Today

Breakfast - Spiderman and Spiderman took a break from saving the world for some waffles. (Pay attention to clothing - or lack of - in these pictures - someone likes to change A LOT).

School

After a long break from superhero costumes, Austin has returned to them this week. Nyah is wearing a hat she decorated through her Liberty Girls club and a pretty purple and white sundress.

Having a snack - Note on nakedness: I have no defense except to say that she dresses how, when, and in what she wants. I can only encourage clothing of some kind.

Somewhat peacefully playing together while Austin and Nyah and I do school - now Olivia's in pajamas.

Entertaining themselves while the little girls nap - Aha! Nyah & Austin have been changing too. Good thing they all help with laundry.

I had my 30 week check up today - all the tests results they never called me about a couple weeks ago came back normal. I sat for an hour and 15 minutes to talk with the doctor for 5 minutes. And they have suddenly stopped scheduling 1pm appointments (my favorite time) and extended their lunch hour. Blah.

Pretty Pretty Flowers

Yesterday I hauled the kids to the Thanksgiving Point Gardens for the Tulip Festival. The official festival is ending this weekend, but the weather for the week is not supposed to be pretty (snow this morning, but sunshine right now). They were good sports and happily came along, right? Well, they were happy to be able to run around with some friends anyways.

I'm a sucker for silly signs-

The Children's Garden was fabulous - lots of playing around for the kids.

Taking a moment to pose for a picture

With friends

After the gardens we ran over to Farm Country so the kids could go for a ride. This was a bribe for my little girls. All through the gardens we kept repeating to each other "Flowers first, then a horse ride." Olivia finally got to ride on her "baby" horse.

They were also excited to see the donkey had her baby. Adorable :)

Sneaky sneaky :)

Baby Jude

I was lucky enough to spend this past weekend with my sister, Jesse, her husband Justin, and their new baby Jude (they say they aren't starting a "J" trend!), and my mom was there too.

Jude is absolutely adorable! He spent his time eating, sleeping, and pooping, but was fabulously entertaining anyways.

Even though I was glad to be there I am sooo happy to be home to my hubby and crew (and my own bed!).

Austin's Recipe

Strawberry Juice

Translated:

1 1/2 tsp. sugar

juice from 3 squished strawberries

Add water

Stir

Eat squished strawberrries and drink juice

Austin didn't quite understand why I wouldn't want to hand squish a bunch of strawberries to make juice for everyone. And I forgot to include his Lego video with his pictures, so here it is:

Its fun that he is doing things he want me to include on the blog.

This week in pictures

Announcing . . .

the arrival of a new nephew - Jude Michael Betts!!

See pictures on my parents blog!

Congratulations Jesse & Justin!

Sweetest Little Girls

Olivia- Ponyo!!

Jo- I sit with you?

Olivia- Yeah, right here (patting the spot next to her)

Jo- You watch Ponyo?

Olivia- Yeah

Austin & Legos

At Austin's club meeting this week a couple of the boys did a video presentation they had made with legos and still shots - claymation type stuff. I don't know what it is called with legos, but I hope you get the general idea. He came home and wanted to use my camera to experiment. Looking through his pictures I learned there are some basic things I haven't ever showed him, like focusing, but it was fun to see what he had been happily doing in his bedrooms for a few hours.

Here are some of his shots:

One of his story lines was about a group of storm troopers and a dragon. The storm troopers get the call about stopping a dragon. They go after it, many of them are beat up, squashed, and eaten, but eventually one guys gets the dragon.

There was also a Bionicle battle

Farm Country

I actually set up a few blogs to post this week so I wouldn't have to try posting, but here we are, on a Monday, getting things finished in record time. I even did my piano practice! And this morning we took a trip to Thanksgiving Point's Farm Country. (I forgot to change my picture size setting so I'm sorry these are all small!)

Of utmost importance - the pony rides! I guess I didn't put Olivia on the horse she wanted to ride, so she keeps telling me she wants to ride the "baby" horse - the smallest horse. I keep telling her "next time!"

Lots of animals to visit and feed!Made a stop in the jail

My favorite sign - Jolie did.

The baby chicks - so considerate to put prices in plain view of my enterprising children.

Put that together with a visit to IFA over the weekend and my kids are certain we need to have chickens. I could handle it, except for all the work of course.

They think we want to hear this every day

I am soooo EXCITED for the Daffodil & Tulip shows this weekend. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to go. Thinking babysitter.