Wabash River

Dustin and I are just short of having been here in West Lafayette, Indiana for two years. We have crossed the Wabash River countless times, but we have only crossed the foot bridge on one other occasion. And yesterday was the first time we have ever walked on the banks of the river and actually touched the Wabash. We decided that a little stroll after dinner would be a nice, relaxing way to complete our evening and we thought the girls would enjoy it too. We stopped by the fountain before walking over the bridge. Any fountain is a treat for my girls. We even asked a nice woman passing by to take a picture of all of us. We always seem to be lacking in family photos.

For some reason Adelynne thought we were going to see some dinosaurs.  I don't know if she was thinking about our recent trip to the museum, but it was cute to hear her talk about seeing the dinosaurs anyway.  And don't worry, Amy did not fall into the river, she made it safely home with us. 

Couch potatoes

Oh no, we've raised couch potatoes! These are pictures of the girls watching a movie before bed time. They are tired, but still, look at the open-mouthed, blank stares from Amy. Gotta say, my girls know when to enjoy a good show!


They sure are cute lookin' potatoes!

Cool Cats

I thought that it might be nice to post some pictures of "our boys." Our cats have been a part of our family from the beginning of our marriage, and they have brought hours of entertainment from the start. Dustin and I both have a deep love for animals, and we are grateful for these beautiful creatures that bring enjoyment to our daily routines.

Max is the one on Dustin's shoulders, and he has got to be the coolest cat ever. He will let you cradle him like a baby, or any way you like-he just enjoys the attention. His favorite person is Dustin, so any chance he can get he's trying to get some lovin' from Dustin.
One of Nemo's favorite hangouts is under the couch. He's your typical, lazy, fat, grouchy cat. But I love him just the same. If you don't already know, you'll have to ask me what my history with Nemo is, we go "way back." One of the funny things that Nemo does, is when he is thirsty he will lay down in front of his water dish and reaches with one paw to pull the dish to him, and then he drinks the water laying down. But one of the only times he is not lazy is when he is hungry: he likes to chase the individual kibbles of his food around before eating them.

Indiana water

Last night, Dustin was preparing to give the girls a bath. He turned on the water to fill up the tub and went to get the girls. When he came back he found the tub filled with orange-brown water. Here's a picture of what it looked like:

This is the tub after the water drained:

I think part of the problem is the pipes that come with the building--they're old, really old. The worst part is that sometimes when I do my laundry clothes will turn orange, and I haven't figured out how to take the orange out of my clothes. It makes me so mad! Anyway, all of our hot water was brown last night, so the girls had to take very quick, cold baths last night--they were not happy. I have never heard Amy scream in terror like she did last night! It was awful. Luckily she recovered quickly and was her happy self moments after being dried off. Indiana does have some nice attributes, but this is NOT one of them!

Conversation....of two 3 year olds

Adelynne:  "Mommy, I went poopy in the potty!"

Minnie: "I went poopy in the potty too!"  (proceeds to show me and use sound affects for how she went poopy)

Adelynne: "I went poopy like Minnie!"

Minnie: "Yea, we both went poopy!"

Adelynne: "We match!"

We like the Wiggles

Here's just a few clips of Adelynne dancing to the Wiggles. If you listen carefully you can even hear Dustin singing his own improv to the music. Amy is just purely mesmerized by the funness.  And you might even catch me singing along as well.

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An Artist

Adelynne drew this picture a couple of weeks ago I think after watching Curious George. The show must have had George at the dinosaur museum. If you compare her drawing to the dinosaur skeleton, you can definitely see where she got the idea. I don't know if you're impressed, but I sure am!

Indianapolis Children's Museum

We finally made it to the Indianapolis Children's Museum on Saturday with a group of our friends. This is a museum you have to visit multiple times in order to really enjoy it all. With five floors and endless exhibits, it is hard to fit it all in, and when you've got young children there is no way you can see it all. We started out on the top floor where the carousel ride is and some fun play areas are as well. There is a mirror maze and some giant size games and some houses for kids of all age to play, and of course a carousel ride. I got some cute shots of the girls dancing to the carousel music, Amy is crying in the one because Dustin had to pull her out of the way and she wasn't too happy about it, but it didn't stop her from dancing. Then they got to go on the ride, and this was the event that Adelynne and Minnie talked about most of the week. I was expecting smiles and laughs from Adelynne as she loves to go on rides. But as soon as the animal she was on began to move she was terrified and she cried the rest of the ride. Luckily the ride doesn't go very long, but I was quite surprised to see her in tears. And once Adelynne was off the ride she was happy and dancing again-so at least it didn't phase her long.

After the top floor we took the girls to a Curious George Play. Adelynne's first live play, and she seemed to enjoy it all. At least she sat through the entire 40 minute play. Dustin and Amy enjoyed the small aquarium while we watched the play. It was a very cute dramatization of one of the stories by Margaret and H. A. Rey. I'm glad we went. Afterwards we ate are sack lunches and then we went to the Curious George exhibit room.  Amy loved the rocket ship slide.

We also made a visit to the dinosaur exhibit, and on our way down we ran into the craft area and Adelynne wanted me to help her make a dinosaur out of clay. I know the pictures are blurry, but you get the point. Then we made it to the actual dinosaurs, and Adelynne might not have been so scared had Aubree not been talking about how scared she was. But Adelynne was definitely intrigued by these giant skeletons. Of course it was dark and there was some sound affects that were not helping with the scariness. I actually have a drawing of a dinosaur that Adelynne drew that I need to post. Next post. I think Adelynne's interest in dinosaurs is actually from watching Curious George. Well, we couldn't leave without seeing the comic book exhibit, and since Adelynne is also a fan of Spiderman, we thought she'd enjoy it. She did. She liked dressing up too. She wanted to try on all of the costumes, but of course I couldn't get her to leave them on long enough for me to get some good pictures. The girls were pretty much on their last leg by now, so we took them one last time up to the carousel floor. Adelynne went through the mirror maze one more time, and Amy danced to the carousel music some more. We had a fun time with our friends, and watching the girls explore. We'll be going back again, hopefully soon!

Here are a bunch of videos of Amy dancing and walking around. She was so happy to be out of her stroller!

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Lafayette Zoo

On Wednesday I decided to take the girls to the zoo because Adelynne and Amy both had a doctor's appointment, and the doctor's office is nearby the zoo. Its hard to believe, but we have lived here almost 2 years and have never been to this free attraction. The Lafayette Zoo is nothing grand or spectacular, but it is enjoyable just the same. The best part is walking into the zoo and there are these little fountains to entertain the children. There's no need to rush because there isn't much to see anyway, so you just let the kids enjoy themselves. The best fountain is the big globe of the earth that rotates. It is covered in water, (as that is the mechanism making it rotate). Its just really cool. After convincing all the girls that we'd be back we headed over to the animals. Amy was so excited to see animals, she does this funny little laugh. I think you can hear her in one of the videos. We saw the monkeys, and they smelled terrible. Aubree was bothered the most by the smell and she seemed to influence the girls the most on holding their noses and complaining about the bad odor. We also saw a lynx and a porcupine (kind of, it was hiding in the log). Then we headed over to the petting zoo, and on our way we ran into the miniature horse which the girls were excited to pet. At the petting area, Amy once again was excited about the critters, and the first one she saw was a chicken that she wanted to chase, but I quickly distracted her with the herd of goats in the petting area. Her excitement was encouraging. Adelynne also loved the goats and she was not afraid to be in the middle of them all. She didn't want to leave, and I assured her we would go back, however we never made it back in our visit-next time. The rest of the time we just had lunch and let the girls play in the water and on the frogs. We all had a great time at the zoo.

After the girls' doctor's appointments, I decided to take them to Target for some shopping time, and bribed them for good behavior with an icee. It worked, the girls were pretty happy with their refreshing treat.

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Back in Time-Again

I let this one go to long, sorry. But I needed to put these pictures up from Amy's birthday that was on April 22nd. I just didn't get them up before we left on our month long trip in May, and then we came back and I thought I wouldn't put them up. But I was looking at the pictures and I was reminded again of how cute Amy was on her birthday and I knew I needed to put them up. So enjoy! It was a great day!

Pictures of the girls

Here are some cute pictures of the girls from Sunday. Who needs a reason to post pictures! Enjoy the pictures!

Building with Daddy

It rained on Saturday, so some outdoor activities were postponed, and instead we all headed to Lowe's for the "build it yourself" project they have every 2nd and 4th Saturdays of each month. (And for those of you who didn't know, Lowe's does this all across the country, so check out your local Lowe's--this is a totally free activity! The kids get a free apron and goggles and they earn patches and certificates when they complete a project). This Saturday's project was building a dune buggy. Dustin and Adelynne jumped right in to building their buggy. Amy wanted to build too, well actually she just wanted to hammer on the table and make lots of noise-not that there wasn't enough! But she had some fun too. Adelynne worked very hard and seriously as you can tell from the pictures, and yes, she did get Daddy's thumb at one point. When she was hammering a nail she'd sometimes get distracted and look away as she continued to hammer. When it was all hammered together Dustin let her do the sticker work herself, hence the perfectly placed stickers. Adelynne really seems to enjoy doing these projects with her Daddy. This was only her second time, but we'll be going back again. It is a lot of fun to watch her build too.

Swimming summer

I took the girls swimming over at the Beaux Jardin Apartments where Minnie lives at, its actually something we've been doing at least once a week. Its a great pool to go to because we practically get the pool to ourselves during the time of day that we go-late morning to early afternoon. Adelynne asks about every day, "Can we go for a swim?" I wish it was easy enough to go every day, but when you have to grease up, suit up, and buckle up 3 girls, it takes a good 45 minutes. And usually I pack a lunch as well, so that takes extra time. Then with all of the towels, water gear, lunches, and diaper bag I am usually hauling 3 to 4 large bags with me. I feel like I'm packing for a weeks vacation when I go to the pool. But I'm working at becoming more efficient at the process so that it is not as difficult. Once we are there, it is a lot of fun though. Yesterday I finally remembered to not only bring the camera, but to take pictures as well. Yesterday was also more warm than it has been, though it was still a pleasant day to be outside. So since the sun was out, the water was refreshing because it cooled you down, but it wasn't as cold as it has been the last several weeks either. Because it was warm, Amy actually got in the water and stayed in, and enjoyed it, and I got in all the way too. We were there for about 2 and a half hours just soaking up the sun, (a little too much-oops!) and enjoying the water. It was fun to see Amy really have a good time in the water. Usually she will get her feet in and then get out as fast as she can, and then she spends her time wandering around eating snacks and watching everyone else. Also, every time we've gone, Adelynne has been getting more and more brave, (thanks to the influence of Minnie-who is the bravest 3 year old in the water, no fear whatsoever-she's awesome in the pool)! This time Adelynne swam out into the deep end all on her own. She is also beginning to dunk her head under water, but she doesn't like it very much. Anyway, we had a great time with our friends, and we are always anxious to go back! See you at the pool!