Last Tuesday we met up with a bunch of moms and twins from our twin club play group to do a our first field trip.  We went to a local fire station.  We got a tour of the entire fire station: the kitchen, the rec. room, the bedroom (more like cubbies with beds).  But the big attraction were the trucks themselves.  The kids were able to be placed in the trucks, “steer” the trucks, and in general have fun with these HUGE trucks.  The kids had SO much fun with these trucks, they were the hit of the show.  Even I liked the trucks…  The tour took over an hour, so I had packed lunch and the kids had a ton of fun eating in the car (a special treat.)  Overall a great field trip.

Since this year might be our last year that we have much say in what the kids go trick or treating as we would dress them as Elmo and Abby.  We started teaching them how to say “Trick or Treat” about 2 weeks before Halloween.  Gregory got it well, Abigail would say “Treat”.  She got the important part down.  We also practiced saying “Thank you” .

On Halloween, my mom and sister joined us for Trick or Treating.  We left the house around 5:45, trying again to be the first ones on the block.  My mom was a trooper pulling the wagon the whole time.  Gregory decided he wanted to walk, Abigail was doing great until she got scared by a toy bat, then all she wanted was to be held.  We got home around 7:00! Got dinner, opened the door to huge groups of kids, stayed up late and generally had a good Halloween.

This year, instead of going up the coast, we went down the coast.  We just returned from a fantastic week in Aptos, about 45 minutes from here.  Unlike last year, where we had to baby proof EVERYTHING, this year, we didn’t baby proof ANYTHING!  What a difference a year makes.  We walked into this large, clean, calm house and made it our own.. The kids were great as we unloaded, Don did all the unloading from the car, walking up and down the stairs dozens of times.  While I unloaded from the house and put things into places where we wouldn’t find them again!

We rented this particular house because it was a 3 minute walk to the park and another 3 minutes brought you to the beach. How perfect.  We spent lots of time at both the park and the beach.  It was great.  We would get up in the morning, go to the park, be home in time for lunch, naps (hahaha) and then maybe go to the beach in the afternoon.  Very relaxing…unlike last year.

We did venture out some everyday.  One day we went to an apple farm, where we picked our own apples.  It was way cute watching the kids munch apples as they walked up and down the few rows of apples we saw.  It took them so long to figure out which bucket they wanted to put the apples in, we didn’t have much time left for picking.  All was good though.

Our hobby of letterboxing took us to an egg farm.  It was SMELLY!  The kids got scared by stuffed chickens dancing, no they weren’t real chickens, just stuffies.  We also got 24 eggs.  What are we going to do with 2 dozen eggs?  Eat them!  From there letterboxing took us to the old Valencia post office.  Where we met Nancy, a professional photographer who took dozens of photos of our kids and made a disc for us.  they are great photos and hopefully you’ll be able to see some someday…

My mom and sister came and stayed with us for a few days.  We took the whole crew to Seymore marine center.  Think of Monterey aquarium and shrink it way, way, way, way down.  I think there might have been 10 people visiting with us.  It was great.  Abigail kept Patty busy at the touch pools, while Gregory and Don wandered around.  Mom and I saw some fish being fed.  We also met another Abigail, how funny!  An overall cool experience.  Speaking of cool… the weather was fantastic.  We would get morning and evening fog, but during the day, the fog burned back and the sun came out.  There was only one day when the kids wore long pants for the whole day.  Just a great time.  And unlike last year, where I couldn’t wait to get home, I wish I was still in Aptos…But no, life goes on.

We’ve been starting the potty training fun around here.  Both kids like sitting on their Sesame Street potty seats, but don’t seem to know what to do once they are there.  They play with toys, towels and occasionally have found what fun tp is.  Just recently, Abigail has started wiping herself, even though she doesn’t do anything to need wiping.  Well, today, with lots of coaching from Don she pooped in the potty!!!  I don’t think she enjoyed the process, but we were cheering her on the whole time.  I doubt she will do this again anytime soon.  We have a brief glimpse of life without diapers…can’t wait!

Our daughter has decided that the BEST thing to do during naps is climb out of her crib and into Gregory’s. This might have something to do with the fact that Gregory’s newest thing is to play with the blinds, throwing his stuffed animals at them to hear the fun sounds. She climbs very well and hasn’t fallen yet…  This scares us.  We tried to put the old board between the cribs, thinking she couldn’t possibly get around and over the board.  WRONG!  She went up and over or around.. we don’t know how, just know she did.  We figured that we needed a dreaded crib tent.  Well, they don’t sell any of them around here, we ended up driving 50 minutes to get one!  So we made an afternoon of it, getting the tent, playing at the park and going to Denny’s for dinner.  The kids were tired and crabby by the end of the day (so were the parents.)  I put both kids in Abigail’s crib after we put the tent up, so they could get used to it.  They seemed to enjoy bouncing around in the crib.  BUT, once we put Abigail down in it for nap time, it was a totally different thing.  She didn’t like it at all!  But, she did get a nap, Gregory did and so did we.  They were totally different kids with naps, happy and fun to be around.  So, while I don’t like the tent, I like the fact that I have happy kids and am myself, much happier.  I’m still hoping that we can take the tent off in a month or so…

We’ve been attending a local church, Prince of Peace Lutheran, for about the last six months. I figured I’d post a picture of the church so you can picture where we spend most of our Sundays. We have really enjoyed the worship services, but more importantly the community and friendly atmosphere. It’s also a wonderful environment for the kids. This summer, we’ve enjoyed Thursday night patio parties where we can meet new folks, chat a bit (when we’re not corraling children), and letting the kids play on the church grounds. It has gotten so familiar to us that every time we get in the van and head in that direction, Gregory says “Church, Church!”.

For those of you who don’t know about Relay for Life, it is a 24 hour walk put on by the American Cancer Society.  Our church got together a team to walk.  Don and I decided to sign up for a 1/2 hour time slot.  We thought it would be fun to push the kids on their trikes around the track.  I really didn’t think they would actually stay on their trikes for the whole time, I thought they might stay on for one lap.  But NO!  They stayed on for 4 laps around the track!  AMAZING!  When we take them for “trike rides” they usually want to get off and either push the trike or look for rocks, sticks and leaves.  After our 1/2 hour was up, we went and saw the fire truck that was on display.  The kids LOVED climbing in the drivers seat and sitting on the back of the truck.  They held (with help) the jaws of life and a (covered) ax!  It was pretty cool!  We had dinner, played around a bit, got night bottles and took the kids home.  A good time was had, for a good cause.

Since Don has way too much vacation(!) he took the week before July 4th off and we sure kept him busy!  Saturday my mom, sister and the four of us took our annual trip to Pescadero, for fun in the sun and yummie food.  Gregory loved the water, while Abigail didn’t want anything to do with it… A change since last time when she was water bound and he stayed on the towel.  We had good food at Duartes then found a playground for the kids to roam before bottle and bed time.  The only downside was the AWFUL traffic both coming and going.

We took Sunday off before heading to Children’s Fairyland on Monday morning.  This time it was dry and we didn’t have to worry about rust getting all over the kids, their clothes and us.  The kids loved running around this tiny amusement park, and watching a puppet show.  We did have to wait a while for the trolly ride.  All in all, though a good time was had.

Thursday we head to the Monterey bay Aquarium to meet up with the Sitlands.  The kids don’t get good naps in the car, but manage to hold it together all afternoon.  I ended up spending most of my time cruising the top floor of the aquarium with Abigail.  We did a lot of walking, without seeing a ton of fish, mostly people.  Gregory and Don meet us for snack, along with many flies!  BUMMER!  The kids play in the toddler area, we go “feed” fish and finally end up watching the big fish swim by in the “outer bay” exhibit. A Hammerhead shark startles Abigail.  We meet up with the Sitlands and go to dinner at Bubba Gumps.  Good but hectic as always when 2 families with twins get together.  

Monday, after a few “down” days we have our first Music Together class.  A music class geared for toddlers.  There is only 1 other kid in the class.  I liked the one on one, but hope there will be a few more kids there this week.  After lunch we pack up the kids and take them to Gilroy Gardens.  A kids amusement park with some glorious gardens to roam about in.  We went there when the kids were 3 months old and mostly did the gardens with my mom and sister.  This time we rode the rides.  We rode an artichoke, and a 50’s car.  We took a water ride, which Abigail didn’t much like until Don started singing “row row row your boat…”  Their favorite rides were the little race cars and firs trucks that went around in a circle attached in the center.  In fact they liked it so much Gregory looked like he was asleep at the wheel of a fire truck.  We did the carousel last.  Abigail wanted to ride the big horse, but once it got moving, she got a bit scared, and I ended up holding her most of the time.  The kids fell asleep on the way home, we had to wake Gregory for dinner.  We tired them out and had a great time.  Now back to real life….

Quack, quack, quack

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads out there!!  You may not remember, but Abigail came home from the NICU the day before Father’s Day and Gregory came home on Dad’s day two years ago.  What good presents!.

And here we are two years removed from that day.  Today we decided to play hookey from church (uh oh!) and go see a duck race.  Not just any duck race, but the Silicon Valley Duck Race (siliconvalleyduckrace.org).  We found this crazy thing from one of the parenting magazines.  People adopt ducks for charity and then they race them down Vasona Creek.  Last year they ran out of ducks for people to adopt, so they increased the number available…to 15,000 ducks.  Yes, that’s right, 15,000 rubber ducks floating down the creek.    Each duck has a number on it so they can figure out who wins.  There are a bunch of prizes; top prize is $1,000,000.  If we win, we’ll continue to talk to y’all (yeah right). 

We had a good time taking pictures with the giant inflatable duck, trying the bounce houses (the kids were scared by those), and taking a train ride.  We met up with our friends Stan and Stacy and the A’s (Audrey and Allie).  We all watched the race, then had a really nice picnic lunch before nap time (for both the kids and the parents!).

What a nice Father’s Day.  How times have changed in two years….  I hope yours was as fun as ours.  Take care.

Our big birthday purchase for the kids was trikes!  After much research (done by Don) we decided to spend the money and get the Kettler trikes.  They are top of the line and wicked expensive.  We didn’t want to spend nearly $200 a piece for trikes, so on line we went.  I found someone on craigslist selling 2 trikes for $300.  I jokingly asked for a twins discount, only to find the seller was father of b/g twins and willing to help out a fellow twin family.  After much finagling about when to pick up the trikes, Don set out Sunday night for Belmont, while my mom and sister helped put the kids down.

 It’s been almost a week and we finally got the kids on their trikes.  What fun!  We rode around the neighborhood.  Actually the kids rode and we pushed them, but we all had fun. They don’t have the coordination or knowledge to pedal, so they just put their feet on the pedals and let us do the work.  Gregory decided he wanted to run half way though.  So he ended up walking about 1/2 the time, while Abigail was happy sitting on her trike being pushed.  Though they both liked trying to push the trikes, they found the handle was too tall.  All in all, a good time was had by everyone.

Gregory has found out that skipping is lots of fun.  He tries to skip around the house, but mostly ends up run-skipping.  It’s cute to watch.  How fast they grow!