Daddy was charmed to come home to the girls painting pictures. He took some cute pictures (and he shuddered just thinking about cleaning up the girls. The paint clean up was pretty simple.)
Another mom had the great idea of squirting out the paint onto an old cookie sheet—instant palette and easy clean up!
Dwayne’s parents are visiting stateside for almost two months, and we get them for just over a week. Dick and Darlene haven’t seen Piper since she was 6 months old and of course, hadn’t gotten to meet Wesley yet. Grandma braided Kyla’s hair even better than Daddy does, Piper took an immediate shining to “Papa”, and Wesley slept indiscriminately in any arms that would hold him.
Our church just held our Women’s Retreat up in La Conner, Tulip capital of …well at least the West Coast, if not the US. My friend, Sarah, who had her daughter one week after Wesley was born, and I went together with our little ones. We stopped at the tulip fields on our way there. The tulips were about 3 weeks early this year and the daffodils were still blooming.
Rachel Alexis was getting very expensive to fix, so we looked into the cost-benefit of getting a new (used) car. Two days later, Dwayne drove home his new Lexus—the same model as Rachel, but a 2008 hybrid. It is very fun to drive (don’t take Wesley’s expression as his real opinion), but perhaps it would have been significantly cheaper to fix the old one. I am still very happily driving my minivan.
We had an amazing day today, weather-wise. Dwayne took the garden tools and worked at the church today and I took the kids to the park. It was a little neighborhood park that we had to ourselves and we had a great time playing.
Playgroup made a trip to the zoo today. It didn’t take long for the four families (that’s a lot of people, with 2 kids per mom—3 for me!) to split into two groups.
Not surprisingly, Kyla and Isaac ended up chasing each other around. But new for us was Piper chasing (and mostly unwilling) Nathan. I love how our kids play together.
Rochelle kindly allows the kids to pound on her piano. The girls were thrilled with the music they made.
Last weekend, Dad and I took the kids to Northwest Trek, near my parents’ house. Below is only the second time I’ve gotten a picture with all three kids. The first was at the hospital.
This day was a 3-moose day. They are the rarest animals to stop on the hour-long tram tour, and we saw three of the four beasts. Actually, all the animals were out that day and we got some great views of northwest animals.
![2932[1]](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGdA7PCaMvPrD5lu1CznvhKv2Ia4Vj-dJ_rsF_WjY1UDwVsPzoca_JvfZ_gmRCVpgr5dwWJWqFaNYUY15lhZe7TbAco6lq0yX8mWWhVaKo_zOb58HYTpkxu558piXNiWTD0Eh9IXarlQ/s1600-h/2932%5B1%5D%5B6%5D.jpg "2932[1]")
But the wildest animal of all? Kids with their “Special Treat” ice cream. Piper had to sit in the stroller to eat her drumstick. It took a lot of concentration to get this coloring!
Me and my boy.
A trip down memory lane: This is us September of 2008: Kyla had just turned 2 and Piper was 7 months old. It’s the same moose.
Big boy is working on those neck muscles!
Mr. Milk Man is posing with Piper’s Baby.
I have always taken pictures of the kids in the laundry basket. This is no artistic direction, but just a practical matter of carrying both a baby and a basket of laundry that needs folding. Here, Wesley reclines comfortably in a basket of diapers. (Yes, I have returned to cloth diapers, now that I am no longer pregnant and have three in diapers. Disposable was getting really expensive and adding significant amounts to our weekly trash accumulation.)
Wesley is 7 weeks old in this picture. 
His sweet little hand…
Pictures of the girls in their laundry basket days.
Kyla 10 weeks old Piper 10 weeks old
I am in a heavenly hell—a handful of excellent books have crossed my path in these last few months. Heaven, because what is more blissful than becoming engrossed in a story, and hell, because I really need to be sleeping/cleaning/writing/stewarding. This is the latest novel that I finished just this evening. It will be at least a few days before I can clear my head enough to pick up another book again, and I need the break.
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield is an extraordinary story and unusually well-written. I wish I could have written this.
The two other books that I got caught up in recently were Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett and NurtureShock by Bronson & Merryman.
For all that I go on about my girls being climbers, I hadn’t thought about them climbing trees yet. Kyla came up with this idea on her own.
Piper is all decked out to help me weed!
Piper likes yogurt so much that she needs two spoons to shovel it in. Notice the extra two yogurts she got out just in case.
A beaming smile (as she walks along the stair railing).
My two favorite guys.
