Mad-eye Moody

Talmage put tape on the back of this googly eye and stuck it to his eyelid. It was pretty funny. He doesn't know who Mad-eye is and for those of you who haven't read Harry Potter, it is a character in the series-- he has one crazy(mad) eye.

Tea Party

Anya was in the middle of a Tea Party with her stuffed animals. I was glad I had the camera on hand. She set the table by herself, sat down and pretended to have a little party. Talmage was busy outside and I think she enjoyed playing how she wanted to without Talmage taking over.

Snowman

Talmage made himself a snowman.

Dress Up With New Friends

On Tuesday the kids went to a friends birthday party at Build-A-Bear. They both got to make a new friend. Anya chose a monkey and dressed it in Snow White clothes just like her Halloween costume. She was so excited when she realized that she got to take the monkey home after the party. She likes treating it like a baby. She named it "Monkey"-- I have very creative children.

Talmage chose to make a puppy (no big surprise). The puppy barks and wags it's tail (and I thought the neighbor's barking dog was annoying). He chose this football outfit because he thought the helmet was cool. He kept calling it Mariners clothes (good thing Aaron wasn't there to have a heart attack, which he later did when I told him that they actually had Mariners clothes but Talmage chose the football ones anyways). Talmage also found cleats to match, he was very excited. He wanted to name it "Puppy" but we already have one of those so I made him pick another name. He finally came up with "Waggy" because of the wagging tail. Waggy has not taken the place of Puppy but Talmage does let Puppy wear all of Waggy's clothes.

I was trying to take a picture of Talmage and Waggy but Anya insisted on crowding in. I ended up getting this one of them preparing for the picture. Talmage is such a goof.

Talmage was being so goofy, I'm not exactly sure what he was trying to do but he loves how the picture turned out and just laughs and laughs at it.

More Dress Up

Talmage came running up to me the other day dressed like this. I asked if he was little black riding hood. He gave me a look like he couldn't believe I didn't know who he was. Then he enlightened me by saying he is Gandalf. Of course, I don't know how I didn't see that earlier. Good thing Aaron made me read The Hobbit so I'd at least know who Gandalf was. If I hadn't then this would have just been another instance were my 4 1/2 year old makes me feel unintelligent (I'm not allowed to say the S-t-u-p-i-d word).



When I was taking a picture of Anya in her dress Talmage saw the camera out and wanted his share of the lime light. He ran to his room and came back with this interesting collection of costumes. He appears to be a pioneer, cowboy, pirate, train conductor (blue conductors transistor on his belt), princess, Dracula, race car driver. I didn't have the courage to ask who he was this time.

Anya's Favorite Dress

This is Anya's favorite dress, her Grandma Dazey made it f. Since Aaron installed a lower shelf and hanging rod in the kids closet for the kids to hang there clothes on, Anya has been pulling this dress out and putting it on over top of her clothes. She mostly wears it so that she can be the mommy and take care of her Elmo.

This is Anya with her dress over her favorite purple feety pajamas.

This is her taking care of Elmo with her dress over her play clothes.

The Stairs

The past few days Talmage and Anya have been experimenting with sliding down the stairs. Talmage has been sliding down in his slippery sleeping bag and Anya has been climbing in her pillow case with the pillow on the bottom for a cushion (she's got my brains!). Today Aaron saw them doing it (so far they've only done it while he was at work) and he wanted to teach them how to do it right. So he pulled out his old sleeping bag for Anya and gave them a lesson in how to hold onto it properly for speed and so that you don't get hurt. (Aaron claims he did a lot of sleeping bag sliding as a kid and just about had it perfected-- I still like the pillow approach). The kids loved sliding and we got a few videos.

Here's Talmage sliding and then helping Anya carry her sleeping bag up.


Here's Anya's oops run. She must not have payed close enough attention to Dad's lesson on how to properly slide. After I turned off the camera Aaron thought that the kids were having so much fun that he'd try it. Well it's just not as fun as it used to be. He didn't like thumping on his rear down each step so half way down he tried leaning back and decided thumping his back on each step wasn't fun either. So now he'll leave the sliding to the kids and just coach from the top of the stairs.



This is Talmage and Anya's double slide-- Dad's idea. Ah, the joys of having stairs to entertain my family on a Saturday morning!