Snail

So one of my favorite times in the day is after the kids have their bath, they like to cuddle up into two little balls and pretend they are "snails" and the towel is their shell. It started with Noah, and Autumn now grabs a towel and says "I a snail too!"

There is lots and lots of giggling when they "appear from their shells"

And some severe protesting that snails must NOT come out of their shells, but they MUST hide.

And then back to giggling wiggling little snails. Clint and I sometimes will "walk" on the snails to crush them, which leads to more giggling :) Silly kiddos

Napa

Over New Years our whole family went up to visit Anton & Marietjie. We thought 6 hours in the car with 2 kids would be hard, but it was actually so fun! And totally worth the drive. My kids grew to love Naomi and Olivia ....

They built a giant gingerbread house together, which they slowly ate after every dinner.

This was Noah's first time building one, and he couldn't figure out why you had to put the candy ON the house instead of just eating it all.

Naomi and Olivia spent countless hours dragging my kids on a blanket for a "choo choo train" they had a blast.

We went to San Francisco where we saw a giant Nutcracker that Noah thought was a little bit scary, but Marietjie convinced him otherwise.

We went to San Francisco and rode on the trolley (Noah & Autumn's favorite thing about SF)

Noah also LOVED watching all the ice skaters, and kept saying "when I'm a daddy I can ice skate too"

The Golden Gate Bridge

It was so great to spend so much time with my friend!

Friends of Anton & Marietjie took us on a boat ride through Napa, it's really so beautiful there.

Noah got to drive the boat

Marietjie took us to Sanoma which is a cute town, but it was FREEZING cold. We went to the park (and yes the kid in the background is some random kid!)

The kids had lots of fun at the park

Love the little sheep on the hills

While I was there I helped Marietjie set up an ETSY store for jewelry http://www.etsy.com/shop/pureandsimpledesigns

We spent a few hours in the bead shop and the kids played outside in the park

Noah wanted to take a picture of us, he's becoming quite the little photographer

And every night Noah & Auty got a story from Anton. It was such a fun time thanks guys for hosting us!

Christmas

I just have time for a few of my favorites, but this is Autumn's precious face when she opened her gift from Grandma & Grandpa, a new baby :)

In front of the Christmas trees at Grace

Grace all decked out!

My kiddos. I love how they both understand this year more then ever about baby Jesus coming to earth to take away our sins!

Lambardi Ranch

So ever since I had kids I always wanted to take them to a pumpkin farm like Lambardi Ranch. And since we are in America in Fall I thought....perfect, I get to take them! I pictured tractor rides and face painting and petting zoo and lots of fun for the kids!

Well it turns out that Lombardi Ranch shuts down the day after Halloween, oops! So no pony rides or face painting or petting zoo or corn maze or fun food. And it looks like this: But the kids had fun and didn't really know the difference.

But the disgusting smelly pumpkins kept looming as we walked
But Clint and I coudn't stop laughing cause it reminded us of the joke from "Deep Thoughts" where a guy tells his nephew he's going to take him to Disneyland, but instead for a joke takes him to a burnt down wherehouse and the kid cries and cries, and it gets pretty late so he never actually takes him to Disneyland. For example here's Autumn saying "Baaa baaaaa" to a farm with NO animals.

And we told them we could pick out fun pumpkins and this is what we saw rotting in the sun....

But the kids had a super fun time cause they didn't really know what they were missing. They pretended to be "dirt in the bulldozer"

And they found the two pumpkins left that weren't rotting in the sun.

And Noah and Autumn had tons of fun making faces in the Giant Pumpkin

Noah's absolute favorite was driving the ancient firetruck

Autumn got into it too

There were some bigger pumpkins for sale at the actual farmers market part of the farm. Noah said...look HERE's all the pumpkins we were looking for momma"

And Autumn got confused and thought a pumpkin was for throwing like a ball, silly girl.

So even though Lambardi Ranch gave us smashed smelly pumpkins, we made pumpkin pie and still had a blast.

Peter Rabbit with Grandpa

So every night now Noah asks for Grandpa to read Peter Rabbit to him. He somehow finds it facinating that a bunny could be naughty. :)

Autumn likes to hold her own one
Noah pays close attention

And Autumn loves to kick up her feet and read her own story to herself. It usually includes the words "bunny jump"

Cookin and feeding my babies

That's what Autumn loves to do every day. I've semi-permanently set up her kitchen and her babies high chair near my kitchen so when I cook she can cook. Here she is pretending to eat her fake hamburger :)

And cutting it up for her babies

Gotta put the oven mit on, the oven is hot!

Borrowing Noah's car to sit to feed her babies cause cooking is SUCH hard work

I think her babies are full now