Juliet and Katie ended up having a rather fabulous time playing together and no one is worried about either of them falling prey to peer pressure as they grow older, as there is a rather large amount of personality and opinions on each side.
Katie quote of the trip, "NO, Juliet!"
Juliet quote, "Hide it from Katie, Katie take it."
It's just a good thing they love each other and there was great delight whenever they saw each other.
Eleanor got to help "babysit" Katie one day while I was recording some board game videos with Grandpa and it went well until she was left alone in a room with Katie and finally Uncle Daniel heard Eleanor screaming "Just because you're the baby doesn't mean you get everything!" while wrapped up and hiding in a blanket that Katie was desperately trying to pull off of her. I mean, we all have our limits, right?
Meanwhile, this is what our cuddly boys do when they're over at Grandma and Grandpa's house.
Bradley and Juliet helped me make banana bread the other morning.
The best help. Yummiest loaf of banana bread ever.
We may have gone a little overboard on Girl Scout cookies this year. I told Eleanor to restock our supply for upstairs and she grabbed a small sample of what we had to offer.
Our favorite local board game store now has a cafe connected to it so Nathan took the boys to check it out.
Turns out it is awesome and we are big fans!
They have a collection of over 300 games you can borrow while you're there - so of course they brought one of own from home to play.
Fancy waffle brunch was a big win.
And then we took the crew down to the lake for our first overnight of the year.
We tested out our new paddleboat! It's great to have something to take out on the water even when it isn't warm out yet. And it doesn't hurt that the whole family can fit!
I don't want to discuss how many attempts to get this picture.
There's no shortage of lake toys now - we have a little netball game down there that we tried out for the first time. Juliet approves!
We were a little worried about Juliet transitioning to sleeping on a cot in the big kid room in the RV but she did great! She didn't wake up at all in the night and in the morning she was thrilled to walk over to the grown-up room and get her morning cuddles.
We decided to do s'mores for a mid-morning snack and I'm proud to say that the kids were both accommodating and enthusiastic about this plan.
The morning was a bit brisk, we were all very happy about the toasty fire.
We're so happy to already get to be enjoying the lake lot, all of us keep saying "I can't wait until it's summer and we get to go here more often!"
Nathan and Patrick tried to fish together and apparently there's aren't many of them in the shallows when it's still cold out but here's a Patrick quote: I still like fishing because it's so cozy."
I left Nathan with the two middle children to enjoy the lake a bit longer.
While Bradley and I took Juliet home before her nap time. But then we made it home in pretty good time and she wasn't at all tired so we went out to the park.
I know the other kids were this adventurous on the play equipment at this age but it doesn't make me any happier when Juliet does it.
Picnic lunch was a very popular choice.
Followed by some afternoon baseball later that day when everyone else was back from the lake. Juliet knows that Bradley is basically putty in her hands and thoroughly enjoys following him around and yelling commands at him.
We all love weekends like this. Also, please not how resplendent Nathan's beard is in this photo.
Church has been a whole thing with Juliet lately. I had been trying to hide from my friend's husband who helps volunteer in the nursery but he finally found me and kindly suggested that Eleanor not get to go in with Juliet to the nursery anymore. Eleanor was bored, not really helping, and probably needed to be with the big kids and get her own Bible lesson. Fine fine. So we've been working on getting Juliet into the nursery without too much separation anxiety and it's going pretty well now, but at the time of this picture she was just hanging out with Daddy in the lobby during the service.
Meanwhile, I was volunteering in children's church which is a mixed bag because I'm mostly having to police my own children. Bradley and Patrick are either rolling around cuddling each other or rolling around roughhousing and it can transition from cuddling to roughhousing in a the blink of an eye.
We had an event after church called FX Live which is incredibly cute. It's basically lunch plus a little skit about a Bible story. Bradley got to volunteer to do sound effects, which we all enjoyed tremendously.
Later that afternoon Nathan and I went with Daniel and Stephanie to Top Golf. Easily the highlight of our time there was the injectable doughnuts.
Daniel had a lot of feelings about the doughnuts.
Ironically, he was fine with the doughnut pictures but that it was annoying to have to take this adorable picture with his wife.
Nathan and I also got an adorable picture.
Juliet and Eleanor got a couple more sleepovers in at home.
However, we have had to halt these for the month of April because Eleanor get a fair number of nose bleeds in the night with all the pollen in the air.
We had one last afternoon with Katie before she and her parents had to go home to Boston. Check out these matching pigtails!
It's hard to tell whether Bradley still loves his Uncle Daniel after this visit.
Pogo stick time on the back deck!
Patrick had a pogo stick accident and Katie was very worried about him.
And then I realized we needed to take pictures of cousins together!
So poor bleeding Patrick was instructed to sit down and smile for pictures! Yay!
And finally the pigtailed cousin buddies.
More icing of the mouth. Poor Patrick.
Then we took the bikes out for a ride to far park and his chain fell off. He's lucky that Juliet helped him walk the bike home. Bradley and Eleanor ran ahead of us to go home first, I'm trying to establish a buddy system level of independence for the older three kids for park outings.
We did this while Nathan was gone on his first work trip since the pandemic. Boston!
Patrick and I missed him very much while he was gone.
Oh, I guess we had a couple more hangouts with Katie before she left. There were here at club grandparent for two full weeks!
Throwing sticks and nuts in the creek was a very popular activity.
No one even fell in so we're calling it a great success.
Then I made the kids Easter themed cupcakes from a kit we were given from church.
Turns out store bought frosting is delicious, the kids were very polite about things but this was clearly superior than my attempts to make anything besides chocolate frosting.
Museum of Prairiefire with Katie.
It's a very small museum but the cousin buddies had a good time.
Wonderscope was the next day, which was very fun but relations were beginning to wear a bit thin.
It did seem that wherever Juliet went, Katie followed and tried to grab the thing.
Surely playing at the water area would go better!
Oops. Nope.
Juliet did enjoy playing with Katie though and was delighted to cuddle up with Daddy and Layla when she got home and talk about her exciting museum trip.
Lucky Layla.
She likes to play with puzzles and sing herself songs and Nathan and I melt whenever she does this.
A little bit of rain is just good fun if you have a cute umbrella!
Juliet has become board game obsessed lately (I'm so proud!) and likes to play the Scooby-Doo game. She doesn't really follow the rules but we roll the dice and move around the board and have a jolly good time. However, the board game obsession is a bit of an issue when I try to lend the school nurse a board game she's excited about. Juliet HOWLED when she saw me hand Codenames Duet out through the car window after school one day and kept crying about, "My game! My game!" She even remembered the next morning when we went through the car line. To be clear, she has never even played Codenames Duet, it's a word guessing game for ages 11+. But she knows a board game when she sees one and they all belong to her!
Eleanor went to another painting night with me at MOPS and snagged one of the sleeping masks we had there and is now way fancier than anyone else here at bedtime.
I love shopping with Juliet at Costco. The other day we were there and Juliet was quite insistent about holding my list so I handed it to her and told her to read it to me so I would know what to buy. She paused and then said, "Fruit snacks! .... Cookies!" She was SO PROUD of herself and I thought she was a very smart girl indeed.
Lucky Grandma with her 2 year old fan club after dinner at her house!
Two year old fan club also enjoys reading books with Grandma.
Nathan keeps making excuses to go down to the lake for various reasons and he never lacks for a cute helper for these trips.
Juliet and Nathan had quite the dress-up time the other night.
I walked upstairs and found this. I don't know which of them was more delighted by the situation. I guess whatever Juliet told him to put on was put on. Quite impressive!
And then her Ella helped her brush her teeth. It's not too shabby being the youngest.
Palm Sunday at church involved a cute activity where the children got to walk around the church waving palm fronds during one of the songs. Eleanor might be a saint for the amount of palm frond nonsense she tolerated from Bradley. We kept hoping the song would be over soon but it was so long so finally we had to save her from her sweet but annoying brother who could just not help himself and had to keep hitting her with the palm frond. It was not the holiest of Palm Sundays for the Scott family.
Adorable park time for Katie and Juliet.
Juliet was so excited about catching Katie every time she came down the slide.
Hand on her back as she walked up the path. Of course, Juliet immediately ran down the path and got hurt after this photo was taken. That was the end of the playdate.
For Bradley's birthday we had him open a big present in the morning. Hurray, it was a frisbee golf set!
We plan on bringing it down to the lake but it's been getting good use in our backyard so far.
However, Patrick's favorite game to play seems to be trying to get a frisbee stuck in a tree and then throwing more frisbees after it until it falls down. And repeat. Good thing I think he's hilarious.
My mom made Bradley a fancy Sonic the Hedgehog ice cream cake.
We also interviewed Bradley about his thoughts on being 9.
And then I guess it was all the sugar, but all the girls ran around roaring like wild things for a while after dinner.
It was really fun getting Katie to join in on the shenanigans.
Meanwhile, Mario Kart in the basement.
Juliet and Katie had a practice sleepover. And then they really did leave after this final hangout! Bradley was so pleased that Uncle Daniel made a special trip to visit him for his birthday. They're coming back in June!
Bradley managed to break his glasses at school on his birthday, so I got to make an emergency trip to the school to drop off old glasses and then go to Costco to put the lenses from the broken glasses in a new frame. So by the end of the day he had identical frames with the correct lenses in them and a pair of frames with no lenses in them which were a big hit with younger siblings. Eleanor is pretty cute in glasses!
If I was a better, more motivated mother this little girl would be potty trained already. She told me she needed to go potty so we took off all her clothes and she made a little pee. So big! However, I hate potty training so we're sticking with waiting until she can basically train herself. Also, please note the double rolls of toilet paper in the kid bathroom. We're so classy.
Juliet wore a mask for the first time for her 2 year checkup. She is my only child who is terrified of the doctor and hates being examined and I thoroughly enjoyed her insisting on sitting on my lap for most of the appointment because she is generally not very cuddly. No shots for the 2 year appointment. She's up to high 20th percentile for weight and mid 30th percentile for height so she's still the tiniest of my children but she's sturdy and healthy!
And what she lacks in size she makes up for in personality. Oh my goodness. She gets to sit on the big bench to eat now and she enjoys it quite a bit.
Our friends the Odegaards hatched some baby chicks and we were very excited to get to go over to their house and see them. After this photo Patrick was informed that the chick might poop on his hands so he dropped that bird onto the floor instantly.
Fortunately they're sturdier than they look so we put the chick on the blanket on his lap instead and that was a much less dangerous position to be in. I don't know how Patrick ended up afraid of a little animal poop, we clearly need to spend more time outside or down at the lake.
This is what my reading time looks like these days. Layla loves to snuggle in between my arms and Meg varies between looking on jealously and resting on my legs.
Juliet and Grandpa time is an adorable sight to be seen. Here they are reading under a table. Grandpa is a very good sport.
Sometimes Juliet has to play on her own that that's pretty adorable as well. I like the part where the Mommy character is saying "I love you" and she has the characters have cute little voices.
Eleanor is getting much needed friend and popsicle time. Fun fact - it seems it is swimsuit weather as soon as it hits 68 degrees around here. Eleanor ran inside to change into her bikini one warmish afternoon and I had to talk her into a sun shirt that went with the swim suit and it was also tricky to convince her that pants were a good idea for a bike ride. Yes, she did get sunburned. This poor white little child. I bought her a fancy sun hat for the summer, we need to have good gear for her so she isn't permanently sunburnt from April-October.
Meanwhile, Patrick and I went on an exciting bike ride adventure to Grandma and Grandpa's! He had been asking to do this for a couple weeks, ever since he heard about how Bradley biked to Grandma and Grandpa's and got an ice cream cone while he was there.
Oh sweet bliss. Ice cream cone and a Scooby-Doo book read to him courtesy of Grandma.
I agreed to help coach Eleanor's Lego Robotics team that was formed through the girl scouts group so I had to spend an afternoon actually learning how to do some coding. Fortunately, they baby step you through it and I also had a fantastic helper!
Swim suit girl loves robotics. It's been so fun, we're both pretty obsessed.
Juliet and her bike buddy Patrick.
He has taught her to roar and we all benefit from this wonderful knowledge.
The roaring.
Standard Juliet quote these days: I not go nigh nigh.
This was right before she was very much supposed to go nigh nigh.
Easter morning!
It was a sugar fueled day. Eleanor hopped downstairs the night before and helped the Easter bunny put out baskets and candy on the table (she was SO proud of this. She also helped shop for the candy for the baskets.)
The kids were fairly pleased with their haul.
Eleanor had insisted on the giant bunnies that included headbands. And how could the Easter bunny say no to this?
Unicorn headbands for the girls, bunny headbands for the boys.
The kids also got cocoa bombs in their baskets because there was a bulk set of them at Costco. Fun story, three of the kids had cocoa bombs during quiet time a few days after Easter and then we tried to find more today after school and had the darndest time finding any and we couldn't figure it out. I finally scraped up two and Bradley was very generous and said he didn't need to have one. I then consulted Nathan and said I bet some kid had been sneaking them as their dessert in their lunch for school. We guessed Patrick ... and then Bradley said "hehehe, it was me!" I had a LOT of cocoa bombs, the big kids got three each and Juliet got one. Math tells me that this means he took cocoa bombs in for his dessert at school 5 times. I don't pay a lot of attention to what happens with the school lunches, perhaps I should start.
Poor little sunburned unicorn Eleanor.
Followed by candy for breakfast (and a half a banana each) the kids came to church for a donut breakfast followed by an Easter egg hunt.
Juliet and her buddy Caroline got to be in a special little kid area for their Easter egg hunt.
Juliet's basket was overflowing with eggs and candy.
Yet more candy.
Me with my ladies! We have such a great church group, it's pretty fabulous.
And we took this family picture before the church service, which was good, because lemme tell you, I had never seen a sugar crash like the ones the kids had once we got into that service. They had us stand for the first 30 minutes of singing, which I heard a fair amount of whining through, and then it somehow got worse when we sat down. Patrick was trying to fall asleep against Nathan and I let Bradley and Eleanor lean against me but I kept telling them "you have to sit up! Have bones!" which was somehow confusing and exhausting and impossible. I gave them my watch and my wedding ring to play with, but it was all too tiring. I'm just relieved we sent Juliet off to the nursery. I do not remember what the message was. Something about Jesus loving us.
A miraculous recovery by the boys after the service.
Quiet time at home was much needed. Please note Eleanor's pretty French braid in her hair. Juliet has a matching one if you look closely in other pictures. I am very proud that we were able to get Juliet to hold still long enough for a fancy braid.
Yet another chance for candy, this time in our backyard. Bradley hopped out there and helped the Easter bunny this time.
We aren't as fancy as my parents were growing up, no color coded eggs. We just told the kids once they got 15 eggs that was it for them and they needed to stop.
They didn't eat that much candy, because after this they were going to a baptism celebration for some friends of ours and there was cake and ice cream there. I KNOW.
Please look at the video below for what life is like with boys. I love them. But they belong outside.
We were relieved to have some quiet time after all the sugar.
Drawing monsters together.
We had Easter dinner at my parents' house. They asked if we wanted a fancy chocolate roll for dessert. I calmly said, "NO to anything candy or sugar please!" So we just ate a light dinner of ham and scalloped potatoes. Ahhh, the health of it all.
I love playing with Juliet outside. She always has a gleam in her eye.
Sitting on a daddy foot for her salad lunch.
Painting her cute little toesies! She loves have nail polish on her toes, she's quite vain about the whole thing.
Eleanor's Lego robotics team.
Eleanor showing everyone how to code.
Meanwhile, the boys went on a park outing with Juliet.
Juliet has been liking all the new games I've been getting in prep for a 2 year old board game video. This is like a 2 year old version of Zingo, she's very good at using the dispenser tool and matching up all the animals.
She's really into picnics right now. Although she is a beast in the car most days. I love Juliet ever so much, but I'm glad this is our final child. I'm a bit worn down by some of the nonsense. She was screaming at me the other day while I was trying to get her out of the car so I just said "Nope" and walked inside to make our picnic lunch and left her buckled in the car. I walked back out a few minutes later and asked her if she was ready to be polite and we could have a picnic. And she was! We're still working on her not saying "I not LIKE you Mommy" whenever she's annoyed with me.
Fortunately she is quick to forgive and forget. Daddy joined us for this particular picnic. So fun.
She demanded the big kids help her jump rope the other day. They were very good sports and it went about as you would expect. A lot of enthusiastic jumping on top of the rope.
We got Pokemon fruit snacks in prep for the party favor bags for Bradley and Patrick's birthday party. Juliet was so excited to hold one and was very upset to have Bradley trying to take it away from her so I showed her how to hold it up high out of his reach ...
He was wonderful and would pretend to be trying to get it while she clutched it close to her.
A little light reading in the afternoon. Is she two or twelve?
The most terrifying picture I've ever seen. Juliet was helping Nathan set up for a cub scout event. She was very excited about all the things.
Bradley made a neat little box to store some of his board game gear in.
Meanwhile, Patrick was fighting a bit of a stomach bug and fell asleep on the couch. Fun story, we had biked to school that day and stayed afterwards to play with friends on the playground. Patrick's friend Marcus biked to the school from his home and my friend Lindsay had forgotten to bring along water and he was desperately thirsty. So I let him drink from Patrick's water bottle right after Patrick had a big drink and then was careful to only let Patrick drink from my water bottle after that, which was just for him at that point. Literally an hour later Patrick was telling me he felt too terrible to eat dinner and felt sick and fell asleep on the couch. I let my friend know and somehow Marcus never got sick! Miracle. Patrick had a rough couple of days, he threw up a few times and ran a small temperature off and on. Lots of naps. I didn't realize how much he generally talks because there was a stark difference in the noise level around here once he started feeling better. So nice to have our sweet, chatty Patrick back.
Trying to get a description of his symptoms out of him was like pulling teeth at times however.
Patrick: One eye used to hurt and now the other one does.
Me: How are you feeling? Does your leg still hurt?
Patrick: It feels fine, it turns out I just had to scratch it.
Me: How about your mouth?
Patrick: Better.
Me: When it did hurt, how did it feel exactly?
Patrick: Like it had gas in it.
Me: ...
Patrick: It must have happened when I helped you get gas at Costco.
Me: Let's go ahead and read this book now.
More Patrick stories:
I was so flattered when Patrick gave me a necklace after school one day. Then he kept saying, "I can't believe it even fits you!" (It's a giant mardis gras style necklace) and he also informed he that he tried to give it to Eleanor and she didn't want it so he decided to give it to me. Gee, thanks kid.
This is the same child who informed me that his spirit animal was a monkey (accurate choice) and asked if mine was a sloth. To be fair, I think that was a compliment because sloths are cool right now. But still. C'mon kid.
There are some perks to being around this hilarious and sweet boy. One night I was singing "You Are My Sunshine" to him as one of his bedtime songs and he started singing "You Are My Momshine" back to me. He made it through the verse and everything. My favorite bedtime ever!
It was much better than the time he took a shower and decided to spike his hair with gel immediately before going to bed. It did look very fancy! But the logic wasn't quite there.
Proof that the kitties are not suffering unduly these days. I switched from comforters to summer quilts on the kid beds and the kitties approve.
Nathan and I let the kids watch shows after dinner one night while we played some board games and it seems Juliet got bored of the show and had a fabulous time raiding the board game cabinet. Please note the expression on her face, she does it all the time these days. I call it the embarrassed look of pride facial expression.
Reading with her Bradley.
Party time! Wonderscope was so fun.
We spent about 25 minutes in the party room and then got out of there to play in the awesome museum.
I didn't have to watch Patrick or Eleanor at all, Nathan and I divvied our efforts between Juliet and the 3rd grade boys. I had to stop them from throwing a football back and forth across the small child sports area.
Meanwhile, in a happy turn of events, our friends the Krenns were able to come and Eleanor spent most of her time with their daughter Molly. I had been trying to force these two to become best friends last summer as soon as I heard a spunky story about Molly and it seems they just needed me to chill out and they would handle things on their own.
3rd grade boys and Patrick playing outside. Luke Howerton and Graeme Fitzpatrick were Bradley's only friends who were able to make the party but it was just right, they ran around together the entire time and had a lot of fun.
Birthday boys together! I'm glad they enjoyed their joint party. They even got cool matching Wonderscope birthday shirts.
The boys working on a building challenge set to them by Nathan.
Siblings in the art room on our way out.
Opening up a final couple of presents at home. Can you believe Patrick thought the Swedish fish candies in one of his presents were for him and not Juliet?
Patrick is such a good sport. He did eventually get to eat those Swedish fish but Juliet certainly enjoyed holding them for a bit.
And we got to have a sweet high school boy from our church come by to give the boys a couple baseball lessons as part of a silent auction item we won last year. We even had Patrick's friend Cael Watts come and join in. The boys had fun and Patrick only ran off and picked flowers for about half the time Jack Schlagel was there so we're calling it a win.
Meanwhile, Juliet had buddy time with Addison.
There was a stick fight.
And she really likes the "snakes" blossom things that hang from the tree in our front yard and insisted that Addison jump to snag more of them for her.
Patrick's birthday morning arrived and he got to open the one present he cared about more than any other - stuffed toy Baby Bowser selected for him by Bradley and Eleanor. Actually, we searched on Amazon for a stuffed toy he would like and Patrick chose this and then I told him he had to forget about it before his birthday and be surprised. He told me multiple times per day for a couple weeks how much he remembered and was so excited for Baby Bowser.
We have far too many stuffed toys and I'm trying to not bring any more into the house but it's difficult to be strong against this kind of joy for new stuffies.
Baby Bowser with his Baby Bowser cake. I tried. He was happy enough with it. To be fair, he picked what he wanted on his cake two days in advance and there weren't a lot of easy options at my disposal.
He loved it though and that's what matters.
More presents in the evening! Juliet helped a lot.
It is such a joy to give Patrick presents because he's amazing at sharing. I found this cool 3D puzzle type thing that had three different Dogman characters in it and without hesitation he let Bradley and Eleanor pick the characters of their choice to construct.
It was really fun, we finished opening presents and had a group puzzle break.
He also got a speed boat for the lake and a globe educational toy that you can use with a tablet. Because I knew he would share them. There are perks to being a sharing boy!
Making Juliet take a picture with me.
She is so cute and so so naughty!
Bradley had his first baseball game and he had a good cheer squad in attendance! Both parents, all of his siblings, and Grandma and Grandpa were there.
The highlight of the game for me and my folks was definitely when Bradley was laying down in the outfield waiting for the inning to start. That's my kid!
It was very cold and very long and quite frankly, it was very boring. Baseball is not my favorite. We're not going to make it to all these games. It would be okay if I was there without other children in attendance but having to regulate on cold and bored children for two hours is not my idea of a good time and I missed most of what Bradley did on the field.
This duo. It's so fun to see how each of the kids like to play with Juliet.
Eleanor had her friend Evie over to work on some Lego robotics and Patrick and Juliet insisting on crashing the party.
Cool skateboard girl! Addison is so wonderful with her. We're really glad Patrick isn't jealous of passing the mantle of being Addison's oh so favored one on to Juliet.
We had dinner on the deck and Bradley made a pyramid out of his hot dog pieces and I punished him by laughing and taking a picture. Now he'll never play with his food ever again ...
Legoland! We were supposed to go the week prior but Patrick had been sick with a bug so we skipped school in order to go. No one minded except Eleanor who insisted on going back for the final hour of the day so she could make a class party she was excited about. Who am I to argue, I take all the parties I can get as well. Her class was very surprised to have her walk in at 2:30.
Building cool race cars
Juliet enjoyed the earthquake setting she could use on her Lego build area.
Bradley and Eleanor are big enough to do one of the rides on their own! So exciting!
We were impressed by how much they still had up and running despite some fairly vigorous COVID protocols.
A group shot of the kids before we left. Nathan even took the morning off from work so he could come too! It was so much fun.
We did run a bit past naptime on our drive home and someone noticed. This is the indignant face you make when your mother tells you to go ahead and close your eyes and go to sleep on the ride home.
This is literally 5 minutes later.
And big news, we got our skid shed put in at the lake! The lofted area is super cool. Bradley was proud/terrified to be the first to try it out. We really need to install a ladder.
The skid shed in all its glory. No one is more excited about this than my parents, who are excited to get their third garage bay back again as it is currently filled with a golf cart and a couple of kayaks.
The next morning Nathan took Eleanor out for her turn at the Cardboard Cafe.
It is definitely our brunch spot of choice now.
They tested out Cat and Mouth and the verdict was fun but messy, you spend a lot of time chasing balls around the room.
Meanwhile, I was at home with this. She's holding her toy phone and blanket up out of my reach. I enjoy this new trick I've taught her perhaps a bit too much.
And we had our friend Brian's 40th birthday party that evening. Somehow we took zero pictures with Brian over the course of the evening.
But I did get a picture with awesome Susan! We're going to start having a ladies' board game night with a couple other friends once per month. I'm very much excited for this.
And then more cousins came to visit us! Emmett and Finn came to visit for their spring break.
Juliet likes her cousins but she likes her grandma more.
The boys remembered what Uncle Nathan swing rides were like and were very ready for another round of crazy high swing time.
And then I made them play so many games with me. Colt Super Express was a big hit.
I was very impressed with Emmett, there's a bit of luck in this game and he got out early but he was a good sport and was an excellent team member with a delighted Bradley for the rest of the game.
Playing another round. At one point during their trip Emmett asked me, "do you just try to make us play a new board game every ten minutes?" and I said, "Yes, absolutely!" I do think I've been picking pretty good ones for them. They're good gamers, they can't help it with the family they come from.
Meanwhile there was some silly business in the living room.
The cutest end of the evening. Books and cuddles.
Juliet looking like a little Jedi in Nathan's sweatshirt.
Lucky Layla getting some Juliet affection! I might have shown Juliet a special trick with our cats and now Juliet likes to grab a kitty tail and hold it up to her face while saying "mustache!"
We had our first Chewie sighting of the spring when we went out to the park.
Chewie actually comes when we call him, he's pretty marvelous.
I was out that evening for a ladies' night for my MOPS group so Bradley read to Patrick while Nathan put Juliet in bed.
And then - on April 20th it snowed. Of all the random Midwest things to have happen! Juliet loved it.
We played outside and even build a snowman right after we dropped off the kids at school. Which was definitely a wise move on our part, because all of the snow was gone by the afternoon and it just looked like another pretty spring day. Midwest weather is crazy!
Juliet has been extra crazy about her daddy ever since he started roughhousing with her on a more regular basis so she bustled over to him after we came in from the snow and shrieked with terror whenever she though I might come over and take her away.
More games with the cousins! It had been at least 10 minutes, we had to play another game.
Eleanor and Evie have had a bit of a lovefest going on lately. Eleanor got to go over to her house for a family BBQ and they insisted on a hugging picture before Eleanor left and Eleanor is desperately trying to arrange for a summer sleepover. She's planning it about three months in advance, which is a strategic amount of time if you want to wear parents down.
Eleanor at school. She had to write the numbers 1-1000 and it turns out that takes up a surprising amount of paper. She was very proud.
Here is a montage of future basketball champ Juliet practicing her game while at Wonderscope! That is a nice, indoor sport that doesn't take as long as baseball. Just saying.
Nathan has been spending a lot of one on one time with Bradley in the evenings before bedtime and after going through the number of Pokemon pictures on Nathan's phone while downloading photos for the blog, I am beginning to suspect that rather more Pokemon Go and less reading time is happening while they are hanging out together.
Juliet might be getting a wee bit spoiled by her grandparents.
And please someone come and help me. Grandma left the other night and Juliet had some complaints to voice about that and then sweet little Patrick chimed in at the end.
