Cute Kids of Summer

'Take a picture of me when I jump out of the swing!' 

And amazingly we got one on the first try. Zeke loves this picture.

'I'm king of the shell. mom!'

My sunflower girl. Given that sunflower season is right around her birthday, and therefore sunflowers remind me of Nora, I had to get a picture of the two together.

Summer Sunday. I love this picture.

Swiss Days

Swiss Days this year started with a parade of first graders going to see the Swiss Miss and Children's Chorus perform. Nora and I walked along with them; it was fun!

On Saturday, Zeke rode in the parade with the school,

then barely made it back in time to catch the little Loertscher train to ride the parade again. It was fun for him (and we were lucky it worked out!), but I think next year he will have to choose just one entry. It was tighter than I expected.

Nora had a hard time waiting for it to be the train's turn, but once she got on she was all smiles.

We had a train breakdown at the end of the parade, and some mechanic work right there on the road. Fortunately, it was minor, so just a few minutes later we were on the road again. 

Aaron worked late shifts all weekend, so he was either sleeping or working through all of Swiss Days. It wasn't quite as fun without him, at least for me. 

Nora's Third Birthday Party

Nora greatly anticipated her birthday this year, which is something I wasn't expecting from an almost-three year old. I think it's the Zeke influence in her life....he love love loves birthdays, and he is the one that showed her her birthday on the calendar. She can recognize her name ('It's my N-o-r-a, mom!), so she immediately claimed the whole month of August as hers. One night Zeke and I were talking and I said something about my birthday. Nora corrected me: 'No mom, my birthday, not yours. It's my August!'

Nora has a cousin who is 13 days older, and while we were at her party, Nora asked if she got to open any presents. I explained to her that this was Brielle's party, but her turn was coming later. That satisfied her, and she looked forward even more to her party and presents after that. 

Grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins did a great job picking gifts this year. Nora loves them all and we have had so much fun playing Little People and mermaids and blocks in the past couple of weeks. And she really does love her new clothes from her grandmas, even though she just dumped them in my lap and moved on to other presents at the party.

Draper and Carrie sent a package, and so we have also played a lot of magnetic 'paper' dolls too. 

Mom and Dad got Nora her very own piggy bank. She was with us when we found it, and she picked the color, even though she didn't know we bought it. In this picture she is saying something similar to 'A pig! Oh yeah, from yesterday [two weeks ago].'

Airplane cake. Like Zeke's train cake earlier this year, we have three plane candle holders, so it was meant to be. And she's always been an airplane girl. And she is in love with the movie Planes.

Miss Nora was also excited to blow out her candles. She didn't blow quite hard enough, so she got two of them after several tries. Aaron got the other one.

Mmmm, ice cream and frosting (the cake under the frosting got mostly ignored). And she had to have her planes on her pink plate. 

Nora makes us laugh and gives us lots of cuddles. She says and does the cutest things, and also has a pretty distinctive dirty look. She takes good care of all of us -  her 'mother hen' nurturing side comes out quite often!  Love this little lady so much!

Lego Mania

The library had a Lego show/competition we looked forward to all summer. Aaron and Zeke carefully crafted their complex entries, and Nora and I went together for easy and simple. 

Aaron built a Japanese WWII plane, the Claude. He submitted it as a work in progress, because we didn't have and chose not to buy all the pieces he needed. See the Lego dude on the right wing working on the plane?

Zeke built boats. The front one is the King's boat, with all sorts of fancy stuff. The pirates, in back, are chasing the King because they want to steal his super awesome chair. Suffice it to say the King and the pirates are not friends. 

Nora loves building towers out of Duplos so I let her go to it while I built a base for it. I thought the flowers were a fun touch. After I put them on, she asked me 'Can I pick the flowers?' and proceeded to take them all off and put them back in a different order. Then I moved the tower out of her reach before she could take it all apart again!

There were a lot of entries and it was fun to see such a great response. Zeke was bummed that he didn't win, but truly he had tons of competition! Aaron came close: he tied with the 1 other adult entry, then lost in a tie-breaker.