Tall ships

We went to Farmer's Market this morning and were surprised to see that the tall ships were in town! What a fun surprise!!

We thought Reed would be pretty excited about the boats, but just the opposite, he was scared about going on the boats. I usually try to respect the boundaries that my kids draw for themselves, but I quickly realized this was not one I was okay with. Neither Gerry or I were willing to miss out on seeing the boats so we told Reed he had to go. He did okay, though he was constantly asking if we could get off the boat.

Spring seemed to have fun, though she looks a little skeptical in this picture!

Reed is listening to a big conch shell to see if he can hear the ocean.

No, this picture isn't sideways, Spring is leaning down to try to hear the ocean in the same shell!

I want to ride my tricycle

Reed is getting really good with the tricycle he got from Uncle Brian for Christmas. At first, he was not so great at peddling, but it didn't take him too long to figure that part out. Steering was the next challenge, but now he steers great, rides forwards and backwards and with some encouragement from G and I, he is learning how to turn it around by himself on the sidewalk so we don't have to keep turning it back around for him! He's cute when he rides it, he usually pretends it's a steam train.

Reed is train obsessed!! :) Even Spring has caught the train bug. She still doesn't have a lot of words or sounds she makes consistently, but she will copy Reed with he makes "woo-woo" or whistle noises (high pitches squeals since neither of them can actually whistle) for his trains. The whistle noises are pretty cute because they both put their fingers to their mouth, the way some people do to whistle loudly. I'm not sure where they picked that up since neither G or I can whistle that way!

And speaking of words that Spring says, she has what I call "proto-words". They're not really fully formed words yet, but they are sounds that she uses for certain things. For instance, a loud "AH" noise means duck, or sometimes bird (sounds like the "a" sound in quack). She will whisper "puh-puh-puh" for puppy or dog. She says eeorse for horse. I wonder what the future holds for a little girl picks up horse as one of her first words and whose mommy and grandma LOVED horses! We might want to start saving for a horse now!! :)

And since I didn't get a picture of me playing clarinet, I thought I'd post a picture of us enjoying the sun today!

Music time

We pulled out the clarinet and trombone recently. Reed and Spring really enjoyed listening to us play and playing with the instruments themselves. Reed said he would like to play the trombone when he grew up; I think that made Gerry proud!! When I showed Reed all the pictures, he said, "Now I want to see a picture of you playing the clarinet." But alas, there were no pictures of me... clearly, I need to remember to get Gerry to take pictures too!

At the lake

We headed back over to Lake Chelan for the Memorial Day weekend. It always feels like a lot of work to get there, and the car ride back and forth is always a bit stressful, but we always love being there!

Putting pigtails in Spring's hair.

Ta da!

Reed's favorite type of boat ride seemed to be riding in the canoe.

But both Reed and Spring enjoyed watching the wake from the motor when we went over to Manson.

Story time with Hama.