Claire's Birthday

We have been contemplating for awhile what to do for Claire's Birthday, and this morning we finally decided to go to the Renaissance Festival. It was a great decision, even though the traffic was horrible. We really had a fantastic time.

 Here we are eating about the worst food in the world. Well, at least here is Claire sitting at the table where we ate the worst food in the world. You are (of course) not allowed to bring in your own food- which is totally fine, we realize they are in the market to make money. But, the food was quite horrible. In fact, Audra refused to eat hers, even when offered pop as a reward for eating it (just kidding, she would eat it, but ONLY if she got a sip of pop after every bite).

 The king and queens' parade

 Audra LOVED the king and queen (anybody surprised?)

 These next few pictures were in the kids play area which was great. This was a butterfly ride which was manually pushed by two ladies. Audra loved it.

 This was the best picture I could take of Ben and the girls. Audra kept turning around saying "NO!", Claire refused to look at all, and Ben just wanted me to stop trying.

 Here's the best family picture. Sometimes, you just have to laugh and move on:

 This is my second favorite picture of the day:

 We caved and bought Audra a headpiece. Sometimes, I really think we spoil our children, but then how could we resist something that we knew would make her so happy?

 After we came home (completely exhausted) we had Grandma and Grandpa over for dinner, cake, and presents. They were generous and brought the DQ ice-cream, our favorite!

 Here we are singing to Claire

 She couldn't blow out the candles by herself, but luckily Audra was very willing to help out:

 Sisterly love right before opening presents:

 And, my absolute favorite picture of the day:

Do you notice what Claire has on her face? A SMILE!!! I finally got it!!!!! I don't care that Audra's face is completely squashed, I was finally able to capture a smile! Priceless!!!

What else was priceless, that I wasn't able to get a good picture of, was Claire and Audra playing with one of Claire's Birthday gifts. Ben and I got Claire a Dora Castle (OK, it was a hand me down from a friend, but then we bought her some dolls to go with it- that was the gift from Audra). These girls played with it for over an hour, until it was time for bed, then went to bed crying because they wanted to keep playing. In fact, Audra kept opening her bedroom door because she had to keep peeking at the castle, so we had to take it downstairs.

It was so cute watching them play. Claire was practically hyperventilating as she moved the dolls from one room to another. There was a horse and carriage that they each took turns taking around the house. It was so cute- they have never been more excited for anything in their short lives!!! It was a great day, capped off with a great Birthday party!!!

Happy Birthday, Claire!!!

The North Pole

I have been wanting to do some fun vacation things this summer. Originally, I wanted to go to Utah and Idaho to visit family. Ben refused- he hates that drive, so we decided against it. Instead, we decided to do some day trips and go and do some fun things as a family.
So, instead of UT we went to the North Pole! North Pole, CO that is. It is a really fun amusement park geared just for little kids. We had a great time. We spent 5 1/2 hours at the park, and Claire was literally falling asleep on my shoulder as we left, but the girls still wanted to stay and have even more fun. It was a great day!

They were a little scared of Santa and Snow White. Oh, well.

 Audra loved driving the car. I remember a ride like this at Lagoon in UT- I used to love that as well!

 Love this picture!

 Claire did not want to go on any rides at first. Eventually we figured out she didn't want to be buckled. She finally went on this ride, but only for about 13 seconds. The operator had to turn off the ride and let her off.

On the train.

 Is that a smile?!?

 For much of the time, especially at the beginning, Claire just wanted me to hold her. 

Eventually she started to warm up and walk on her own. My arms were grateful.

 Attempted family picture.

 This was just before the magic show, which the girls loved. 

Claire really wanted to be on stage, so she went down and then started screaming. Nice.

 The biggest hit of the day by far was the Merry-Go-Round. We went on that at least 5 times, maybe more.

 They got to feed reindeer.

 Not sure how I feel about this ride...you aim at your friends to shoot them. 

This ride was definitely built in the 50's.

Happy Memorial Day!

As we all know, Memorial Day is about honoring our troops, and having FUN! As the kids get older, I really do want to go to the parades and the memorials and make it a more significant day, but that just wouldn't fly for us right now. So instead we went to Bellevue Park- one of our favorite places in the summertime! We go several times every summer, and it just gets better and better. Plus, it is a PERFECT place for photo-ops, hence the million I am about to show. What can I say- I FINALLY got some decent shots of Claire, so I have to post them!

 You can kind-of see her smile in this one. That is very hard to catch.

 Very proud of herself for climbing all the way up.

 She's so beautiful!

 I'm so mad at Ben for closing his eyes- otherwise this is such a great picture!!! Maybe we can photo shop sunglasses on him?

UPDATE: My friend Becky put sunglasses on Ben! Woo-hoo!!! This looks SOOOO much better! Thank you Becky!!!

 In this picture you can almost see Claire's boo-boo on her lip. Yesterday while taking a bath, she fell against the tub with her whole face and got a nasty bloody nose and split lip. Poor girl- she was just gushing blood. Luckily, because it was in the tub, the blood stayed there and didn't ruin any clothes or anything. Also luckily, she didn't break her nose- it was bleeding so bad I thought she might have. But, after a little Cat In the Hat, she was back to her usual dare-devil self.

 Claire isn't looking, but at least everybody's eyes are open.