The one with all the pictures

After a few days in Boerne the Mellor's showed up, and the girls had so much fun with their cousins. They spent pretty much all day everyday playing outside. Maire and Aine doted on both my girls, I think T drove them a little crazy with all her attentions.

I love these pictures of Nora.

Declan was such a cute little helper, too, he was following Nora around the yard, helping her up when she fell and helping her keep up with the bigger kids.

Teresa and Ciaran are 11 days apart, and they fought like cats and dogs the whole time we were there. It was pretty hilarious. They both kept trying to egg each other on, and annoy the other. In this picture T is trying to keep Ciaran from getting on the trampoline. She'd done this once before, and when I stuck my head out the door to make her let him on she just flung herself down and started sobbing about it. Don't feel too bad for him though, he gave as good as he got.

We also got in some park time:

Teresa went fishing in the cat's water bowl:

On St. Patrick's Day we started out with a nice long walk behind Granny and Grandad's house.

But first there was a huge gun battle:

Teresa loved playing with the boys and their guns. She would alternate between calling them guns and 'shoots', and when she would run around with them she would say "shoot, shoot", which would bother Ciaran and he would try to correct her "no, you say pew, pew", etc.

We tried to force some cousin love between Ciaran and Teresa, and it didn't start out too well...

But they got it figured out:

A typical interaction between the two looked more like this:

He was sweet as pie to Nora though.

Teresa was so funny on the walk, the day before Granny had helped her feel how fast her heart was beating when she needed to sit down and rest, and was explaining about all that stuff. So on our next walk T decided she needed a break, and kept saying "I just need to rest because my heart is broken". So the girls and I took a little break.

T showing me her broken heart:

Later that day we went to a little family fair in town. They had lots of fun and free stuff for the kids, including some 'exotic' animals to look at. T was busy looking at a porcupine and totally didn't notice the llama coming up behind her.

She took off running so fast when she realized what was going on. The llama was un-phased.

Roni, Texas

Marc found us some super cheap tickets to Texas a few weeks ago, so the girls and I decided to go down for a quick visit. T is so silly, I told her we were going to Boerne, and she can totally say it, but after a while she will just start calling it Roni, Texas instead. I'll correct her and she'll call it Boerne again for a bit and then switch to Roni (like macaroni). The flights down were pretty horrific. I've only flown on direct flights since having kids, and this was my first time having layovers. What a huge difference it makes. But, it was worth it, because we had so much fun!

The Texas humidity made Nora's hair all sorts of awesome. T's curls started really showing up shortly after she turned one, so we've been waiting to see if Nora's hair does the same. She definitely had some more texture with the humidity, but I'm still not sure which way she'll go. Or which way I want her hair to go...

Teresa was loving her little closet-bed, she thought it was so fun, and piled it high with all the stuffed cats she could find, which she kept calling "my family" all week.

My friend Summer has a paint your own pottery shop in Boerne, so we stopped by to say hello. Teresa had fun playing with her little girls.

We did our traditional feeding-of-the-ducks trip. Did you know that duck was both Teresa and Nora's first word? Kinda funny.

Too bad neither of them would look at the camera for this picture!

Boots the cat is such a good sport with babies. Nora was thrilled to get to pet him.

You might think I would be able to blog about such a short trip in only one post, but you would be wrong. Stay tuned for the rest of the week, where in we are visited by the Mellors!

Randoms

T and Nora in the ball pit. Nora's favorite thing to do is stand up near the edge and then just turn backwards and flop down into the balls. She's just done that in this picture.

Ahh, the magic of chocolate milk. Pretty much the only time we get complete silence in our house if the girls are awake.

I made T this little skirt yesterday. She 'helped' a bunch and was really excited for it. The pocket is conveniently just the right size to hold her beloved kitty.

She absolutely would not wear a different shirt for these pictures, even though the one she has on is way too small. Little rascal.

Look at my little helpers! I walked in on them like this and thought they looked so cute. Nora thinks she can do anything Teresa does.

Date night self portrait:

A sick little Nora. She threw up again last night! Isn't she so sad?

Teresa was playing in this box and once Nora climbed on top of it she started giving Nora a ride around the room.

She was a big fan :).