Car Dreams

It is no secret that Kassidy is obsessed with cars, but she even surprises me sometimes.

For Christmas I gave her the Sonic All-Star Racing game for the Wii-U, mainly as an excuse to buy it for the bigger kids (she has no interest in video games) and as a joke to test her passion for cars (there is a picture of some cars on the cover, but nothing else to read or play with).

Anyways, she has coveted that game from the second that she unwrapped it. She walks around with it, and will quickly break it out when she sees the kids getting ready to play on a game console.

Here she is sleeping with it.

Katharine and Ava

Our friend Ava visited earlier this week. 

We know her from church, but we also knew of her work at KidKraft (the maker of those big doll houses that you can buy at Costco and Amazon).

She has met up with Katharine before, but this was the first time that she got to see Katharine's setup in her room. She actually designed all of these dollhouses, and loved seeing how Katharine had furnished and modified them.

Katharine has provided a lot of inspiration for her in the past, and she got to see some prototypes of a few new projects.

Very cool.

Table Cats

I don't have many posts that feature our cats, but it was funny how they were both sitting around the table at suppertime last weekend trying to snag some scraps.

Both love ham and turkey, and Pepper will eat yogurt and other odd things as well.

Pepper and Lukas

Marmalade

Swinging and Squating

We had to clear out a corner of our garage so that the water heater guy could check out our tanks (we need to replace them- uggh).

Anyways, a few old toys made it back into the house (including this baby swing). Lukas and Kassidy were horsing around on it so I grabbed my camera...

Jacob Visiting

Cousin Jacob flew in from Germany last Thursday to spend some time with us.

I've kept the camera away, but got this picture last Friday as he helped the boys complete our Lego firehouse. He is still learning English, but luckily those instruction books speak the universal Lego language of pictures :)

Growing Up

Kassidy turns 3 in two months!

Our little girl is growing up fast, but we still try to savor the moments when time slows down a little bit.

Wet Ponies

Keira  brings her ponies around with her everywhere.

Here they are getting their hair washed.

Pairs

Here are some shots from our backyard yesterday afternoon.

Katharine and Maya

The Boys

Tyler State Park

I took the day off on Thursday to take advantage of the weather and travel to Tyler State Park with the family and the Milettes. We picnicked, sailed, and hiked around the lake.

We started off eating at the beach, feeding ourselves and some ducks.

After that we took the kids out in canoes. For many of them it was their first time.

Once we were confident that we weren't going to tip those things over, I gave Gwen a big splash and started  a canoe battle :)

After the canoes we hiked around the lake; collecting, observing, and climbing over everything.

A few pictures turned out better in black and white, but it is always the colors that I remember the most after visiting the park.