Friday, April 29, 2011

Kidsquest

We have been spending a lot of time playing indoors lately. Way too much in my opinion, but with what has seemed like constant rain and cold temperatures we haven't had much choice. Luckily in Seattle there are a lot of interesting things to do indoors with kids so we have been filling our time at Children's museums, indoor play parks, gymnastics open gym to name but a few. We have never visited Kidsquest children's museum in Factoria before, but decided to try it out this week. We had a lot of fun though it was a bit busy for me. The 'scarf tube' and the water room were the hot favorites for M and Z.

The museum is located in a mall and is right next to Petco. After we left we headed in there to take a look at the fish. They also had a ferret and several rats and Guinea pigs. Zoe "needed" both a ferret and a rat. I said no on the ferret and that there were probably already several rats at our house, most likely under the deck. When we got home she spent a long time shouting for the rats to come out. They didn't, and to be fair I have never seen one, so hopefully they don't really live there. After that I told Zoe the fantastic story of the rat, the burning washing machine and the chainsaw, which is legendary in the woods household. It is quite gory so I am hoping it has put her off rats for a while.







Thursday, April 28, 2011

Hippy Chick

A few weeks ago Zoe got this headband in a Dora bath kit. As everything these days is "my do it", Zoe decided to put it on herself in this rather fetching way. Yesterday I saw these "peace" pajamas and thought they would complete her Woodstock look.


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Happy Easter

So what was so great about Easter saturday this year? Well if you look at these pictures you might see blue skies and sunshine. Yep, for pretty much the first day this year we had a beautiful day, all day. We took advantage and went to the bunny bounce at Woodland Park zoo. We hunted for easter eggs, did the sack race and rode the carousel. We avoided the Easter bunny (creepy) and ham (vomitous) and just enjoyed the day outside. Max and Zoe loved the easter eggs hunt and didn't mind handing the eggs back at the end. We had a few ready at home filled with "special treats" to take their mind off it just in case.











Sunday, April 24, 2011

Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium

On Thursday we headed down south to the Point Defiance zoo and aquarium. It is in Tacoma and is in a beautiful position right above the sound. We met up with Miles and GiGi who brought along Shannon and "Grammy JoJo", so we had quite the entourage. The day started of chilly but dry, but soon we were blessed with warm sunshine and it was fabulous. I was impressed with the zoo in general and the play area was fantastic. All the kids loved feeding the goats, especially GiGi who gave them full on bear hugs. The shark tank in the South Pacific aquarium was a huge hit and Max and Miles could have watched the big sharks swoop by all day. We got up close and personal with the massive walrus and saw the new wolf exhibit. It was a fantastic day, spent with great friends and the kids haven't stopped talking about it since. I have included pictures of their favorite parts of the day, because now they can tell me all the things they liked the best.











Saturday, April 16, 2011

Imagine

Nana Ellen is in town and we decided to go to the Imagine children's museum, which is about 4o minutes north of Seattle. Scott's cousin, Esther (Ellen's niece) lives there and we thought it would be great to get all the kids together. So Max, Zoe and cousin Ella all got to explore the museum and Nana, Esther and mummy got a great work out running after them. Ella just turned 3 and you can see from the photos that M and Z are giant in comparison. They are huge and have long legs and run really fast. On this day the running in question was in opposite directions away from me, but they were just bowled over by this place so it was impossible to get mad.
Zoe and Ella bonded over purple, pink, handbags, babies and stuffed animals. Max thought this was great as he got Nana to himself for some serious bus and train time. Pink and Blue-They're just different:)



In this picture Max and Ella are observing a child having a massive tantrum. Wouldn't like to say who except her name rhymes with Chloe.



Ellen built thrones for the Prince and Princesses.




Max ringing the bus bell, he did this for about half an hour.

Monday, April 11, 2011

All aboard!

This morning we headed downtown to the Maritime Event center (aka Maritime museum) to have fun with our twin friends. The museum isn't that well known and sometimes they have free days on Mondays and today just happened to be one of those Mondays. There is a lot for the kids to do including a boat to play in, pretend fish to load, buoys to haul and an enormous water table. Fun was had by all.













Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Twin mums

Almost 3 years ago now I looked like this:)
And I was lucky enough to attend a multiple birthing class with a lot of other ladies that looked like that too. There must have been about 15 couples in total and we shared such exercises as "5 things not to say to your wife during birth" and also got to listen to the (terrifying) stories of twin moms that had been through birth. About the end of July 2008 I started to get e-mails from all the couples documenting the arrivals of each set of twins. For the most part our group had good, long pregnancies and straightforward births though quite a few C-sections. Max and Zoe were the 2nd to last to be born and about 4 weeks after that they went on their first outing to meet the other twins from my birth class. Since then I have kept in touch with many of these amazing women and our kids have become good friends. I also joined another twin mum group called PEPS when M and Z were about 6 weeks and I have to say I think I owe all of these ladies my sanity. I got to share the best and the worst ( and in my case it was mostly worse) of early parenthood with them. They got me through tandem nursing, total sleep deprivation, pumping and the world's stompiest baby. Now we share mostly laughs, food and wine, but I am eternally grateful to them all for getting me through those dark days and thankful that I get to share the terrific twos with them right now.

Here are a few pictures from todays adventure with 5 twin moms, 5 sets of twins and baby Nash. We even ventured out for pizza after the open gym:)

Lastly, we missed you Oscar and Sadie, get well soon.

Milo and Nash

Max and Emily

Tate and Adelyn

Max, Miles,Shannon,Gia and Zoe

Max and a very unhappy Jacob:)

Zoe and Emily

Milo,Huston and baby Nash
Group shot