We love our kids to death. We appreciate them wanting to help when we go out to rake the leaves and do any of the cleaning up around the apartments. They just make me want to smile all of the time...well, most of the time!
Here is a cute video of our little guy. He is growing up SO FAST! I can't believe he is 3 months old already and laughing, too. Amazing how they grow like weeds!
We are having a lot of fun at our house.
This is just something silly that our kids do. I remember doing it as a kid so that I would have long hair with my shirt. Every night when we take off their shirts to get them into their pajamas they leave their shirts on thier heads and think that it is a party hat. The other day when we were taking Brendan's shirt off, it was really tight around his BIG head and it squished his face together. I just started laughing. He was laughing too, although I don't think that he could see what he looked like because he couldn't open his eyes. I had to get a picture of his cute squished face. I love that he makes me smile so much. 
Eliza is such a good friend to Lincoln. She makes sure that he always has all of the toys that he could possibly need while he is sitting in the swing. Lincoln gets a real kick out of her, too. I like to watch her interacting with him and wonder what kind of mom she will be when she grows up. I know that she will be a good one for sure because she loves her little baby.
Brendan loves Lincoln, too. They are always wanting their picture taken with him.
I set Lincoln down in the big chair quite often so that I can just get something done. I know that he will be entertained by the circus going on in the living room at all times. It just sort of amazes me at how often I turn the corner and ALL three of the kids are in the chair. They just like to be close to each other...or love to be around Lincoln. We love our little brother!
First time with all three kids in the bathtub was kind of fun. Putting Lincoln in and washing him really fast and then taking him out was the key to this bathtime success. The kids loved it that Lincoln got to be in the tub with them. They still love their bathtime, too. They can't wait for the swimming pool to open back up in the summer.
I think the funnest part of the day was when we were able to make fresh apple cider.
First we had to pick the apples. The orchard made this a lot more simple by having us only have to pick them out of the crates and not off of the trees. The kids had a lot of fun filling up their buckets. Two buckets of apples make a gallon of cider.
Next we washed the apples. Sarah made sure that all of the stems were removed (not that this had to be done). But our apples were nice and clean for the apple press. Brendan and Eliza did a good job of throwing the apples into the press. The first process left the apples like this:
And then they started to press the juice out of all of these crushed apples. It was really neat to see all of the juice run out of this bucket. And the cider tasted so YUMMY! It was all that Brendan and Eliza wanted to drink until it was all gone.
And if that didn't fill us up with the fall spirit, we went to another apple festival. Daddy got to come with us to this one. We got pumpkins and squash! And best of all we got to see lots of animals at a petting zoo. We got there late in the afternoon and didn't get to go on a hay ride though. It was fun to be able to go around and play though. We felt bad for Chelsea, the stomach flu got to her right in the middle of our fun filled fall festival day.
Our dilemma right now is that Eliza thinks that she is a boy and that Brendan's favorite color is pink. What do you think we should do? Mostly we are just laughing about it and that seems to be working. Eliza is coming around to admitting that she is a girl sometimes, but we are glad that we got her on video (with berry smoothie all over her face and blueberry pancakes on her hands) before she gives up the boy fetish.
Speaking of fetishes...Has anyone heard of Michael Phelps? Brendan picked up on Michael Phelps during the Olympics all on his own. We hadn't ever said anything to him, but the TV announcers can take the credit here because at the end of the Olympics when they were doing one of the montages of highlights, Brendan announced to Neil and I that Michael Phelps was on the TV. Now Michael Phelps has really inspired Brendan in his swimming skills and confidence. In this video, he is swimming with some foam noodles. He can swim all over the pool for hours by himself, like Michael Phelps.
Oh, by the way, he wants to name the baby Michael Phelps, too. So while we haven't picked out a name yet, we are calling the baby Michael Phelps or Neil came up with MP3 (because he will be our third kid).
These kids change so much and all of the time! We are enjoying them so much though...
There is something that we miss though. Eliza is so strong willed and when she makes up her mind on something, there really isn't any luck changing it, unless you can get Brendan to ask her to say hi to him. When he does request this, her response is similar to that of a woman answering the phone in the middle of a fight to say hello. No matter how mad she was Eliza used the sweetest, happiest tone to say "hi, Brendan" and forgot what she was crying about to begin with. It was just so funny to see her do this over and over and over! And then she stopped before we got it on video. Maybe she'll do it again randomly when we have the video camera going.
We will try and be better bloggers in the future. Love to everyone!
