My mom and Daniel both have birthdays in August. It seems right that they can celebrate together, since Daniel's best friend is his Mimi. He wants to go to Mimi's house every day. In fact the other day I told him that Mimi and Papa might move from their house to be our neighbors in our pasture. You should have seen the look of sheer bliss on his face! He checked with me several times throughout the day to find out if they had moved yet...
As a little surprise, we took the train boy for a short ride on the Amtrak to a nearby locale. Here we are as the train pulls up...Daniel is mulling the fact that real trains are bigger than he expected, and my mom is laughing at his comment "Look at the big BIG TRAIN!!!" (in his deep little voice). He uses a lot of double adjectives to get his point across.
Here we all are in front of our big big train. Hannah and Daniel didn't have to be told twice to stay close to Mommy! They were
right beside me. The conductor was fabulous. Hannah had this paper luggage tag from the station that we told her to hold on to, and it somehow got dubbed "Hannah's ticket." When the conductor came through the car, I gave her the ticket stub for all of us, and Hannah pulled out her 'ticket.' The lady didn't skip a beat! She congratulated Hannah on being so alert, and promptly punched her 'ticket' as well. Hannah just beamed. I have it on video, but I haven't figured out how to condense it yet...
Speaking of not knowing how to do things, I'm not sure how this photo got in here. This one is at the zoo earlier in August. They are showing you how tall they are these days. Daniel actually had his 3 year old check-up this week, and he is definitely on the tall/thin side of the growth charts. He grew 4 inches this past year! (The average is 3.)
Back to the birthdays...This was taken at Daniel's birthday party. This is where Daniel can be found at any given play time outside - in the dirt. He is drawn to it like a magnet! I'm not sure what he's doing here, but it almost always involves moving dirt by fistfuls from Point A to Point B. We do have plenty of outdoor toys, but nothing can compare to DIRT. :-) Isn't he just so cute?!
We had a little kids Thomas the Tank Engine birthday party for The Buddy. Somewhere along the line, I decreed that I would not do a party for everyone every year, so they get to have a party every 3 years. This was Daniel's first one, and he had so much fun!
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Hannah did too. A couple of her friends that are big sisters too came along to celebrate. They are (of course) playing dress-up. I think those feather boas were tied to the back of Peter's truck when we got married. We cleaned them up a little bit, and they made wonderful dress-up material. Notice the high heels too. You can't dress up without those! Those are shoes that I had from being a bridesmaid in several friends' weddings. It cracks me up to see Hannah get everyone all set up. This is Isabella, Hannah, and Brooke on parade.
Perhaps Daniel's favorite part of the party was the birthday cake. Notice the blue mustache...
I realized after the party, that this is probably the first time I've ever given Daniel his own plate of dessert. (OK, I know it is about time, but I really limit their sugar intake.) He was so sweet. He nursed that scoop of ice cream like it was the sweetest thing, and likely his last meal. He was still sitting there eating it while everyone else was up and running around, savoring each bite. It was a Thomas the Train Cupcake Cake.
If you want to see more photos from the birthday party
click here. Veronica is professional photographer, and her shots are really good...
Hannah and Sally catching up on life
Peter, Jonathan, and Mark trading stories
Chris (& Jonathan and Mark) giving Sean relationship advice
Playing a little basketball in the front yard (Jamie, Mark & Peter above)
Hanging out and getting to know each other (Jodie and Brian)
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