Pennsylvania Dutch Country

To make for an even better summer, Grandma and Grandpa took us on a little vacation to Pennsylvania Dutch Country. We took an Amish buggy ride, toured an Amish farm, and went to our first outdoor amusement park called Dutch Wonderland. We had more fun than two 2-yr olds really should be allowed to have! Mommy even came with us to get a change of scenery. She spent a fair amount of time in the hotel resting, but it was great to help her get out of the house.

The Amish barn was kind of smelly (ha!), but it was so fun to get close to the animals.

We also stopped by the Boyds Bear headquarters and store. It was bears, bears, and more bears! We loved it! A rare sighting of Mommy:

We even got to adopt our very own baby bears. The whole process involved picking their names, getting them wrapped in a blanket, promising to take good care of them, and giving them lots of love. We were awarded our very own badges as "Beary New Parents" and are still very proud of our new baby bears! It was good practice for helping with our new baby sister's arrival.

Here are a bunch of pictures of the fun we had at Dutch Wonderland. We loved Duke the dragon, the princess, and all of the rides. It may have been the hottest week of the summer, but we didn't let the dog days of summer get us down!

We would have taken one million pony rides if we could have. We thought the ponies were the best ride at the whole place:

What a cute Amish bunch:

Elyse: This airplane thing is too cool! I want to go on rides everyday!

Elyse: Grandma, do you know that this lady isn't moving? She seems kind of grumpy...

What's a vacation without lots of swimming in the pool?

We even slept in the same bed at the hotel. This is a recipe for trouble for sure:

No Felicity, you have to press this button to make it go.

Grandma, I can see where Mommy got her picture taking obsession. Make sure to take three hundred pictures of me on the horse in case none of them turn out :0)

One thing is for sure, we know how to bulldoze through our vacation with the best of them! Yippee!!!

Grandma and Grandpa Time!

It has been a crazy year for us and this summer has been no exception! We have been so lucky to have our grandma here helping out during our Mommy's pregnancy. Because Mommy has been very "out of touch" with the world the past 8 months, our blogging presence has drastically diminished. (So sad for us!). We figure a few pics of our fun with Grandma (and a few visits from Grandpa) will give you an idea of the fun we've had in spite of the craziness going on around us!

One of Mommy's few outings was to the 4th of July downtown DC on top of Daddy's work building to watch fireworks. It was great to have the whole family together for the big show!What better place to celebrate the nation's birthday than in the capital? We had a great view!

Grandma and Grandpa took us to the National Mall for a picnic and fun at the museums:

If you're in town, there's a super carousel right on the Mall. You must check it out!

The Air and Space Museum was a high-flying adventure:

We've also spent plenty of time this summer in our pool in the backyard:

Grandma took us to a few different zoos and we LOVED it! It has been a scorcher of a summer, but it hasn't stopped us from painting the town.

What a great summer we've had. We feel especially lucky to have had so much time with our grandma. Maybe we wore her right out, but we know she had fun too!

Pretty soon they have to leave us and go back to Minnesota (somebody's gotta work around here!), and we're going to be so sad. We're just lucky we got to have an amazing summer of DC adventures and travels.

Thanks for all of the fun Grandma and Grandpa! We love you!

Our New Tree House

We were going to post pictures this week of our HUGE adventure to Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish Country this week (we might still get to it!), but we had more pressing news to share.

Just yesterday there was a storm that came through our area. It wasn't the worse storm we've ever seen around here, but the wind sent half of our neighbor's tree plummeting into our kitchen ceiling, kitchen windows, and the driveway!

This picture should be up and down, so if you look at it sideways, you can see how one large branch is poking through the ceiling:

Another fabulous spot of the ceiling:

Here you can see how drywall hanging into the kitchen is a real interior design plus. We think it's going to be a new trend!

And finally, here's our smashed window with one of the big branches resting nicely on the roof. What you can't see here are all of the branches that made their way through the roof and into our kitchen! So much for asking Daddy to build us a treehouse in our backyard; now we have our very own in the kitchen!

The great news is that no one was hurt and the damage could have been much worse. 2010 is shaping up to be QUITE the year for our family!!

Smile for the Camera!

We wanted to get our pictures taken when we turned 2 (WAAAAY back in January), but Mommy was just too sick to make it happen. Instead, we got our pictures taken at the ripe old age of 2 1/2. We just had to wear pig-tales because we are still pretty much sporting the baby-mullet and putting our hair up really helps give us that "yes, we are 2 1/2 and no our mom does not cut our hair in a mullet on purpose" look.The pictures are courtesy of Target Studios and we've picked out the best ones for your viewing enjoyment. Smiles all around!

This is serious business!

Of course Target Studios is no match for our favorite photog, but it's what works for us now (especially with Mommy in her current condition). We hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to see all of the pictures we took (the good, the bad, the silly, and the crazy), you may go to The Smile Station and enter
Customer Name: Amy Butcher and Access Code: LTTT0832103544TAR
These pictures are courtesy of Target Studios and are in low-res format for viewing only.

Ode to Daddy

It is no mystery to anyone who knows us that we love our Daddy. But over the last 6 months while Mommy's been so sick and incapacitated, we just love him even more. He works so hard, plays with us like a maniac (it's great!), and is just all around a super-duper dad. We thought we'd try to be just like him, but found out that his are BIG shoes to fill. How do we look in your shirts, Daddy?You think they're a little big for us? Oh well, we'll just have to settle for BIG hugs instead!

Happy Father's Day to our awesome Daddy!!

Super Summer Silliness!

We are enjoying summer so much that we've just had hardly any time to update you on our crazy little lives! Mommy is doing better each day and has even had a handful of outings in the last month! Here are some snapshots into our summer fun:Elyse: I'm working on perfecting my smile. It's still a work in progress.

When it's hot, hot, hot outside, we just love swimming in our pool:

To celebrate Father's Day early with one of our grandpas, we had ice cream cake for the first time and let's just say it was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!

Delicious, scrumptious, and I'd like to eat it peace please.

Even though we still have the baby mullet, we're currently rocking the pigtales. We think they're just the right look for the dog-days of summer:

Our grandma is here for the summer to help out Mommy and Daddy and boy are we sure happy she's here! We, of course, are working her to the bone and we love it!

Many an afternoon is spent relaxing in our lawn chairs enjoying ice cream cones:

Elyse: Ta-Da! Go for the perfect landing, Felicity!

It's a wild and crazy life, but someone's got to live it! Here's to more summer silliness!

Three's Company

Elyse: It's BIG news! Are you ready for it?

We are going to have a new little SISTER around soon!Felicity: We can't contain our excitement! We are just going to be the best big sisters, showing her all of the ways of the world and will help her get into all sorts of mischief!I'll show her how to be fancy in every way and how to always be cool and collected for the paparazzi:

Of course I'll teach her how to use her smile to get out of sticky situations and remind her that she's very lucky to have two fabulous, fancy sisters like us!

The ultrasound showed that baby #3 is doing well and growing very strong in spite of Mommy's setbacks. Mommy has made dramatic improvements in the past few weeks and is now off of her PICC line and able to eat some foods. She's still pretty weak and can't do much, but is feeling a little better each day.