Happy Birthday Charity Elizabeth!

On September 23, 2010, at 7:56 pm EST, we welcomed Charity Elizabeth to the world at 5 lbs 13.5 oz and 19 inches long.After a very rough pregnancy, Mommy was induced and labor lasted 12 hours. All went splendidly with the exception of a brief scare at the end when Charity's chord was wrapped around her neck and she needed to "exit the premises" as quickly as possibly. Thankfully, she didn't have any problems due to the drop in heart rate and made her presence known loud and clear (like only a true member of our family would!).

Mom and Dad are so happy that this long road is over!

Just minutes old, Daddy gives Charity a pep talk on how to survive life in our crazy house!

We are so happy our sweet Charity is here and can't wait to share LOTS more pictures with you! We can't thank you enough for all of the prayers, love, flowers, cards, and encouragement we've received helping us make it through this difficult year!

We're Cookin' Up Something!

With our baby sister on her way soon, we thought we would cook up some treats! Here's our recipe for fun:

1 Cup sweet, innocent smilesMixed with 2 Tbs of mischief.

Sift in 3 heaping tsps of silliness,

Taste the combination to see if it's just right,

Bake in a hot 90 degree DC summer,

And you've got the perfect recipe for a TWINkie treat!

We know our mom and dad just love to enjoy everything we can cook up!

The First Day of School

We live right across the street from an elementary school and love to watch the hustle and bustle that happens in the morning and afternoon when the kids come and go. Today, being the first day of school, we put on new fall dresses and watched all of the parents and kids head off to their BIG DAY! Mommy even got up early and sat outside with us. We waved and wished everybody a "Happy First Day of School!"

They're about to start coming, Mom! Hurry and take our pictures so we can watch!Oooooh, this is so exciting!

Felicity: Just think, Elyse. Next year, we'll be going to our first day of pre-school. I can hardly wait!

To all of our friends who go to school and to our friends who are teachers: we wish you a very Happy First Day of School!

Another Crazy Year

Happy Birthday Mommy!
Before Grandma and Grandpa left to go home to MN, we celebrated Mommy's birthday a little early. In all reality, she can't believe she actually made it to her birthday this year; but of course we knew she had it in her!

The last picture you're going to see of her before our baby sister is born: In spite of being relatively home-bound for almost 8 months, we are happy to report that Mommy has not gone insane. In fact, she was able to enjoy her birthday party and even ate some birthday cake (if you know her, you know this is a BIG deal).

Thanks to our awesome Grandma, we had decorations and party blowers for the big celebration. Fun was had by all!

The party was also a great chance to celebrate and thank our Grandma for all of her love, support, and hard work this summer. Thanks again, Grandma! We love you and miss you already!

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.