Oh, the adventures you can have...

While Daddy, Nonna and TOF tore down the basement office of our house, Mommy took the girls on a geocaching adventure (lest they want to "help" with the Sawzall!).  It was two hours filled with curiosity...

Our first stop was Kitchen Kettle Village in Intercourse.  It was very quiet on Sunday morning (yes, there are still places that aren't open on Sunday!) and we spent some time visiting the animals there.  Chickens, llamas, goats and a miniature horse named Derby.

Then we found a "snake", errr... how about a worm?  The girls were fascinated.  Natalie declared that Mr. Worm was "like a straw".

Then we hit another couple before heading to this park in Paradise.  The "river" was flowing and Jill located the cache inside the guard rail.  When Mommy pulled it out, it had a plastic spider attached to it.  Mommy yelped and lunged with it toward the girls, scaring them!  She got quite a lecture about how that wasn't funny. :)  

Then we found some early spring flowering weeds to check out.  Jilly picked one and showed its' petals to Natalie.

Here they are "fishing".  This poor guy walked up while we were scouring a nearby bridge for a cache.  All he probably wanted to do was sit and quietly spend some time fishing.  Little did he know our little munchkins were watching his every move.  The next thing Mommy sees, the girls have found long skinny sticks and were casting them out into the lake like fishing rods.  And they were less than quiet about it.  But they are just so darn cute!

To the circus!

After the lovely juice mess was cleaned up, we packed some lunches and headed to Harrisburg to see the circus.  Grandma, Pap and Kole came too, and Great-Grandma, Uncle Danny and family and Uncle Ron and Aunt Georgia too.  It was fun!  Our favorite part was the silly guy on the diving board.  He was funny!

Jill and Kole

Uncle Ron's silly clown nose!

Guess we were in a crazy mood after the fun of the circus...

And here's just a quick pic of a cute little Natalie, wearing Daddy's jacket.  

(Kind of looks a little like a Hogwart's wizard robe?)

cleaning

Saturday morning, we had an incident with a juice bottle.  While the girls were helping put away groceries, one of our apple juice bottles fell and cracked it's cap, spilling the better part of a half gallon of apple juice on the floor!  Yuck!  So after sopping up the mess with paper towels, Mommy brought out the big mop and her two little helpers were itching to help!

Sweet Natalie and Lancaster Leaf Party

The many faces of Natalie.

Friday night at dinner she was just being incredibly sweet and silly eating dinner, so Mommy took out the camera and just snapped away.  She's such a sunny, happy little girl, and we are so very blessed.

For the past few weeks Mommy has been very busy at work, helping to plan a retirement party for her company's CEO.  Mommy made posters, programs, invitations, place cards, photo book, a slideshow, you name it! The event was last night and it was a great success!

Relaxing after the business part of the evening was through...

Faith, Mommy's boss Julie and Mommy.

Yes, they are cigars.  It was a Lancaster Leaf TOBACCO party after all. :)

Eating Green

Our annual Green Dinner in honor of St. Patrick's Day:

spinach noodles, creamy pesto sauce, peas and lima beans  

(and some chicken, but that wasn't green!)

Things that make Mommy happy

Goofy kids dressed in green.

The Lowe's going in five miles from our house

SHAMROCK SHAKES!

Mommy's Latest Creations

Jello and Cool Whip desserts made for our Quadruple Valentine's Day Date with the Sensenigs

Gifts for Mommy's cousin Tim's new son Trevor

Birthday cake for Will

Gifts for Baby Gingerich (i.e. the Fabulous Weaver Baby-to-be)

Natalie's big day

Well, it finally happened.  Natalie learned how to escape from her crib.  Apparently, Jillian had been teaching a class on the subject and Natalie aced the final!  Daddy found her running around in her room this morning.

So it was finally time to bring down the half rail from the attic and give our two year old a toddler bed.  She was excited!

And surprisingly enough, she went to bed just fine tonight.  She didn't venture out even once!

She also went roller "gating" for the first time today too!  It was a big day around here.

How cute are they???

helping make Jello

Her 'ugly' face... or her poopy face depending on the scenario...

Walking better than her Mommy in those heels!

And then there is Jillian.  There are just no words for this...

Visiting Aunt Ann

Sunday we traveled to Media, PA to visit Daddy's Aunt Ann.  While we're a little murky on the details of exactly how we are related, we know we are somehow and we just love her.  Living up to the stereotype of the Italian grandma, she sent us home with lots of food, drink and gifts. But not before a little cooking lesson...  She taught all the girls how to make ricotta gnocchi.

Beautiful day!

Geocaching!

Playground time!

We could get used to this!

Jilly quote of the day:  while explaining to Natalie that she "bigger" i.e. older than her...

"You are only two.  I am five.  I am a whole hand."

Update

We made our annual late winter pilgrimage to Chocolate World in Hershey on Sunday.  We were so happy, Grandma and Pap accompanied us!  We got there kind of late in the day, but we were still able to sing with the cows twice.  Yup, we didn't even bother getting off the ride this year, just went around again immediately.  (Aunt Kristen and Uncle Mike, you are still the big winners... we took them on it three times last year!)  After the ride, Daddy got his beloved milkshake and the girls shared an ice cream cone.  

Then we headed for dinner at Duke's.  But first we stopped off at the Wendy's to retrieve a geocache, of course!  It was a cool one. 

The quote of the night:

As the kids and grandparents were singing songs, Natalie starts up her favorite "Take Me Out to the Ball Game".  She notices Pappy is not joining her and says "Pappy.  Sing whiss ME!!!"

But this weekend we are so excited about the weather!  We decided to eat a quick dinner last night after work and school so we could head out and play.  The look of disbelief and then joy on the kids faces when Mommy and Daddy told them they didn't have to wear their big jackets for 2 days was priceless.  So off we went clad in jeans and sweatshirts, burning off some energy at a playground and picking up four caches, including our first night cache.  

But we are in for a fun day today.  For some reason Daddy didn't want to get up the kids at 6:15 this morning, so Mommy took the morning shift.  In just the one half hour we let Daddy sleep, we managed to:

have a carpet picnic 

(that's chex, dried cranberries and animal crackers... isn't that what you have at a picnic?)

and a rock concert!

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