Birthday Girl

My birthday was on Tuesday and the boys were so excited to celebrate with me. Henry especially looked forward to my "birthday party" at Gramma and Hanka's house, and Will wanted to know if all my friends were coming over. It was a very small "party" that even Gene missed due to a trip out East, but it was a special day nevertheless!

My parents made me one of my favorite meals from my youth: broiled avocado cups! They are so tasty but I never make them because Gene's not a huge fan of avocados. My little boys liked them, though, so they might just make their way into the dinner rotation at our house!

And what's a birthday without birthday cake? That was definitely the boys' favorite part, since they like sweets just like their mama!

My parents also got me a great gift, which Will opened practically by himself.

They gave me a set of Danish Christmas plates. They have too many for their new house and weeded out by giving me my favorite series.

This set of plates shows a family going to chop down a tree from the woods, then bringing it home, decorating it, and waiting for Christmas morning to arrive. These have always been some of my favorite Christmas plates, so I'm so happy to have them for my own kitchen. Thanks, Gramma and Hanka, for making my birthday so special!

The Dot Artist

My friend Tiffany introduced us to dot art when she bought Henry Do-A-Dot paints and a dinosaur activity book for his birthday this year. Henry has since become absolutely addicted to dot painting and wants to paint all the time!

I have to say that I love it too because it's so easy and mess-free (compared to traditional painting). Henry will dot paint for 45 minutes. The only problem is that we long ago ran out of pictures in his special dinosaur coloring book so now we have to draw them ourselves! Fortunately, Gene is a master artist and I am pretty good at tracing. Can you see any of the dinosaurs in the paintings below? Doesn't this make you want to do-a-dot too?

Raspberry Fingers

Yes, I let my boys play with their food.

They love raspberries (who doesn't??), but they really love to pop raspberries on their fingers and shout "Raspberry Fingers" before popping those juicy raspberries into their mouths.

Raspberries are the perfect finger food, wouldn't you say?

Cukes!

This is the last week of the spring season of our CSA. We've enjoyed the best vegetables for the past 10 weeks and can't wait for the fall season to begin in September. I think Henry is going to miss the baby cucumbers we've been getting. He pulled this one off the counter and devoured it in no time!

Yum-O!

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs Everywhere!

Will has a slight obsession with dinosaurs these days. It all started when Aunt Jess introduced him to "Dinosaur Train" on PBS back in March. Now we watch "Dinosaur Train" all the time, visit the science museum and zoo to see dinosaurs up close and personal, and of course read lots and lots of books about the mighty creatures. One of Will's favorite games is to play paleontologist. Can you tell what this picture is all about?

It might just look like random piles of toys strewn across our living room, but Will actually very carefully made dinosaur fossils out of these objects so that he could go on a dig. Can you see the five different "skeletons" below? He had to preserve his dig site from Henry, who just wanted to grab the "bones" and run! Since my parents know about our dinosaur obsession, they brought back these cool dinosaur t-shirts from their recent trip to Wyoming. Aren't they fun? They're perfect for our dino-loving duo! Thanks, Gramma and Hanka!

They even had some dinosaur photos on their camera to show the boys.
I wonder where this dinosaur obsession will take us next?

The Indoor Playground

It has been so hot here lately, so of course we are always looking for fun things to do indoors. One of the boys' absolute favorite summer spots in the indoor playground at a local church. This place is huge and air-conditioned, and best of all, it's absolutely free! It can get really crowded, but we've discovered that if we go first thing in the morning or late in the afternoon, we might have the place nearly to ourselves. This picture doesn't even show all of the playground, but you get the general idea of how tall it is! There are ramps and slides and steps and tunnels. What kid wouldn't love this place? Henry's telling me that he's at the very top. There is another level above him, but he hasn't made it up there just yet. In this picture, Will has climbed up a series of steps to pop up and surprise Henry. Doesn't the expression on their faces just say it all? Utter joy.

These three huge slides are so much fun!

And when the boys get tired of climbing and crawling and sliding, they can go play in the rocket ship. And since Henry's fascination with rockets is still going strong, this is a favorite area of the playground for them!

They fix the rocket, tinker with the controls, and even meet space aliens!

This church has cool murals all over the place, and the idea of the space ship is that the kids are traveling back in time to learn about the Bible. I'm not sure my kids quite grasp that concept, but they sure do enjoy this cool, air-conditioned respite from the Houston heat. Happy climbing!

Dinosaur Invasion

Have you heard about the dinosaurs at the Houston Zoo? A group of animatronic dinosaurs has taken over a corner of the zoo for the summer months! And if you know Will, you know that we have a serious dinosaur obsession going on at our house.

Gene was able to get off work at 4:30 yesterday afternoon, so I gave the boys three choices of afternoon activities: zoo, science museum or children's museum. Will originally picked the science museum (because he loves the dinosaur fossils there), but once he heard about the zoo dinosaurs, he couldn't wait to go there instead!

The dinosaurs have been at the zoo for about 6 weeks already, but I wasn't sure if they'd be too scary for the boys. The dinosaurs do move and grunt and roar, but they really weren't too frightful. Henry disliked some of them, but we just moved quickly by the scarier ones and everyone was fine!

Henry especially loved seeing these little dinosaur babies.

The stegosaurus is one of our favorites. Did you know its brain was the size of a walnut?

You can take the Daddy out of the office, but you can't wrestle the Blackberry from his hands!
Will loved the dinosaurs. We went through the exhibit four times, and I'm sure we would have gone through again if the zoo hadn't been about to close!

Will looks completely bored here, but he's just tired and hot.

We couldn't leave the zoo without visiting the newest addition to the elephant family, baby Baylor. He was adorable!Everyone loves the giraffes. The zoo lost a mama and baby the day before, though, so we decided the giraffes all looked a little sadder than normal.Where are the giraffes, Henry?We saw this meerkat on the way out. It was 95 degrees, even at 7pm, and he had the right idea. Dig yourself a hole, climb on in, and chill.You know, after you've had your fill of dinosaurs!