep in a bit, so we headed outside to cover their sidewalks in chalk and terrorize their neighbors.

When we finished, we headed to the botanical preserve that is right behind their apartment.

It was a good morning to go and look for suns of spring, which were abundant.

If you look close under the group of three rocks, you'll spot the bug dragging the body of another bug. I spotted them and was fascinated watching them. I then declared that they were good friends and one was helping the other. What a sheltered world my parents are raising me in.

While the park was only a acres big, it had lots of trails and many little streams leading into the pond in the middle. I jumped across these rocks at least 10 times looking for pebbles to throw in the water.

There was also functional wood art throughout the park, including this boy sized throne.

Mama thinks thei park is where all the eagle scouts complete their final project, because there were many bridges built over the little streams. I got brave on this one and decided to climb both sides.
Mama says I'm growing up, because old Henry wouldn't have had the guts to do this.

Miss Leah and I practiced on the balance beam. We didn't get a shot of it, but I also had a good time running back and forth over a balance beam that was laid across a shallow stream bed. And I never lost balance!

After the first 50 stones, mama said I was going to fill up the lake and placed a 3 stone limit on each place we stopped.

Miss Leah got this great shot of us sitting nicely together.

But this shot more accurately portrays what we're really like.

We had an awesome weekend and I already asked papa to drive us back tomorrow. Thanks for having us, Miss Leah and Mister Josh!

DC Trip- Saturday- Juner.

In addition, to my cute new Green dress, Miss Leah also surprised me with a new rain coat and hat.

I am ready for some mud puddles!

Luckily, there wasn't any rain this weekend and it was warm enough for just my birthday suit.

Miss Leah is great, but she doesn't have quite the same comic timing as Mister Josh. We played with me all weekend and was always a good sport when I would come crawling with my blankie or a hat for a good game of peak-a-boo. He even held me when I was eating a messy peanut butter sandwich (he complained, but we think he loved it).

On Saturday, we drove out to Leesburg, Virginia for the annual flower and garden festival. Don't be fooled by the name, it's a 10 block street fair. The best part was that Miss Leah's friend, Miss Maggie was there! You may remember that Miss Maggie also went with us to the Renassaince Festival last fall. She is super fun and we're just biding our time to give Miss Leah the slip and take Miss Maggie for our own. Her timing could not have been any beter, because she scopped up Henry and kept him occupied for the rest of the day.

While we didn't take any pictures of the actual fair, we did get a bunch of group shots. It was pretty warm and I was drinking LOTS of water, so my pants got wet (if you know what I mean), so I got to cool off and wear just my little dress.

There were tons of booths selling plants of course, but also great fair food. We partook in the fresh squeezed lemonade and sausages wrapped in pretzels. If it weren't so hot, we were going to hit up the fresh donut stand, but we had to pass. Luckily, when we recovered the stand selling dip mixes was there with free samples.

There was a music stage just for the kids and a courtyard filled with fun games. Inside the city hall, Henry spotted the performer and cornered him, demanding to know why he wasn't dancing.

Mama gave Henry the ultimate bribe and said if he was good for the whole festival, he could go into the train store! He was true to his promise and got to go in and look at the Coors Light Silver Bullet train and play with the Thomas set.

And after mama brought him back out, Miss Kathy took him right back in for more fun.

The real excitement of the festival, however came from a thrift store on the edge of the fair. True to the rest of Leesburg, it was a very nice shop. Mama was excited to get me a new outfit including bibs, an unstained white t-shirt, a white sweater and shoes for only $5. Then we was really excited to find that they were selling the model of double stroller she'd been pining for for only $27. She couldn't resist, so now we own 2 double strollers and have to decide which one we're going to sell on Craigslist.

When we thought the day couldn't get any better, we stopped at a Trader Joe's on the way home and stocked up for the second time in two weeks (we're so lucky). Then, these two worn out kids went straight to bed without fussing and didn't een bother to come out for the standard one hour past bedtime potty break. This left the adults plenty of time to eat goat cheese, sushi and pizza and watch movies. What a great day.

Our trip tp DC- Friday- June.

This weekend we visited Miss Leah and Mister Josh in DC. Papa had a conference in DC, so we tagged along and the Vincents are still reeling from what they called "Turner Invasion 2009." (We call it "Turner Invasion 2009- Part 1." We'll be back.)

Friday was gorgeous, so we headed downtown to the National Zoo- along with the rest of the city. When we finally made it to the zoo, I did not want to pose with the otters, but they made me anyway. At least we got a good look of my latest preppy outfit from Miss Leah.

Mama and Henry weren't as scared of the otters.

The animals were neat, but the real attraction for Henry was the bridge over the enormous construction site.

Someday this will be a new elephant habitat, but Henry hopes they leave the huge crane.

We eventually pried Henry off the bridge to go in search of other animals. Henry showed us how flamingos stand.

And Miss Leah and Henry posed on a giant eagle- just like from the Lord of the Rings.

This weekend, I started getting bold by standing on my own for up to 10 seconds. I'm also experimenting more with climbing.

We also saw some bears, primates, and cheetahs, but as the afternoon wore on, us kids started to wilt in the hot sun. Plus add in the fact that both of us were up until 11pm in the cars and then up again at 1am when we got to DC (extra late thanks to night time contruction. Thanks Virginia).

We were going to go see the Lions, but some of our group turned up the whine and we all decided to head for home.

We both fell asleep on the way back to the car, which meant we both were awake for the whole car ride back to Miss Leah's! After a long day of no napping, mama was just about ready to pitch us out the window and put us down to bed early- which we fought against for a good 90 minutes. After Henry declared a deep fear of the nightlight, mama put her foot down and we decided to take it easy on her for the rest of the night.