Sword Fight!

As one of his birthday presents, Henry received a gift card from Target. Originally I had thought to save the gift card and purchase The Lego Movie when it comes out (as the kids loved it), but he found a toy at Target that we couldn't resist: a Batman sword! He even figured out a way to carry it just like a real ninja.

 

Of course, the most enjoyable thing about a sword is the sword fighting. I managed to get a video of just Henry fighting the bad guys

...and then I of course had to participate in some fighting as well.

Note that now we have THREE swords - the other two are old pirate swords from Halloween costumes Evan and I did a few years ago. Sadly one of them got lost at Foxfield, but the other one is still here so we can have a standard sword fight still!

Easter 2014

On Easter Sunday we had a little celebration at home. Evan's parents were visiting overnight, so they got to see the Easter egg hunt we threw in the backyard! The kids had a blast hunting around for eggs, even if they had to do it by putting the eggs in their Halloween trick or treat bags!

 

We didn't have too many places in the yard to hide eggs, so we got creative with use of the fence and different toys!

 After all of the eggs were found we took them back inside to check out the loot (consisting of marshmallows, jelly beans, and coins).

 

The kids did receive a few fun toys in their Easter baskets (nothing big, but just a few things myself and Grandma Lynn found). Our lovely neighbor also brought over an Easter bag for each of them, which included a slinky!

 Evan's parents needed to leave after our egg adventure, but the weather was too beautiful to stay inside, so we headed out for a family walk around the pond. Natalie wanted to push her baby stroller, so Henry pushed his lawn mower at the same time.

Natalie and I had some more fun outside later that afternoon, but this post has already gotten pretty long so I will stop here and show those great photos of her in my next post! Stay tuned...

Pajama day at preschool

Last week at preschool Henry had pajama day! I had assumed that he'd want to wear his new Batman pajamas, but instead he chose his Thomas the Train pjs. Luckily his teacher always takes photos on special days like this, and over the weekend she shared them with us. Henry and the other kids were too adorable to not share!

I love how they posed the kids in this one! Amazing that they actually all participated and stood still for the photo.

How cute are these kids?!

We were told explicitly to pack a sweatshirt so that the kids could play outside during recess. Looks like Henry had fun getting to play in his pjs outside!

 

Dinosaur Park 2014

On Sunday, after Henry's birthday, the weather continued to be gorgeous. With my parents still in town, we decided to pack up a picnic lunch and head over to the dinosaur park in Ashburn. We've been there multiple times previously (last trip was apparently June); it's just such a great park! One of the reasons it's such a hit is the amount of shade - when it gets really hot in the summer, almost the whole park is still shaded. Luckily, we didn't have to worry about that on this trip, as the weather was still really nice, and that was a good thing - the trees are so late in blooming this year from the cold that there was very little shade to be seen!

The first thing we did was hit the swings. I think Henry would stay on a swing the entire day if I let him. Even Grandpa got in on the swinging fun!

I took a lot of photos of Henry on this trip, as it was still his birthday weekend. He was so darn cute on all of the equipment, that it wasn't hard to take his photo!

 

 

We then headed down to the creek, which is tied for first place for my kids in terms of enjoyment (tied with the swings). The water wasn't nearly as cold as I expected, and we had fun walking in it! Evan wanted no part of going in, so he took my camera and grabbed some shots of the rest of us.

 Henry also did  not want to get in the water, but he was willing to walk along the creek bed next to us, looking for stones. I took my camera back and grabbed a few pics, including the one on the left, while we were still walking about by the creek.

 

After everyone was done (signaled by Natalie falling in twice, which I had prepared for with extra clothes and towels this time!), we headed back up to the playground area for a picnic lunch...but not before I grabbed a couple more shots of Dad relaxing on the stones (his church; my dad is a no-holds-barred sun worshipper), chatting with Henry. Such a fantastic way of ending Henry's birthday weekend!

Henry's 4th birthday party

This year, I decided not to have Henry's birthday party at home. After having all of his at our house, and the last 3 of Natalie's, I was ready to give a lot of the responsibility (mostly related to mess!) to someone else. I weighed a few options, and ultimately settled on the Leesburg Animal Park. They built an entirely new facility since last fall, including indoor party rooms, play area, and animal enclosure. They gave us our own guide for the party, and took care of everything: activities, plates/cups/napkins, goody bags...everything except the cake!

 The party started with a close-up encounter with an "animal of our choice." I actually did ask if they had any calves we could meet, but sadly they did not. Cows are Henry's favorite, so I figured it was worth asking about! Instead we decided to go with a bunny, as Henry was very excited at the idea.

 It was great to see Henry really excited by the bunny, even being willing to hold it, as previously he'd been afraid of this sort of thing. So very cute!

 Natalie was also very excited to get her turn holding the bunny.

 We then all went out for a private group tractor ride. We didn't go far, but it was fun to do a circuit of the llamas, donkeys, and zebras they have at the farm.

 Henry and his friend Dexter (from preschool) sat next to each other on the ride, but I was only able to snag this one photo - it's like boys their age don't like posing for photos! I had totally forgotten that Kathy took this photo of Henry and I (right), until she sent it to me.

 We then went to the petting zoo part, were given our buckets of food, and had some fun petting and feeding the animals. One of everyone's favorite animals was the female Scottish highland cow (seen below with my mom) - she was quite pregnant, so we all felt she deserved a little extra food!

Again, it's so awesome for me to get to see Henry freely interacting with and touching the animals, as even last fall he was too scared to do it without a lot of coercing. How cute is he petting a baby goat?!

 Then the kids each got to go on a pony ride. Henry didn't want to do it (which didn't surprise us much), but the other kids thoroughly enjoyed their turns, particularly Natalie! She'd do a pony ride every day if we let her.

 Then it was time for snack and cake! Henry chose the Nemo design, and I went with the blue and orange, because...well, that should be obvious :)

 Kathy was nice enough to snap some photos during us singing to Henry. How cute is he?!

 

Happy, happy birthday to my now 4-year-old big boy!

Henry turns 4!

On Saturday, this little guy.....                                                         became this big guy!

I hardly know how these 4 years have gone by so quickly, but somehow here we are! We've had our moments with Henry (that year+ of nightly dinner time struggles is not something I really care to think back on!), but I can't imagine having any other kid. He knows what he wants, he speaks his mind, he's incredibly caring, he loves his family, he's smart, he's funny (wow is this kid funny), he's creative...he's everything a mom could want in a son. I've loved watching him grow over the past 4 years, and I can't wait to see what happens over the next 4 (and more).

We celebrated Henry's birthday with a party at the Leesburg Animal Park. It went so well! I highly recommend them for birthday parties, if you're trying to come up with a location. Everything went very smoothly, the kids had a blast, and the price was fantastic. Not only that, but they've built a new indoor facility with animals, a play area, and party room...if you're in the area, you should definitely check it out! I'm going to do a separate post of just the party next, to show all the fun!

Henry had a lot of fun before and after his birthday party playing with new toys. The first one he got was from my parents - the Bat Mobile!

 This thing is really cool: when you push a button, it moves on its own, and the yellow spinner disks get shot up into the air on a big puff of air. Very cool! We probably should have had a super hero-themed party, based on his gifts: a Batman costume from my sister (complete with mask), a flying Batman toy, and a Wolverine action figure, amongst a bunch of others. He also very much enjoyed this card from Kathy and Eric, which roars when you open it. See the mask on top of his head? Batman needed a little time to do some light reading.

Happy birthday Henry! Can't wait to see what the next ones bring.

Just not up for photos

I have quite a few photos to post up here, from over the past month or so:
- a summary of my trip to Brussels/The Netherlands
- my sister's birthday party from April 5
- Henry's birthday party (Saturday)
- a day at the park (yesterday) with my parents

However, I also seem to have picked up some sort of flu bug, which hit me yesterday morning. I managed to push it aside for our morning trip to the park, followed by a picnic there, but I followed that up with a 2.5 hour nap in the afternoon to try to recuperate. I actually slept longer than both kids! I still felt pretty crappy through yesterday evening, and slept horribly last night. Not only did I not sleep well (I was continually waking up), but I managed to put a giant kink in my left shoulder, so I'm in terrible pain from that too. Luckily tonight I am feeling better, and I'm hoping that with a better night's sleep, tomorrow will be even better than today. But, in the meantime, I'm just not up for picking out favorite photos to post here for those topics listed above...so it will have to wait until tomorrow when hopefully I feel back to my old self.

Even better, my anticipated work trip (next two days) to Blacksburg is now postponed, so I don't have to travel anywhere this week either - that's two weeks in a row at home! I can't even remember the last time that happened. It's a much needed break, and I'm really looking forward to being here this week. Since it's spring break, the kids don't even have to be transported anywhere, so Evan and I get to just take them to daycare and focus on work during the day. Definitely a nice break for the both of us!

I did get all of my Netherlands photos edited tonight before writing this post, so I'm getting even closer to being done with my backlog of photos (I now only have 3 trips/excursions left to edit!). I'm hoping that my extra nights here this week will help with that. Gotta try to be productive with this extra time at home that I've been given! That also means I'm going to try to post every night this week, to get caught up. We will see if that happens...but at least I can line up a lot for upcoming posts. Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone has as nice of a week as I'm hoping to have, despite the gross weather being forecasted for us. 

Natalie does tap and jazz!

We continued Parent Observation Week at Loudoun School of Ballet with Natalie's Tap & Jazz class on Thursday. This time I remembered my real camera, and so I was able to get some better photos of Natalie than I was of Henry (although I think I did ok with Henry's on Tuesday!).

They start with tap, which is just so much fun to watch! Honestly, I find it far more interesting than ballet. Natalie wants to go back to ballet this summer and again in the fall, which is fine - I want her to enjoy her dance class - but I will miss getting to watch the fun tapping.

The class started with shuffle-stamp (and variants thereof) in place.

And then continued with shuffle-tap-step (and variations thereof) across the floor. So cute! Here is Natalie's friend Lily and her.

 

They then showed us their recital dance; here's a first (bit rougher) version. They will be dancing to "Green Eggs and Ham". Did I mention that the theme is Dr. Seuss? Love it! They have some practicing to do, but they still have about 6 weeks so I know it will come together! It's so cute.

Then it was time for jazz! They started off with some stretches; Natalie was very excited that she could get her legs just about all the way to the ground. 

There were more across-the-floors for jazz.

 

And then it was time for the jazz dance for the recital. They looked so cute all curled down like turtles - their jazz dance is to "Yurtle the Turtle". Apparently there's an actual song based on the book - who knew?!