arboretum

yesterday we went to the arboretum for the first time (with some friends with passes, yea playgroup!):

afton and diego in a covered wagon, we spent a couple hours in the pioneer village, wagon, log cabins, a tepee, etc, the kids loved it!






my one real attempt at any kind of posing, but we'll definately go back sometime and get some pretty shots :)

i loved this one, the kids were all standing around this tank with seaweed and other underwater plants, and rayna took off as fast as she could to get closer to them, within minutes of standing there, they were all dripping seaweed and smelly water on her, and she LOVED it! hilarious!

thought i'd better include one more of rayna, i took a bunch, but most didn't turn out great, oh well.

one of the fun little houses set up in an exhibit, telling various stories, this was one of our favorites.

and last but not least, the petting zoo, little goats and a chicken, a pony, and a sheep, afton LOVED that too!

sisters and black beans

okay, anna inspired me again, only i think these pics show how different my girls are, instead of how similar...

you see, they're both eating black beans and avocado (afton obviously has a pretzel too), but i think it's most interesting to see how neat rayna is, and how messy afton is!

though perhaps that's only in my eyes, after all, ray does have avocado up her nose :)
and yes, they both love beans.

btw: afton's about 9 1/2 mo there, and ray's 9 3/4, and yes, i did grab the camera for rayna because i remembered the pic of afton, but i didn't realize how close in age they were as i took the respective pics.

poop

what can i say, you saw the title, if you're still reading, you should have an idea what you're getting into ;)

afton pooped in the toilet for the first time today! she's really been resisting potty training, so i think this was a major step... in fact, she'd been sitting on her little potty seat a few minutes, then she wanted her big girl panties, so a couple minutes later when she announced loudly "i pooped" i nearly freaked (thinking i had a huge mess to clean up), but on glancing over, i realized if she had, it certainly wasn't a big mess so i got her to run to the bathroom, where we jumped her up on the big potty as she explained, "i hold it in" --what a great girl!!!!!!!!!

spring break

this past week was spring brek for paul, but this present week seems to be spring break for everyone else... that means we get two spring breaks for me and the girls (i know, there's not a whole lot we get a break from, but it's a nice idea anyways!). anyways, paul still had to work the first three days of his spring break, but we took thursday and friday off to go visit katharine's family in austin. we had a great time despite the cold and rain... really i liked that i could take a break from figuring out what's for dinner, and i loved that afton was so excited about playing with her cousins, she couldn't have cared less that it was rainy and cold... she got to play at the botanical gardens and see the big fishys (koi pond), she got to ride on a bus and see some fun things at UT: museums, fountains, rocks (we're fairly easy to please at this stage of life), she got to play blocks and jumping and who knows what else in the cousin's room, and she got to eat some yummy food (we didn't have to bribe her to finish her meals)! thanks katharine and joseph for opening up your home to us!
about 20 minutes after we left to head back home saturday morning, afton was asking if we could go back to katharine's house and play some more. i also thought it was noteworthy when afton started saying 'auntie katharine's house' because i think i only referred to katharine as 'aunt' once, and she put that together with auntie em (paul's sister) and added the 'auntie' all on her own, she's still asking at least twice a day to go to auntie katharine's house.

i thought we could make up for not taking her back to austin (a mere 4 hour drive) by having a special park day this week. we always have park day monday and friday, but we had an extra one tuesday, at a special park with extra friends that usually don't come because of school, including grandma, nicki, and naomi--sorry guys, she still wanted to go back to auntie katharine's house :). some how, i doubt that any of our other fun and exciting ideas for the restof this week will compare either.

ps, i forgot my camera, so no pics of spring break :(

books

i'm looking for good books to read... any suggestions?

pretty girls

and a few more pictures in case anyone hasn't seen enough of my girls lately :)
(these were the last 2 sundays, trying to get some pretty pics)

i asked afton where she wanted her picture taken, and she picked the toy box... what can i say, she's fun!
this was supposed to be one of those cute posed pictures where the girls sit together and smile... one of these days i'm going to get one where they smile... but at least they're cute and matching and all that :)

yeah, rayna likes to eat everything... but isn't she cute doing it?

picnic!

we had a blast saturday at a little park right near campus. we've passed it a number of times (and paul every day), going to pick up or drop off paul at his office, and we kept saying we'd stop one of these days for a picnic. well, we finally did, and it was great! the playground is big (and different from the few around here that we go to all the time), and there was a fountain near by to walk around (and splash in when mama wasn't looking). here's a ton of my favorite pics (we took dozens!)

raisins

paul wanted me to post this:

this afternoon after stake conference, we went to steve and dorothy's house for dinner (which was fabulous! thanks again). afton did a great job eating her dinner and she loved the dessert... at least, she picked the raisins out of the cookies, and left the cookie part behind! so funny!