Tommy's Klondike Gold Rush Project

Preschool grad

Tommy graduated from preschool today.

Here he is being congratulated by his teacher Eve.

Breakfast Buddies

Tommy graduates from PFM daycare tomorrow, and for his last week Nicole is joining him in south class. She's transitioning from the toddler room and will be starting in the big kid preschool the week after July 4th (PFM is closed next week for summer break).
Here they are at drop off this morning having breakfast together. I hope she doesn't miss him too much when he's off to summer camp starting next week.

Nicole and friends having lunch

The director at our daycare just sent this video 

of the toddlers having lunch today. 

I wonder what Nicole was about to say at the end of it

Video for dad's new phone

Hi dad - here's the video showing how to out the sim card in the phone I sent you.

Hope it helps!

Iris onstage in The Phantom Tollbooth

Here are two photos of Iris during her stage debut in The Phantom Tollbooth last night. She is playing one of the Number Miners in the city of Digitopolis. The show was a lot of fun to watch, especially seeing her gigantic smile the whole time she was on.

Last bedtime conversation with Tommy as a 3 year old

Tommy turns 4 tomorrow. Here's my final bedtime conversation with him as a 3 year old.

Jim: You know, (classmate)'s mom is having another baby girl very soon.
Tommy: So is mommy
J: She is? Who told you that?
T: Mommy did.
J: Well, I'll have to talk to her about that. Do you know where babies come from, Tommy?
T: Yes.
J: Where?
T: From Portland!
J: All right then, good night little buddy.

I have no idea how he put that together. He has cousins in Portland but they are both much older than he is so I don't think he's ever met a baby from Portland.

Naturally he was up again  less than 5 minutes later because he had to poop, but this was our last meaningful conversation of the evening.

Whatev. Any way you slice it my little man will be 4 years old tomorrow. Happy Birthday Tommy!

Tommy is good at stacking

I took a bunch of photos of Tommy yesterday during take your parents to daycare day & the google photo app automatically rolled them into an animated gif, which I thought looks pretty funny

These kids really like Frozen

Maybe they even love it, and Tommy hasn't even seen it yet. 

Iris has seen it twice, part of her role as official household trend spotter.

Eventful Week!

so yes, it's been ten months since my last post. I blame facebook.

We've had quite a week here. Nicole decided last Tuesday (2/25) that she was done with scooting around on her butt & got up on her 2 feet for more than a couple steps for the first time. Here's a video taken that day by one of her daycare teachers.

And then around 7:30 tonight Iris finally let me grab ahold of her extremely loose tooth and after about one second of tugging, it popped right out. She had told us over and over for the past few weeks that "nobody is involved with my tooth" so I was glad she let me take care of it tonight. It was so loose it probably would have fallen out by itself in the next day or so anyway. She is *very* excited about the Tooth Fairy visiting tonight.

Nicole having fun on a swing

Nicole rode in a swing for the first time today, a beautiful day in Seattle

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's Miss Nicole in her Valentine's Day outfit, previously also worn by Iris, as shown below. 

Thanks to my dad AKA Pepere for the gift, in early 2008. 

And no, we have no idea what happened to the hat.

Which baby?

One of these is Iris from January 2008, one is Nicole from January 2013. Can you tell which is which?

Gangnam Style hits Ballard

Iris & Tommy like to dance to the SNL skit version of Gangnam Style

You can view the skit here: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/lids/1417085

Iris and Jordyn Wieber

 

Iris met Gold Medal-winning gymnast Jordyn Wieber this morning at the Ballard Fred Meyer, and she was very nice!  

She signed the Sports Illustrated Iris is holding and the box of Corn Flakes with her pic on it. Iris was very excited.

Tommy and Iris in their summer party outfits

Couldn't decide which of these two pics I liked more, so I posted them both

Separated at Birth, 72 years apart

Here's Tommy and my dad, at about the same age:

Tommy sure loves his scoot bike

took this video this afternoon-another beautiful late summer day in Seattle

Queen Elizabeth's 50th Jubilee Photos

In honor of Queen Elizabeth's 60th Jubilee this week I thought I'd post my photos from when we were in England in 2002, when she celebrated her 50th Jubilee by visiting every city in England. We happened to be in Bath the day she visited so we went to see her.

School kids are all lined up and ready to see the Queen

 Here she comes! That's her there in the green hat.

 Um, big thanks for getting your hand right in the way of my shot & 

bigger thanks to my autofocus camera for choosing that to "focus" on

Unfortunately, this is the best one I got, with the window bar directly in front of Her Majesty's face. You can really tell it's Prince Philip on the other side of the car though, right? Right?

Hey, I never promised that the photos were any good.
These were taken with the last film camera I ever bought,
so it was pretty disappointing when we got them developed,
though it's kinda funny now.

Thank you to my wonderful family

For the beautiful sign hanging in our garage.

Baby Michelle likes the sunglasses that don't fit Iris anymore