Paper Pullers

We were at Grandma's house over Memorial Day weekend and I saw Nora doing this:

It was a serious flashback to photos of Zeke doing the same thing - at nearly the same age, and in nearly the same outfit!

Love these kids, despite their need to scatter things far and wide.

Believe it or not, Zeke is older than Nora in these pictures, even though he is smaller and not crawling yet....

Infrequent Flying

Between moving, rainy weather, and no longer having a model airport (it's turning into soccer fields), we have only been flying 3 times in the past 4 months. That's rare for us, but it's been okay because we have been busy. And honestly, going flying isn't as much fun with a babe who can't walk yet - she's heavy!

We've flown at 3 different places this year. The club field:

the lake:

and the park:

As you can see, Zeke is the official helper, particularly with the small planes. Nora and I spend a lot of time watching from the car, where she can move around and I can watch the planes without worrying about Nora eating rocks.

Zeke's 4th Birthday Party

I asked Zeke what kind of birthday party he wanted, and his answer was to have cake at Grandma's house, like we did last year. So we did!

Smart kid went after the presents as soon as we got there.

Opening Misty Island Rescue from mom and dad.

I think every present had something to do with Thomas. Or Cars. Or both. Two of Zeke's favorite things!

We borrowed a Thomas DVD from the library in January that has a secondary story about one of the engineers making a Thomas cake for a birthday party, and Zeke has been wanting to have a Thomas cake ever since. Knowing that trying to make a 3D Thomas could only end in disaster, we started looking for other fun options. When we found these train and airplane candle holders, Zeke was a big fan. Aaron did the decorating by painting the frosted cake with food coloring and a paintbrush.

Nine Month Nora

Celebrating Nora with a few fun pictures that weren't already posted in the past couple of months.

She plays while she eats. The purple slinky was her favorite thing while most of the toys were already packed.

This is a pretty typical view of Nora.

Look how proud she is that she dumped her dry oatmeal out onto the table so she could play with her pretty green bowl. So cute even when she's making a mess!

It's all about the white chocolate, at least to play with. Daddy is so proud.

Other cool things about Nora are she is starting to cruise, her balance is getting better toward standing alone, she loves to climb stairs, and she insists on feeding herself. Love this little girl!