First Day of School!

I know I'm a little behind, but I had to post Norah's first day of school picture. Our big girl had been loving her teacher and all her new friends. She's become very interested in writing and makes up her own stories (which she writes, with our spelling help) all the time. We can't wait to see how much she learns this year!

And although she's all grown up now (wink), she's still not too big to enjoy a good story with Grammy in "the relaxing chair". 

Five Months!

Guess who turned five months old yesterday...

This girl!!!

Stats: Probably 12ish pounds, 0-3 month clothing, size 1 diapers, dimples have not yet disappeared! Hooray Darcy! Also, it's looking to us like she might turn out to be a redhead. Double hooray!

** Here, Darcy is modeling her very first t-shirt (as in, non onesie) from great grandma and grandpa Henderson. 

Not Water Related

Despite my last couple of posts, our girls didn't spend their entire trip to California in the water. They also went to the park! Their favorite is a park they called Castle Boat Park. 

As you can clearly see, Castle Boat Park is comprised of a castle and a boat play structure. How convenient. That dot in the middle is Penny running at top speed toward the castle. 

At Castle Boat Park, Norah and Penny enjoyed such activities as:

Running. 

The balance beam. 

Going up and down the steps. 

Climbing the giant fake rock to be higher than mom. 

Running. 

Climbing the simulated rock wall into the tower. 

And teasing Daddy by pretending to jump off the castle. 

They also both loved the tiny drinking fountain for dogs. Which, I suppose, is somewhat water related. 

Plight of the Youngest

This is what happens by the time the hand-me-downs are making their way to the third girl. 

That's Darcy's adorable big toe. 

Fortunately for Darcy, after her big sister was done laughing...

She was willing to help her little sister out. 

I suspect that this will be the case for most of our sweet Darcy's life. 

Water Adventures

We met up with a few friends in CA for dinner. We decided to keep the girls occupied by meeting at their community pool. As usual, a good time was had by all. 

It was the perfect sized kid pool!

I got exactly one photo in which both girls smiled. 

The rest were some variation of this. 

Or this. 

Norah begged me to take a photo of her "starfish float", which she learned in swim lessons. 

Which prompted Penny to request a photo as well. 

We could barely get them out of the pool for dinner. There was serious wailing and gnashing of teeth when it was time to go. We are not getting a pool. That is all. 

Best. Birthday. Ever.

Our friend Tiffany has such varied taste in music that she has been known to declare a song, album, or artist, to be the "best ever currently". If Norah knew this phrase, I think she'd steal it in a second. 

Case in point: she asked this year to have her birthday at the beach. After our outing she quickly declared it to be the "best birthday ever". See the evidence below!

Sand castles were built. 

Daddy helped with the engineering. 

Building sand castles with Daddy was super interesting.

At one point, Penny saw a pigeon and excitedly yelled, "Flamingo!!" Don't mind her. She's from the mountains.

And, after some cajolling and with much trepidation, Mark managed to get the girls into the water with him. But only up to their knees. Still, by all accounts, it was the best birthday ever. (Currently)

No Naps Required

We took a trip a couple of weeks ago to California for Mark's brother's wedding. We left on the fourteen hour drive super early in the morning (3am) and told the girls that if they slept in the morning until we said it was time to wake up, one of their rewards would be that they didn't have to take naps. This is them not taking naps at about 2pm.