Memorial Weekend

This past weekend, we were again blessed with a visit from our dear friends, the Peters.  I'll actually recommend that you go check out Mandy's blog here for some additional pictures of our days together since as we all know, I'm a terrible photojournalist.

One of the many highlights of the visit was the big Carne Asada we hosted for Chen's birthday on Saturday.  We had a bunch of friends over, and little girls seemed to rule the roost.

The girls put on a birthday performance for Chen -- which was actually fairly coordinated!

More dramatics from our girls...

Here's our other visitors, Mandy and Scarlet -- who were troopers camping out in the basement.

And two of the little visitors:  Sam and Emily, with their lovely mommies.

Hopefully I'll get some more pics from Chen's phone to supplement this post as it seems a little weak considering the good times we had with the Peters... nevertheless, we are always grateful for their visits and friendship.  Love to all!

Hartman Creek

About two weeks ago, we went on our first camping trip of the season to Hartman Creek.  The rain held out and we had a great time with Gigi, Grandpa Bob, and Scarlet as the guest of honor.

It didn't take Scarlet long to discover the joys of going in and out of the tent:

Meanwhile, our girls discovered the joy of tending to the fire, and spent most of the weekend gathering sticks and tending the flames. Magdalenne may have been a bit distractable (though extremely fashionable for a budding camper!  Nothing less for M. Sanne!)

Grandpa Bob ponders life as the kids swing.

One of the most beautiful parts was kind of an accidental find.  Chen and I took the three girls for a little walk after dinner, and the grey skies were just being pushed aside by a rare glimpse of sunshine -- making for a gorgeously lit scene.  We let the girls just take off and run in a nearby playfield.

Scarlet wasn't sure at first about this whole running-off-on-your-own-across-a-field thing...

But it didn't take her long to realize there was glee to be had:

And Chen even snapped a rare shot of me and my almost-halfway-there belly:

Hopefully the success of the weekend is a good omen for camping weekends to come this summer!

Cousins, a tooth, embarrassment, and morning chalk

Tia Kathy reads a book to the girls at Alice's second birthday party.  I'm pretty sure my girls will at some point think that Alice's Lukaszewicz cousins are their cousins too (pictured below:  Henry and Peter).

These two just click.

And little Emily just clicks with everyone!  She doles out smiles like it's her job.  So precious.

Speaking of smiles... here's a familiar one, now short a tooth!  The first tooth out in Casa de Chenhalls!

And some not-so-smiley faces.  This is how Magdalenne looks donning her punishment:  jeans and a not-pretty shirt (sorry Mexico fans).  She was so upset that someone would see her dressed like this (and here I go, posting it for all the world here -- what a mom).

Back to smiles.  This was taken at about 6:30 a.m. on our first really warm morning.  The girls were up, dressed, and playing outside at the crack of dawn.  Well, dawn cracks around 5:30 these days, so I think only Magdalenne gets credit for that.  She was in fact, outside and singing her little heart out at 5:50 a.m.  One can only wonder what the neighbors must think.