Brooke was off-track so we decided to meet up with my sister, Sarah, and visit Ogden’s Treehouse Children’s Museum.
Spencer found the trains right away:
Carson showed me his cute smile:
Brooke planted carrots:
She found a pony and had to have her picture taken with it:
What luck! Next to the pony was a display of bears. Her two obsessions right next to each other:
Ponies! You can guess who was in heaven:
Spencer doesn’t look like he’s having much fun, but I assure you, he was:
Caroline painted with water on the wall:
Brooke enjoyed being the teacher:
Brooke loved the musical instruments area. She played this instrument for several minutes, eyes closed, body swaying. I could tell she thought the music she was playing was so beautiful and she was appreciating every note:
You can’t see it in the pictures, but my sister and I are convinced that somewhere lurking in that fun museum was an evil germ that gave our babies the barfs. Luckily Spencer was the only one affected in our house. Unfortunately Sarah’s whole family got to experience the sickness. As fun as the museum was, we may have a hard time wanting to plan a return trip. You might say it left a bad taste in some of our mouths.
Our sick little guy curled up with his blanket and bunny:
Somehow we had pictures of Easter on our camera that we hadn’t downloaded…until now. Let’s relive the egg hunts.
This was the city egg hunt:
They were giving out kites so we snagged a couple:
Then we went to Dallas’s mom’s house for a nice dinner and egg hunt. Note Caroline and Brooke’s excitement as they searched for eggs:
Note that Spencer doesn’t look too excited:
The girls with their loot:
Spencer with his loot:
We couldn’t get Spencer to pick up a single egg. He just bee-lined it straight to the sandbox and played happily with Oma’s huge sand trucks oblivious to the candy eggs that could be his. No need for candy when there’s a cement truck that needs playing with.
Once again I have a million pictures I’ve been meaning to post and haven’t so you get them all at once! Lucky day! I’ve been saving some of these pictures since January.
The girls helped me decorate Dallas’s birthday cake. Dallas just informed me that it was totally disgusting. Now you know: never add gummy bears to cakes:
Oh look! I had a birthday, too!
I never took a picture of what Brooke got from Christmas so one day she set out her pony things so we could document:
Brooke is sitting right by me and is demanding that I let her add her own caption to the picture. Here’s what she wants you to know, “I got lots of ponies and I’m getting more. I love them all.”
One day Spencer was coloring. I loved that he was using his hand to hold up his head. This is probably only cute to me:
Spencer went through a phase where he wouldn’t stand up. It was really strange. It was as if it hurt him to put any weight on his legs. Growing pains? Who knows. He had a hard time rolling his cars on the couch while kneeling:
Here he is in happier times. Who knew toilet paper could be so fun?
(That stripe on his cheek is my eye liner. Rascal.)
Dallas made the kids a snow fort:
We all went sledding. Caroline was terrified to sled so I forced her to ride down with me to prove how much fun sledding is. I love her face in this picture:
(My evil plan worked and after that first terrifying slide down the hill she begged to go again and again.)
My two boys hard at work:
Spencer in a container:
Spencer found Caroline’s headbands and wore both of them one day:
I didn’t realize I had so many Spencer pictures. Here someone drew all over the table. When I saw it, I gave Spencer a stern look. He immediately and innocently exclaimed, “Hey! Who did this?!” It was a very convincing act. Too bad he was still holding the orange crayon:
Caroline found some fabric scraps and dressed up like a princess. She felt very beautiful all day with that bow in her hair:
Dr. Seuss had a birthday. We went to a city activity:
Dallas asked The Cat in the Hat to sneak up behind Brooke and scare her. She didn’t appreciate the surprise:
Spencer routinely carries this stool to his room to act as his piano bench while he’s playing with his toy:
Spencer is terrified of the vacuum. When he sees me getting it he piles up all of his prized possessions on the couch and waits for me to be done:
We fed ducks. The girls used the tall weeds for their fishing poles:
More Brooke commentary, “I like to go fishing, but this is just a pretend fishing rod.”
Spencer fell on that path. Sad baby:
Brooke, “Me and bear are fire fighters! I love my bear. He’s so cute.”
I’ll end with some artwork by Brooke. One day I saw she had drawn a CTR ring on the back of her school paper:
Brooke has taken to using her creativity when completing a task that requires absolutely no creativity – writing her name on her papers. That girl.
Brooke drew a picture of me. I’ve never looked prettier:
Brooke’s favorite show is Wall-E. Here she has drawn the characters from the show:
So maybe what happened next shouldn’t surprise me so much.
I decided to search our library for bear books. One of them ended up being a book all about how to make bears. I checked it out for Brooke because I knew she would have fun looking at the pictures of all the different kinds of bears. Never in a million years did I anticipate I would actually use the book.
However, I should have known that Brooke would fall in love with the bears pictured on the pages…and her love would cause her to beg me to make her a bear. I wasn’t sure my sewing skills were up to par, so I kept trying to brush her off hoping she’d forget about it, but it was no use.
Luckily, she took a liking to one of the easier bears to make. After studying the instructions I started to think I might actually be able to make her a bear.
So I did.
Meet Treasure Bear Ice. He’s a treasure bear because his belly is a zipper so Brooke can keep all of her treasures zipped up inside of him. He’s named Ice because I finished him the week that she was studying the letter “I” in school, and her show-and-tell needed to start with that letter. “Ice” was the only “I” name she could think of.
Luckily for me his flaws aren’t readily seen in these pictures so you will all be under the impression that I’m a great bear maker.
Brooke loves Treasure Bear Ice. She now drags him along with her other bear everywhere we go. One day she said, “I love Treasure Bear Ice more than Bear. It’s kind of like Andy when he got Buzz.” I could tell she sensed she was betraying her old friend, Bear. Then she added, “I still love Bear though.”
And thus begins Treasure Bear’s journey of getting as dingy and matted as her old bear.
