A Doll's House

We got a new Little People doll house and we are enjoying many hours inside the air-conditioned sanctuary of our house playing with it. In fact, we drag it all over the house setting up shop wherever Mom is!Here we are busy playing pretend with the house imaginatively intertwined with our Noah's Ark Little People set. We like to call it: "After the flood: A day-in-the-life of Noah, his family, and his many ark animals just keepin' it real in suburbia."

Noah and the doll house is very serious, people. He's gotta have a house too! Geez! You think he lived in the ark forever? Puuuhhhllease! We've got his living arrangements all set to go in a beautiful two-story pink colonial. Who wouldn't love it?

And finally, a special little pic...drumroll please...may we introduce:

Our Mommy and her new camera! Here's the woman who insists that she is documenting our lives one snappy photo at a time! And for that, we are grateful (or so she tells us we will be someday). :0)

P.S. Our Mommy also wanted us to tell you that you get extra coolness points if you can name the author of the literary reference in this post.

High-Flying Summer Adventures

Last week we had an AWFUL week with a nasty sickness and just felt miserable, but this week, we are finally able to enjoy the summer (that is, if it's not raining outside!).

Relaxing with Daddy in the hammock is all we have the energy to do sometimes in the crazy humidity! We know that our new hammock will get tons of use this summer:This tent and tunnel system is fun inside and out! We like to crawl inside the tent and hide from each other. It's such a fun game!

Don't be fooled! Mom's not actually sleeping...sleep? Who needs sleep when we're busy entertaining her? And as for me, I'm busy pondering my new investment strategy here:

Another fun thing we're enjoying this summer is going with one of our mommy groups and their littles to different parks in the area. This week the park we visited was H-U-G-E! In fact, we were a bit overwhelmed, but did have a great time flying this cool plane with our friend K at the helm:

Elyse: Crimey! I've been jimmy-jacked here!
Guess I'll just have to be the solo Ace Amelia Erhardt of this jetplane!
(a little shout out to the "Night at the Museum 2" movie)

TOP SECRET: Cardboard Twin Brigade

Thanks to our cool Grandma who sent our mom a gift, we have had hours of fun in the shipping box. Mom tells us that she just can't bring herself to throw it away because we're having such a grand ol' time! Here's to keeping our box alive another week...Yes, Mom? Can you leave us alone please? We're trying to have a top-secret meeting in here!

Shhhhhh Felicity! Don't let Mom hear our secret knock!

Nothing to see here, Mom, nothing at all. Just keep on moving...okay Felicity, here's the secret knock...tap, tap, ratatat tap...top-secret meeting about to begin!

Whew! Elyse and all of her top-secret protocols and thingamajings can wear a girl out!

Monkeying Around

We belong to a great local baby/toddler/kid gym called Monkey Business. This is not a chain, but a great little place owned by a local mom. Since we're always supporting twingenuity, this place is so much fun and locally owned! You can't go wrong! We take a fun music and movement class here and we also enjoy open play on a rainy day (we have TONS of rain...yuck!). Elyse: The other day at Open Play, I showed off my mad walking skills. Like Mommy now says, I'm a full-time walker and a part-time crawler! Here's proof that I'm joining the ranks of the upwardly mobile:

Felicity: Okay, Elyse, here's what I'm saying, it's just not worth it to put all of your eggs in one basket. You've got to diversify your portfolio, invest in smart choices, a little of this, a little of that. But be smart, buying stock in Huggies, although seemingly wise now, is just not going to take you through the long haul.
Elyse: A good point, Felicity. I'll take that under advisement.

And while I think about that, I'll just WALK over here!

These days, I'm doing my best thinking while taking a WALK!

Row, row, row, your boat with two twins down the stream...

Felicity: Larry the Caterpillar, meet my blog friends. Blog friends, this is Larry.

This tree house is so fun! We just love playing in it!

Felicity: Mission commandeer-squishy-ball-from-unsuspecting-boy-in-the-corner:
Mission Accomplished.

So many fun things to climb and play on, we just love it here!

You can't catch me, I'm a bumblebee!

Elyse: Two pink balls, one for you and one for me...hey! Wait a minute! How did you get both pink balls? Felicity, something is wrong with this picture.

Climbing, climbing, climbing! We're getting so big!

When the day is drawing to a close...

When our day is drawing to a close and we're waiting patiently for Daddy to return home from work and help put us to bed, we get a little bit goofy and silly in the kitchen.

Felicity: I decided Mom needed a little extra space to cook dinner, so I found the perfect place to get out of the way and hide! Where could I be?Oh, Mom! You're a tricky one, you are!

Ta, da! Bet you didn't know where I was, Elyse!

Elyse: Seriously Felicity, I'm not concerned one bit with your current location. I'm watching for Daddy to come home. Do I see him over this way? Nope.

How about over here? Nope again.

I don't know what to tell you. He's just not anywhere to be found! He should be home any minute, where could he be?

Oh well, enough of that waiting around! It's time for us to cause our usual mischief and merry-making! Here's our new favorite place in the kitchen: on the kitchen island shelf! Never mind that Mom usually keeps baskets full of things on this shelf, we just move those (translate: throw them) on the ground and climb up! It's so fun to hide here!

And just when our silliness crescendos to an almost ridiculous level, Daddy comes home to help us get all of our silly genes out!

Friends from Near and Far

Boy did we have a busy, fun-filled Memorial Day Weekend!! We got to hang out with our friends, enjoy yummy food (and ice cream!), and we got to spend some quality time with our grill-master daddy sans work. There was tons of fun to be had all around! Here are some snapshots of our busy weekend in no particular order:

Elyse: I was very excited for our big Memorial Day barbecue and couldn't wait to debut my mad walking skills to our friends. Then, I just got too nervous and decided to go with what works: my get-my-pants-dirty, scratch-my-knees-all-up, seriously-why-don't-I-just-walk crawling. Oh well, better luck next time. I keep telling Mom and Dad that I'm having fun and that's all that matters! (And I can walk, I just CHOOSE not to. BIG difference!)I showed all of our friends how to rock it out with our dragon and let me tell you, I know how to rock!

Mom bought this hammock to put in the yard between two trees that were MADE to have a hammock between them. Clearly our friends were having a rip-roaring good time playing in it! We love it too!

We also went to an ice-cream social with one of our Mom's mommy groups. It was busy, but lots of fun! We ate delicious ice cream from a great local place and played with our friends. This is our new friend K and her mommy. We just love playing with her and her baby sister!

Elyse: Ummm...no need to be in such a hurry A! The view from down here is just fine!
This is our buddy the A-man. He's our age and walks/runs (just like Felicity -- I just let them run around me, no need for all of us to break a sweat!). He also comes over to play with us at our house too and he's lots of fun!

Yummy snacks with good company. You can't beat that!

Umm...Mom?...did you know that this table is slanted? It really cramps our ability to enjoy a leisurely snack when we're falling off.

Elyse: Our buddy L is also our age and is into this crab-walk mode of transportation. This is just the kind of thing that is right up my alley!

On Saturday, our very good friend from Pittsburgh came to visit us! We had so much fun with Annie on a hot, sticky DC day. We played inside and outside and thoroughly enjoyed every moment!

Felicity: Annie and I had lots of giggles!

Annie's from Florida and doesn't mind the heat. Mommy's from Minnesota and hates the heat. We were afraid Annie would freeze in our ice-box of an air-conditioned house. But she's tough and didn't mind!

Feliciy: This was our very first tank-top wearing experience of the summer. We're going to have to wear lots more of these this summer! Whew! It's so HUMID here!

Elyse: Okay, here's the deal, Annie. I give you this foam block and then you give it right back. Deal? Remember, I give it to you and then you give it immediately back to me...don't hold out on me! Felicity doesn't quite seem to get this arrangement, so I want to make sure you do.

Elyse: Yes, I'm smiling in this pic. Don't have a heart attack Grandma!

Yippee!! What a fun weekend we had! We got to see so many friends and do so many fun things! Now, we think we're going to go take a nap after all of the festivities!

Pictures!

When we call our friends fancy, we definitely mean that we have fancy, sophisticated, important, very cool friends, but there is one friend in particular that encapsulates "fancy extraordinaire!" Her name is Melissa and we had the pleasure of hanging out with her at the Sculpture Garden in Minneapolis while she took our pictures. She is a good friend of mommy's and has been many things to her (one of which is a fellow law-school widow), but has just recently taken the official title of PHOTOGRAPHER. We are so proud of her and we feel especially lucky that she shared her talents with us! If you'd like to see some of the pictures she took of our family, check out her photography blog. If you're in the area and looking for a professional photographer, then check this out. Here's a big hooray for our friend Melissa--you are one fancy lady! We love you!