Maple Syrup Festival

 We took part of this beautiful day to head out to the little town of Chardon for their annual maple festival.  It was a sunny, lovely day, and a charming, slightly frenetic festival.  We met up with Nana and Papa, some friends of mine from work and later, Nat, Amanda, Jack and Ivy.  We had pancakes, of course, drenched in sticky sweet syrup.  We rode the merry-go-round, as you can see from this pictures snapped by Nana.  Each time Naomi rounded the turn to see Nana and Papa, I could hear her shrieking for joy.  We were the only ones on the ride, so Lillian and I had to be at the exact opposite side.  Lillian seemed to know that this should be fun, and was laughing through her chattering teeth.  Whether that was from fear or the fact that the pole and horse were quite chilly, I don't know.

 After the merry go round, we made our way to Main Street to watch the bathtub races.  The what, you say? They take the old cast iron tubs and soup them up with racing wheels and a steering column.  The driver sits in the tub and the pushers provide the power from behind.  Everyone gathers to cheer on the teams as they race in two-team heats down the street, around a hairpin turn and back up again.  Hysterical.  You can see that Naomi had the best seat in the house, thanks to Papa.  She and Lillian were way too distracted by the balloons to concentrate on the flying bathtubs.  But, I managed to sweet talk some very nice gentlemen into letting us pose our children in their precision racing craft.  Yes, Lillian is wearing a feather boa and a Championship Wrestling belt.  We tried to get Naomi in there, but she wasn't having any of it.

Here's Lillian, trying to convince Papa to take her on the Ferris Wheel.  Seriously.  She tried to talk him into it for about 20 minutes.  Sadly, she's still an inch shy of the height requirement.

We capped off the day with bowls of maple stir, which, sadly, the girls wanted nothing to do with.  Naomi had her 25 cent candy squirt gun that absolutely made her day and Lillian had some goldfish. They were both asleep before we hit the first stoplight on the way home.

Disorganized

 I don't have any clever unifying theme for this week's pictures.  It's all kind of pleasantly scattered, which I feel to be a very accurate representation of how we live right now. 
To your left are the girls imitating the dog.  Quite well, actually.  Roxy spends a good deal of her day perched along the back of the couch in a cat-like pose.  The girls clambored up there last weekend and "slept" for about 34 seconds.  You can see that Naomi is still in her rainboots. 

 

 Nana came out on her usual Wednesday and we drew chalk outlines. Sounds creepy, I know.  The the girls loved it, rolling around in th chalk dust and finding new spots to have themselves outlined.  Everyone (including Nana) was covered in a rainbow of dust by the time it was done.

 Here is Naomi choosing her next spot.  You can see that when we draw now, everything (including numbers) must be given a smiley face.  That is mostly Naomi's request.  W cleaned up enough of the chalk to be abe to go to he open house for their daycare and show Nana around 'school'.  It really was like a regular school open house. Special artwork was hung around everywhere and all the kids had done beautiful take-home projects to show off their skills.  I'll have to get some pictures of their books on here.  They are too precious.  Of course, without exception, every child brought into that daycare had a terrified, haunted look in their eyes for fear that they were going to be left there again.  We got out before it got too ugly.

This picture is only here to show you that Lillian's hair has gone rogue. And that she's a bit of a weirdo.  We'll have to get a pic of Naomi's 'piggytails' soon, as she actually tolerates them now, frequently requesting them.  It was big news among the daycare teachers last week when she kept them in all day. 

Tea and Cozy.

Perhaps the tea is still too hot.

 These girls spend an odd amount of time with their socks on their hands.









Sometimes the socks are puppets that say hello.  Sometimes they are padding for high-fives. Sometimes they are props for peekaboo. 
Sometimes they even go on feet.

Easter, in pictures

We previewed the flowers at the garden.



We worked together



I held Anderson, Kate's beautiful new baby boy.

We dressed up pretty for the actual egg hunt. Thanks, Aunt Pat!

The girls are weird.

They are not cheating.

Naomi gathered eggs, carefully inspecting their contents before accepting them in the bag.  Lillian is not pictured during the actual hunt because she was dragging William all over kingdom come, gathering as many eggs as possible.  William had to keep re-hiding them, to keep her at the accepted quota of 8 eggs per ticketed child.

We got our faces painted. 

Naomi never did let us wash this off.  The last of it flecked away by Tuesday.

The cuteness to the factor of 4.

I don't even know.

Naomi misses an egg during our at-home egg hunt on Easter Sunday.

Lillian's egg-hunting face.  Girl is serious about the eggs.

Up Close and Personal

I think Lillian fell in love today.

We took the girls on a spring break field trip to Lake Farm Park today.  We;ll have to remember to always go at this time of year.  It's a carnival of baby animals. It was very hard not to slip a piglet into the diaper bag.  There were nine of them.  They would have hardly noticed, right?

After Lillian introduced herself to this baby goat, he decided to clamber right out of his pen and hang out with us for a while.  He tried to eat my hair, nuzzle with William and prance around Naomi.  But Lillian was clearly his love.  And she felt the same in return.

Until she met this sheep.

Later this evening, after playing with the animal sounds on my phone for a bit, she got weepy.  She turned to William, tears in her eyes, chin quivering and, in a wavering voice, announced, "I want a sheep!"

Naomi came, too.  This lamb yelled at her for a little while.