Lately...

Just a little of what we've been up to lately...

Sprinkler fun in our yard...the kids even made their own water slide as you can see!

Rare close-ups of Daniel (he doesn't let me take his picture much anymore)...

very "classic"-Daniel faces!

Annabel singing "Sticky Bubble Dum"...there's a video at the end of this post, too!! Super cute!

 Blowing up her bubble!

Still blowing the bubble up!

Annabel's many chalk-drawn attempts at making A's on our driveway...the one centered in the bottom of the picture is pretty dang good!!

 Fuzzy pic, but what a super cute little girl driving her cozy coupe!

Gymnastics Fun! Annabel still loves gymnastics. This is her "table," one of our exercises.

Annabel shows off her "V" exercise. The table and the "V" are new-ish skills for Annabel- she will show anybody who asks about these two things! She loves to do them!

Balance beam walking!

The bars are Annabel's fave!

Pushing the boat!

Running on the Air-Trak...another fave activity!

We always end class with parachute fun! Here the kids were asked to point to their favorite color with their toes. (This was how Annabel learned how to do the "V" a while back- she pointed with both toes one day and ever since she did it that day with the parachute, she can do it on her own, too!)

We spent a few hours at the Arboretum one day a couple weeks back (the same day Annabel turned 28 months old, the same day I took Daniel to the movies- all part of the grand scheme of my excuse for writing the monthly Minnie post late! Yes, I'm clearly still harping on myself!) and the kids had a great time. We started with our picnic lunch since it was lunch time anyway. Of course the kids wanted to go in the rock creek immediately after lunch. And then we did everything else, with the kids soaking wet- the hedge maze, the rest of the children's garden, etc. We changed into dry clothes before we headed home. 

**Side note- it was insanely busy that day. It wasn't super warm, a very nice day yes, but not hot hot, so my guess was between everybody squeezing things in before school started and it not really being hot enough for the pool (in my opinion anyway), everybody decided to go to the Arboretum! We had to park in "eeditional" (according to Daniel) parking!! A mini-hike away...that's how crazy it was, and they had cars parked in the grass, that's how crazy it was. I'm just glad it was still manageable and enjoyable for us- we had a great time!!

 Soccer started again!

Our good friend, Miss Connie (from waaay back in our nature classes and our other hikes since then) has a son on our team, Connor. Daniel and Annabel were both SO excited that they would be seeing Miss Connie on soccer nights! Annabel had quite the audience in Miss Connie- Annabel LOVES Miss Connie and Miss Connie just thinks Annabel is THE cutest, too- mutual love!!

GO, Red Bulls!! Daniel is on the white team this time, still all number 4's so don't go getting too excited for picking him out in our pics that way, just like last time!

Uncle Jason let Daddy borrow his gaming steering wheel for driving games on the computer. Ben is really enjoying this new "toy"... and the kids are quite curious about it! It drives them crazy (hah, get it- "drives" them crazy) that they can't just play with it. But Ben let Annabel help him drive one afternoon while Daniel was still sleeping. She was so excited and so super cute!

We played "Cars Museum" one day last week- Daniel's totally cute idea! It was fun to round up our collection of Cars movie stuff and display it around our family room...eye cars, books, puzzles, play sets, balls, etc. Then Daniel wandered around as a guest and asked me, "sir," lots of questions about everything, too- so cute. Check out our museum! (And I can guarantee that this isn't even everything we have that is Cars related! Our collection is steadily growing...and oh it's such fun to find new and unique cars for our collection, because of course, yes, they are still making new eye cars all the time and also we're starting with eye planes now as I mentioned before.)

 Silly Annabel sitting in the middle of this garage, quite pleased with herself I might add; she's so tiny she fits!

 Daniel had to sit in there, too!

Legos are huge in our house right now! We found a bin of our old Legos from when WE were kids and Daniel has just loved this bin! I love to see all the different things Daniel (and super clever Daddy) build every day!

Who knew colored pens could be this much fun?! I had to sign something somewhere recently and they offered me a pink!! pen to write with, and besides loving the pen in the first place- smoooooth writing (why is it that nice, good pens are so hard to find?! I think it's a personal thing anyway- everybody loves a different pen), I knew I had to find them for Annabel- so I took note of the brand and all and went right out to the store to get some! Plus I had reward bucks so they were free- double score!- happy kid, happy wallet! Annabel just LOVES these colored pens- you incur her wrath if you take pink without asking her though!

Still a lefty, yep! And she still likes to "trace" her hands, too!

My sweet boy...after a rough week last week for Daniel, I needed this special moment in time, with Daniel sitting and focusing so intently on these gears with the sunlight highlighting just him...this just brought me peace.

Soccer night again! 

Waiting for practice to start...

Keeping herself occupied while Daniel plays soccer...and clearly making herself comfortable with shoes off!

Go, Daniel!

The cutest renditions of the "Sticky Bubble Gum" sung by Annabel- and I'm SO glad I got these on video when I did, because she was saying "bubble dum" and it was so super cute...but alas, she's corrected that and it's "gum" now. Sigh. And yes, there are two videos because she's just a hoot and I couldn't pick one of course!

Here's Annabel counting oh-so-cutely! She can count to 11! Sure, she skips a few numbers, but I'm impressed she can count past 10!! She's definitely got 8 through 11 down- she counts like that all day long these days! Go figure- 8-11?! What's that about?! Anyway, such cute counting, this was just a spontaneous attempt, I'll be sure to get some more videos of that again some day.