Birthday party!

Regan's best friend's birthday party was today and the kids had a blast! Gracie lives just a few houses away from us and the girls are 9 months apart in age; they are the best of friends :) This was Regan's first kid birthday party and they played "traditional" birthday games (see below for pics!).

A pinata!

Carry the egg on a spoon...and Regan/Gracie didn't drop their egg once (although they cheated big time by holding the egg steady with two hands instead of one).

Sidney even got to enjoy the activities...her favorite part was eating! Go figure.

Regan and the birthday girl!

Gracie playing with Sidney

Drop the clothes pin in the jar.

A new set of wheels!

Sidney got a new set of wheels for Easter from gma/pa Friederich and I finally put it together today. She's incredibly wobbly in it so she doesn't last long; that girl is such a peanut it's hard for her to sit in anything (she even topples over in resturant high chairs because she's just too little for them!). She's was having fun while Regan pushed her around the patio tonight though :)

Flowers!

Regan helped me pick out and plant flowers today :) It was so much fun having her help me. She picked out the orange plants and a couple of purple ones. Her preference was to dig in the dirt so I'm not sure how well these flowers are actually in the soil. We'll find out!

Caterpillar!

Ryan found a caterpillar last night on our front steps. He was then on a mission to find it a good home (inside our house of course); he even went so far as to look up online what to feed it! Regan has named it "dragon"; but I don't know why!? For now it's living on our kitchen table....I'm really hoping we can keep it alive!

Sleeping

This is a picture of Sidney on our last night in DC. Ben took the picture with his iPhone because she was just so darn cute. The trip obviously wore her out too and she fell asleep with her arm in a pose above her head :)

Happy Birthday daddy!

It was daddy's birthday today!! We bought him presents and even got a yummy German chocolate cake. I thought about making one, then realized we just stepped off an airplane yesterday and hardly have any food in the house, let alone ingredients to make that crazy cake. I then went on a hunt searching for German chocolate cakes. Those of you reading this from New Ulm are thinking "what's the big deal?, call a bakery". Well, not so easy as I found out. I finally found one and put it on hold until after work. Good thing I had it held because there weren't any others left in the store by the time I got there! After we went out for dinner we got out the cake, took pictures and let Regan lick the icing off the top....let's just say she's not a big fan of German chocolate frosting with coconut but she loved the chocolate frosting on the edges....Sidney too!

National Zoo

The National Zoo is probably the most amazing zoo I've ever been too. It has everything you can think of (though not giraffes for some reason). My favorite was the Pandas, by far. Regan loved the hippos and talked about them all afternoon (Ryan's favorite too!). Here are a few shots...keep in mind, it was another hot and HUMID day :)

Panda eating lunch, it's amazing how close we got! He sure was putting on a show for everyone.

Look at that hair! Did I mention it was humid? She kept pulling off her hat so we just lathered her hair/head with sunscreen.

Ben and Regan checking out the aquariums.

The orangatangs are free to roam the zoo! Yep, they let them out and they walk above you on these ropes, no enclosures or anything. There are signs talking about how/why they don't come down or fall. They were so cool.

This thing in the petting zoo took a big dump right before I took this photo. Ryan was explaining it all to Regan...hilarious!

Sidney snoozing on mom.

I wonder why no one was in this exhibit? Again, it was out in the open without fences/screens. Strange. We saw the sign and kept right on walking!

Mom and Regan posing with the bear sculptures.

Uncle Ben and Regan posing with the monkeys.... Regan went right in front of his head!

Washington DC

Sorry I haven't posted in a while, we've been hanging out in Washington DC for the last week :) It was a super fun trip! We saw sights (Old Town Alexandria, Mt Vernon and the National Zoo were the highlights) and just relaxed in the hot and HUMID weather. They tell us the humidity wasn't bad, but Regan's curly had told the truth :) Except for the ticks and black widow spider (yep, you read that right, Ben killed a black widow spider while we were out there) all was well!Here are a few photos, I'll post more of the zoo on a different post.

Regan admiring uncle Ben's huge fish at home!

Family photo at Mt Vernon with views of the Potomac. It was terribly humid this day!

This is what Ryan and uncle Ben did most (all) of our trip! (playing on their iTouch/iPhones). Incredibly annoying!!

We found an awesome park for Regan!

Regan and daddy watching Finding Nemo on the way home.

Sidney eating lunch on the way to DC! Her first flight :) I felt slightly bad for the guy next to us, he was super nice and made faces at her the whole time; I felt bad for him because he had a 16+ hour flight ahead of him after we left...headed for South Africa!

Sprinkler fun

It was 97 degrees today; yep, for all you out of state (country) people, you read that right, 97 degrees in May in Minnesota! So as we watered the grass tonight, we (along with all the neighbors) let the kids run through sprinklers. Regan just puts her back/butt towards the sprinkler and says that's good enough! Eventually she'll run through them like a big girl.

I love food!

Notice the little circle noodle stuck to the middle of her forehead?! No one is quite sure how it got there, but we all laughed hysterically at her! Tonight Sidney got a tasting of lasagna with real little noodles. She has a tendency to gag on them but has been doing better recently. Maybe it was the fruit I mixed it with; I'm certainly getting creative!

"Look at me, I can stand!" Now if only she'd start taking steps! She's perfectly content just standing up. That's ok, I guess she should learn to crawl before she walks; we should have at least one kid do it in that order!

Best Friends

This is Regan with her best friend-Gracie from the neighborhood. They just adore each other and scream like little girls (which of course they are) when the other appears at the door or at the park for a play date.

Regan had so much fun yesterday hanging out with grandma and grandpa Friederich. She showed off her gymnastics moves on the "balance beam" and gave some cute smiles for grandma at the park :) Isn't she precious?

Alright all you blog followers, I'm having major trouble with my blog (as you can tell). I made a bad decision to change the template of the blog away from black (thinking pink and spring); well, it's backfiring on me! I cannot figure out how to get rid of the useless stupid pink template that I found on another website and just use a blogger template. So....bear with me as I try to figure this all out. In the meantime, I'm hoping to add some new pictures to the existing blog. If you have any suggestions on how to help, I'm open to them!

Wagon ride

The girls went for their first wagon ride together on Sunday. Sidney only lasted about 1/4 of a block before getting mad (might her sister have picked on her?, very likely). Regan made it another 1/4 of a block before wanting to get out to pull the empty wagon. I think it'll be a while before we use the wagon for its intended purpose.

Teeth!

Here's a picture of Sidney's bottom teeth. It's not the greatest picture, but you can see her teeth and that's all I was after.

Roller skating

Uncle Ben sent rollerblades to Regan for her 3rd birthday (at the same unfortunate time she broke her collar bone). Well, the sun is shining and the bones are healed so we attempted roller skating today! She's getting the hang of it and will be transitioning to real skates by next year I'm sure :)

Grandma Jan brought up golf clubs for Regan....real ones. She's just figuring out how to use them and I wasn't able to get a shot of her tonight. But Sidney held onto this one long enough for a cute pic. Can you tell everything goes into her mouth these days!

Como Conservatory

Regan was definately dressed in the right color today; she blended in with all the spring flowers.

Poor Sidney couldn't figure out why I wouldn't let her eat all those pretty flowers. She got pretty mad at us!

Como!

It was a little chilly this morning to be at Como Zoo, but apparently I wasn't the only mom who had the idea: it was packed! We parked a long ways away but it was worth it. Both girls had a wonderful time and Sidney and I were the hit of the zoo! Let's just say we were the kangaroos that the Como Zoo doesn't have :) Everyone commented and some even asked where we found such a clever thing.

Happy Mother's day!

It was a lot easier to take pictures separately, but we did our best at getting one together too. It's been a wonderful Mother's Day, with flowers and coffee from Caribou this morning but best of all, just getting to spend it with my girls and not doing any housework!