Robin's Nest

Michael came to get me last Wednesday to show me that a bird had built a nest on top of the slide of our swing set. He asked what I wanted to do with it and we let Hannah choose if she wanted to see if a bird would lay eggs in it or if she would rather slide. Being the animal lover she is, she chose to see if we would get baby birds. On Monday Michael went to check on it and saw that there was one little blue egg in the nest.

 

I went out on Monday to find the mommy sitting on her nest and confirmed that it is a robin.

  

I went back to check today while the mommy was gone and found that we now have three eggs!

After a little Internet research I have learned that they usually have four eggs and lay only one per day. They do lay unfertilized eggs, so we won't know until time for these to hatch. They lay the eggs, but won't start incubating the eggs until they are done laying so that they will all be born at the same time instead of days apart. The eggs take 12-14 days to hatch and then they live in the nest for 9-16 days. This means we will probably be in Oklahoma when they hatch (if they were fertilized), but we will get to see the baby birds when we get back. Of course Michael will keep us posted on the progress and if they don't hatch, this will save the girls some disappointment. Lets just hope we have better luck with our eggs than my cousin Audrey had with hers...

Saturday trip to the zoo!

For the first time in a LONG time, Michael didn't have Bible Study or a running date on Saturday and we got to spend the day together as a family. I was so excited and we refused to let a little cold weather (44 degrees) stop us from having fun. We grabbed the coats and headed to the zoo! The elephants seem to always be the girls favorite animal to watch. I don't know if it is because of Zuri, the baby elephant, or if it is because their area is more open (no glass), but we always stand in front of them for at least 10 minutes- aka-forever in toddler time!

We always take a trip on the carousel that has the coolest animals ever. Hannah picked the baby elephant for her and the cheetah for her sister, which is surprising since her favorite animal is the cheetah.

One benefit to going to the zoo when it is cold, some of the animals are awake and playing, like this Leopard.

 And this peacock:

 Tried to get the girls to take a pic on the big metal elephant, as you can see, that didn't go well...

It was a fun day and so nice to get out of the house as a family!

Photo Challenge Day 30-Any Photo

I can't believe that the 30 day challenge is over! It was hard to keep up sometimes, but it has really pushed me to be more intentional with keeping the blog more updated. My goal is to update at least 3-4 times a week when I can. Since I am about to spend 17 days in Oklahoma, my updating the next few weeks will be alot more sparse!

Once again, since I get to pick any photo, I am going to share something I would have posted about anyway, more of our Easter. These are from our backyard egg hunt. This year we bought two packages of different eggs, Hannah got the animal print eggs and Rachel got the multicolored metallic ones. It worked out perfect because they each knew what eggs they were looking for and returned the ones they found that weren't theirs. We also did 6 larger eggs that they shared! We were also blessed to spend this holiday with our adopted parents, the Porets! We are so thankful to have them in our lives!

Easter Out-Takes

What would a family photo shoot be without all the fun out takes...

All you can ever hope for is just ONE good one! :)

Photo Challenge Day 29- Recent Pic of Myself

This is our Easter pic for 2011, our colors were pink and white and I love how it turned out!

Photo Challenge Day 28- Weather

It's that time of year again, where there are lots of storms and the weather can't decide what season it wants to be- Winter or Spring. These are all pics from last year, but it all looks the same...

 The best part of storms-the rainbows! :)

Photo Challenge Day 27- Theme 2

Photo Challenge Day 26- Always Laugh At

I can't help but always laugh at a really good cheese face!

Showing off the foam puppets we made from a kit



Showing off her new Dora socks (four sizes too big for her)
that we got in the mail from Aunt Carla!



Photo Challenge Day 25- In a Hurry

Rachel has been "in a hurry" to be as big as her sister forever! She talks better than most 3yr olds, runs and climbs, and tries to do everything Hannah does. I realize this is good in lots of ways, but its really sad to this mommy sometimes because I want them to be little forever. This is her trying to do a somersault! :)

Photo Challenge Day 24- This Makes Me Happy

This is a duplicate challenge as Day 10, but I will go ahead and use it as an excuse to show you some pics I was going to do a post on anyways. So this time the thing that makes me happy is creating family traditions, the most recent was decorating Easter Eggs!

In the future, I will be smarter than I was this year (I hope) and be sure to read the box of the egg decorating kit BEFORE I give it to Hannah as an option to purchase. She LOVES dinosaurs! We watch Land Before Time, Dino Dan, and Dinosaur Train and she knows lots of dinosaurs by their really long names and how they look. So, when I saw a dinosaur egg kit, I knew she would love it too. However, there was "some assembly required" and at three, that means for mom to do. So after about 30-45 minutes (with some distractions), I had 8 of these little guys ready to go!

from this...

to this!

Then after dinner, we got all our stuff ready and put on clothes that were safe to get stained and got started! (Kids were not cooperating for pics)

This set up lasted 10 seconds or less because Michael decided he could handle Hannah alot easier than Rachel. Also notice after this, there are no pictures of Rachel for the "during" process because she was in my arms! 

 

 Hannah LOVED the dinosaurs, so it was worth it in the end to get this smile!

 This is Michael's egg, it was going to just be orange so he soaked it for a long time, then it still wasn't orange enough for him so he decided to try mixing colors to see what he would get. It turned brown and starting chipping and was really ugly. Well, he kept dunking it long after I thought it was a lost cause and here is the end result, its the coolest looking egg we made!

 One pic of me with the girls for proof that I did help. As you can tell, the girls were just as cooperative as they were for pictures with their dad.

 Another thing that looked alot more fun than it was, were these face stickers. They don't lay flat on your curved egg and so they don't stick well. You would think that since they are made for eggs, they would work on eggs.

 We finally let Rachel play with an egg and she was so excited and about 15 seconds later, she smashed it into the table and it cracked. She looked at it and looked at me and said, "Oopsie!"

 We had to convince her that it was ok that she broke it!

This picture has some of the egg white from Rachel's egg in the back, but it is a pic of Hannah's favorite egg. She colored it with the clear crayon and dyed it her favorite color, purple!

There are lots of things that we do with the girls that will be easier as they get older (like dyeing eggs) and lots of things they may get older and think are lame, but we will still do them every year we can because traditions are important!