Carnival

Brian saw a carnival in the mall parking lot and thought Addie would enjoy it. Indeed she did. She had a blast and we had a blast watching her. Her favorite was the dragon ride. Brian took her on the Ferris Wheel even though he absolutely hates heights. What a wonderful Dad he is.

Phone calls

Addie LOVES to talk on the phone. Brian has been away for the week and she really enjoys calling him. She and Trekker can also talk for quite a while. Addie was grilling Trekker about what he found at an Easter egg hunt. Although she likes to talk on the phone herself she does not like the lack of attention while I am on the phone. Usually I am being climbed on, or licked, or just barraged with repeated "can I talk, can I talks?"
I have been working on getting Edith to at least say hi or make any noise at all on the phone. She is very insistent on holding the phone but just smiles while the person on the other end talks. (She also plays phone with anything with buttons, i.e. remotes, calculators, electric timers, etc) My strategy is to whisper in her non-phone ear things like "what does a cow say? and "what does a monkey say?" She complies and then whoever is talking to her doesn't think the phone has been put down and Edith wandered away.
Today I was trying to talk with my father about something. Its hard to remember what because Edith was climbing on me and Addie was being loud. Addie then starts talking in my ear. I end my conversation how I always do "I need to go. The kids are getting antsy/crazy/wild. Bye." After I hang up Addie asks, "Why didn't you tell Grampa what a chicken says?" I guess she was following my lead and encouraging me to make animal noises into the phone. As usual she doesn't miss a thing. So if I cluck or moo while I am in the middle of a conversation, now you know why.

Oh and now some pictures of Easter Egg Hunting.

Edith got the most eggs because she was allowed to pick up any egg she wanted. Addie's and Trekker's were labeled with their names. All of them had a good time and loved checking out their loot.

Dog School

Addie has gone with my mom to dog class several times. She loves to hold her own dog class with Mabel. She does all the commands especially sit and stay. Addie had me make her a little treat bag. Mabel is quite obedient and especially enjoys all the extra tidbits.

April Fool's

This morning I tried to think of an April Fool's joke to play on Dad that Addie would understand and could help with. Together we replaced all of the clothes in Brian's dresser with Addie's. Addie made sure to make sure all of her clothes were folded properly and in the right spots. Addie was so excited and we laughed and laughed after yelling April Fools. Brian opened several drawers before realizing all of his clothes were gone. Addie is really excited and wants to play more jokes, mostly hiding more stuff in Daddy's dresser.

Crazy Camels and a "New" Toy

Saturday morning we visited Overlook Farm in Rutland for a pancake breakfast fundraiser. They had the most delicious sausage made from their grass fed animals. This is a farm run by Heifer Project to demonstrate what it is like to live in some of the various parts of the world that they serve. There is lots of livestock and several houses. Addie thought the bamboo house from Thailand was a playground.

One of the highlights for Addie was that her Sunday school teacher also went. She liked the animals alright, but continually asked, "Where is Mrs. Chaplis?" Addie is definitely a people person. Edith enjoyed getting to pet the baby goats, one only 4 days old. We all enjoyed watching the rather silly camel. He was standing by his fence and just wagged his whole neck and head back and forth repeatedly. He continued doing this for the entire time we were observing him.

We also visited the Sugar Shack to see the maple syrup being boiled. We all listened to the talk about the whole process. The volunteer asked if there were any questions. Addie wondered, "Why is the floor gravel?" The two student volunteers were stumped. I guess that was outside their expertise of maple syrup information.

Addie and Edith have a "new" toy. It seems that they have discovered Mabel. They take her for walks around the house together. Luckily we have two leashes so they each can hold one. Edith really enjoys feed her as well. I think Mabel is still undecided on all this attention. On one side it is nice to actually get attention and be played with, but it isn't always fun to be dragged around all day.

Amazing

I am always impressed by Addie's amazing powers of observation. I am going to share two recent examples. First, we were heading into a restaurant and Addie pointed out a hanging tree. She was very excited about the hanging tree. None of the rest of us would have even noticed because we were so busy with shuttling everybody inside.

Today we went to the library and I got out Country Mouse Town Mouse by Jan Brett. When I got it out to read Addie says "This is the armadillo book." This only makes sense if you know that we have previously gotten out another book by Jan Brett that stars an armadillo. Addie immediately recognized the style of the drawings. Wow. Even more amazing is that we got out the armadillo book back when we were living in Issaquah over 9 months ago. Double Wow!

On the Edith front she is quite excited about the new shoes that she picked out. She grabbed a pair of Trekker's old work boots (size 8) and absolutely loves them. I had to hide them because it is probably not so good to wear shoes 2 sizes too big. She also now has Trekker's old leather jacket. She looks pretty cool in it. Here she is sweeping up the driveway with the shop broom.

Higgins Armoury

We spent a nice morning at Higgins Armory. Both girls really enjoyed the kids room. Edith practiced being both a knight and Alice (playing chess). The actual museum itself was kind of boring for the girls although they did enjoy stretching their legs. The interior structure of the museum has a sort of tunnel of archways made into a hallway with a line of colored tiles in the center. Of course this made a fabulous path to run on. I had lots of fun chasing the girls and reminding them "we don't run in museums."

And Edith now has 6 teeth! That pesky second tooth on the bottom has finally popped through. Hurrah!