When you're married to a dam* engineer:

He just can't help himself.


*Don't worry, it's spelled correctly. Having heard this joke so many times from the engineer himself, it's starting to rub off on me.

One hour...

in an extremely crowded, excessively loud, ridiculously hot room, with the crowd consisting mostly of children under five, all for this:
That's it, that's all I got. As you can see, Ruby was not too thrilled about sitting on Clifford's lap, so the photo op was extra short. Good thing Clifford was holding on tight because she was fighting to get away.




Luckily, a friend of mine was there and snapped a couple of photos of my girls so you can see that Ruby was fine meeting Clifford. Both girls gave him five and petted him.
But once they were on his lap it all went downhill for Ruby. Here she is contemplating the situation, realizing that Mommy is NOT the one holding on to her any longer:
You can also see my arm trying to snap a picture before it went downhill. My camera just isn't fast enough. Cora was fine with it all. I was annoyed that they skipped the story, it was Story Time, after all. (They skipped it because there were so many kids there, but how long does a kid's story really take?)

I feel sorry for Clifford. If I was hot in that room, he must have been roasting!

Imagine this:

Two two-year olds:












Two one-year-olds:


Two less than one-year-olds:












Plus all their parents (Ray and Meg not pictured):














All in one house.

It was an interesting afternoon. It was also a lot of fun. I think the kids enjoyed running around the yard. I attempted to get a picture of them all together, it was impossible. This was the stillest I could get any group:









Hunter was almost impossible to catch up with. Most of my pictures of him came out blurry. Tucker was the easiest to photo, he doesn't move too far, too fast, yet.

A new place to hang out

The Zoo

On my birthday (which was over a month ago) Ray surprised me by taking the day off. We took the girls to the zoo. It wasn't a very big zoo. We were the only visitors there (at least we didn't see anyone else). It had snowed a lot just a few days before. Several of the animals weren't out because of the snow. But we had a lot of fun anyway.

Cora spotted animals:









Ruby played in the snow:









The tiger was the coolest animal there:












They also had a barn area with farm animals. That was fun, too.










A few of the animals we saw:

Guess who picked the hats?

If you guessed Mommy, try again.

Random Assortment of Photos

Cora has advanced to getting shoes on her feet instead of her hands. She can also put shoes on Ruby, about this well:

Who needs toys? We've got TONS of rocks.

My wonderful neighbor made these bibs for the girls as a thank you for Ray pushing her snow all winter. I love these bibs. They are big. They wrap all the way around so the girls can't pull them up and get stuff all over their clothes.

Remember the cookie incident? When I found them they were both lounged on the pillow.

The neighborhood cat. The girls love him.

Cora put her hat on by herself. I love how her ears are poking out. It reminds me of Roy when he was little and always pulled his cap down so far that his ears poked out.

The girls were not happy to be sitting on Mommy's lap. They only came to Mommy because Mommy had the camera. They no longer wanted Mommy when Daddy took the camera to take this picture.
But they were plenty happy to sit with Daddy, even when he didn't have the camera:
Life isn't fair.