Happy Birthday Clara!!

Clara is 3 years old today! We started celebrating yesterday, and took a trip to the mall with Grandma. Clara wanted to find a "beautiful dress", and she completed the outfit with a matching hat and shoes! Thank you, Grandma!!! We had lunch at Red Robin, where the staff brought Clara a special ice cream sundae and sang Happy Birthday to her. Yesterday evening, Joe and I took the girls to get Kidd Valley burgers and played on the beach at the Kirkland waterfront. We woke up this morning, and headed to Safeway for a birthday sprinkle donut. Clara is loving this string of birthday celebrations!

We have loved every minute of the past 3 years, and adore this goofy, creative, sweet, bright little girl that God has given us to love!!! Happy Birthday Clara Bella!

A Hot Day at the Zoo

We set out last Saturday to enjoy the beautiful (and really hot!) day at the zoo. We were lucky to have a day between rounds of strep throat to enjoy together! The zoo is one of Joe's favorite places, and the girls are now sharing his enthusiasm. We took our red wagon to allow the girls to climb in and out at each exhibit. I think Hannah's favorite part of the day was the climbing in and out of the wagon. We would often be stopped looking at an animal with Clara, while Hannah just kept climbing in and out!

I have a pretty funny photo of Joe trying to climb back out of this little cave....I'll have to save it for another day:)
Hannah loved watching the sea otters dart around in the water.

Clara is truly an animal lover. She has been talking about wanting a pet A LOT lately, and now that she has given up on getting one for her birthday, she has informed us that she will ask Santa Claus for one. I guess we've got 7 months to talk her out of that one!

An Apple A Day....

Is not keeping the doctor away this year! The girls and I all had strep throat a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday we found out that the girls have it again :( We are on our second (and hopefully last!) round of antibiotics. This morning when I got the medicine out for Hannah, she started saying "no, no, no" and when I turned around to give it to her, I found that she had tried to hide herself in the cupboard! We are ready for summer and hopefully an end to a rough, sick winter and spring.

The girls worked on building a zoo together today with the blocks. This was a major breakthrough, as the usual scenario is Clara building an extensive pretend structure and Hannah grabbing blocks and running away.
Tonight after dinner I heard Hannah's little voice counting, "one, two, three, four, one, two, three". When I peeked out of the kitchen to see what she was counting, I found her counting popcorn kernels as she stepped on them. Isn't that called a learning experience? ;)
Clara is really into posing for pictures these days. We get all kinds of interesting expressions! She is wearing the dress she picked out for her birthday. Clara's daily wardrobe is "a beautiful dress, some tights, and my fancy shoes".

What a Weekend!!!

We had a fun, busy weekend with a visit from my brother, Tommy, and our nieces, Darien and Monica. Tommy came up to build us a deck, and the girls came up with more plans for fun than we could fit into a weekend! In 48 hours we shopped at the mall twice, went to two different parks, played at the Children's museum and the Aquarium, rode the carousel on the waterfront, and ate ice cream three times, cotton candy, slurpees, and went out to dinner for Indian food....whew!

One trip down the block was as far as I got pushing this crew in the stroller!

Giddy up! at the Children's museum
These four love to play together!
Clara learned a new trick on the swing from Monica
Darien took over with Hannah this weekend for me. She had her up out of bed, dressed, and diaper changed before I would even realize it....I don't know what I will do this week without her!!

Our new deck!!! Tommy built the deck in 48 hours, just stopping long enough to eat meals. We are soooo thankful for such a nice gift!!

The deck is finished, and everyone is ready for some ice cream in the sunshine:)