I just love these sweet faces

Wednesdays are pretty spectacular because the garbage man comes.  As soon as breakfast is over, we put on our shoes and head out front to wait for the truck to come to our house (reliably at 7:55, week after week).  The anticipation builds and builds, and when the truck finally arrives, Max runs down the sidewalk beside it for several stops, waving and waving to the garbage guys.  It makes for quite a start to the day!

Farmers

Mr John planted a lot of veggies along the fence for us. Max has lots of fun getting his harvest basket and picking the crops. 

Pentagon pancakes

We took a family trip to the Pentagon for breakfast this morning. Max's favorite part was holding Evelyn's hand while we waited for our food. 

We had lots of fun on the bus!

It's always something...

Max is working on his phonics.  He can tell you the first letter of almost any word, and he's right about 85% of the time - 95% if you go phonetically and use 'k' for the hard 'c' sound, etc.

Evelyn is desperate to walk.  She pulls up on EVERYTHING she sees - legs, tables, chairs, trash cans, you name it.  She's getting pretty good at letting go for a second or two and clapping.

Max has the differences between boys and girls down.  Girls have bows and boys don't, and boys have mustaches (like Max does, obviously) and girls do not.

Evelyn looked right at Ian and said 'dada' last night.  We're pretty sure she meant it and it wasn't just a truncated dadadadadada, which is her favorite word at the moment.

And on that note, here are some cuties of the kids in action this weekend:

Strolling with my homies

It was 68 when we walked outside this morning. What a beautiful day!

Fiesta!

Love this girl!

Cutie patooties

Sweet post-church play. 

Early mornings

I don't mind the early mornings because I love getting special smiles like these!

Bus museum and train museum

Max picked the American History Smithsonian (aka 'the bus museum and the train museum') for our adventure on Saturday.  He wanted to go see the War exhibit first.  He is particularly taken with the guys helping their friend while they wait for the helicopter to evacuate them; he wanted to talk about how we always help our friends for a long time.  We also hit the highlights of the Civil War (say 'please' and 'thank you' to anyone who helps you), WWII (everyone is as good as everyone else), and 9/11 (if you are scared, you can go home to your family while the fire fighters help people).  Doing the war part is exhausting, as the mental gymnastics to keep things age-appropriate but informative enough are quite hard, and it feels very rewarding to make it through with Max feeling like the world is a good place, filled with friends who help you, first responders to care for you, and people who treat each other nicely.

After the war, we headed to our all-time, best-ever, most-favorite part of the museum - transportation.  Max and Ian rode the Chicago metro train car for (not exaggerating) 25 minutes.  Ian like it because you can sit down and it is relatively peaceful.

I love that we have a picture of Max in this spot every year around this time.  I'll have to look back in the archives later to try to find the previous 2 and add them here.

And now the torch is passed, and Evelyn gets to start getting her pictures made here, too.

Barbershop

So handsome after a trip to the barber. He was very proud of himself for being brave and big while she used the scissors and razor. 

Saturday morning fun

The kids had fun playing together Saturday morning. It's funny to watch them interact!