Daniel and Rylie love to play

Daniel and Rylie have become the best of friends lately. They are so cute together when they play and they really play well together. Here are a few pictures of them enjoying each other's company.



Flying kites

When flying kites, the kids found a nice dirt pile which was way more exciting, so spent most of the time here.


Rylie refused to take a nap one day and then crashed on the carpet. Daniel decided to lay nearby to show his support.
Rylie and Daniel went to the zoo, the mall, a few stores, etc... and by the last store they were just plain tuckered out.
Here they are flying on a rocket together.
Can you feel the love.

Playing in the sand!

Making fruit loop necklaces.

Preparing for summer

With the summer AZ heat approaching we have been preparing all our water toys so we can play and enjoy. We got a great inflatable water slide. Here are some pics of the kids enjoying it.
I was amazed that Rylie can climb this wall by herself. She is so coordinated.

Here is Rylie sliding down.

I had the kids help me wash the slip and slide.

Phoenix Children's Museum

We have been horrible in keeping up our blog ever since about the time Wyatt was due. I jut uploaded all my photo pics and the first thing I realized is I never documented going to the Phoenix Childrens' Museum while my dad and his wife were in town. This museum was absolutely the best for a 3 year old and a 1 year old. They had so much fun exploring the different options of things to do and us adults had fun just playing along.

playing xylophone.

swimming noodles maze

playing with the ramps and cars

too cool for you

riding on the tricycle track

Shopping at the stor
weighing legumes

Doggie

Daniel loves his doggie. He got this for his birthday when he turned 2 and he has adored it since. One day Darin walked into our preschool room to find Daniel and Rylie playing Candy Land with doggie. If Daniel had his way doggie would do everything with us. So far we have limited him to car rides and bed time. He is a constant addition to our furniture with doggie lying on our couch, our floor, etc...

Easter party

Our town of Maricopa has some neat parties for holidays. This Easter party was hosted by a community church and wow, did they go all out. Daniel and Rylie had a blast on the inflatables, easter egg hunt and other stations. It was great that Darin was able to come with us.

Don't be fooled. The kids actually didn't like the petting farm much. Rylie stayed very close to Darin and wouldn't touch the animals. Daniel was more courageous, but just wan't too excited about it.

Niether Daniel or Rylie were very interested in the Easter bunny. Rylie wouldn't get any closer than this.

Docorating cookies. Nummy!

Here Rylie and Daniel are cashing in their eggs for their treat bags. What a great way of doing a hunt-- that way everyone gets the same prize at the end and their isn't such a fight to get the most eggs. One question, do any of you have kids that become seriously obsessed with candy. Daniel goes nuts. When he gets candy his entire personality changes. He becomes tricky, trying to sneak candy all day. He refuses to listen to us and ends up doint really crazy things (like peeing in a mixing bowl, instead of the toilet). He seems to be a little more extreme then the normal sugar high-- his is a sugar obsession. We are seriously thinking of cutting candy out of holidays. This may be challenging especially at Halloween, but we would like to enjoy Daniel during the holidays instead of wanting to kill him.

Daniel and Rylie excited about their basket full of eggs.

Climbing up the slide. Daniel had a differnt type of approach to sliding. He sure seemed to love it although I think my heart skipped a few beats.

Here are the kids doing their easter egg hunt. They had different areas roped off for each age group so that the little ones don't get overrun by the older ones. I love it!

Daniel loves inflatables. He loved this obastacle course! Don't you love my commentary?

Rylie's haircut

This is Rylie's first haircut. Her hair kept on falling into her face so we finally decided it was time to cut bangs and even out her hair. Isn't it cute?
We straightened it just to be sure it was even.

Had to tossle it a little just to give the full effect. Pantene- are you looking for a new model?
Isn't she just adorable.

Be still my heart

There is nothing more attractive then a daddy doing stuff with his children. While I was feeding Wyatt one day, Darin took it upon himself to make egg sandwiches with Daniel and Rylie. Oh, be still my heart. I was so touched by the scene and just loved seeing all of them interact with one another. Daniel and Rylie are sure lucky to have such a great daddy. They love him and get so excited for anytime they can spend with him.

Updated pictures of Wyatt

Wyatt is now just over 5 weeks old. It has been a relatively easy transition to having him in our home. He is adored by all of us. He has overall been a very calm and laid back kid. The only problem he has had is that he reacts badly to dairy. He won't sleep at night and has horrible gas. So Heidi is now dairy free and Wyatt has been sleeping much better since.

What a great cheezy grin! We are all thrilled to have Wyatt join us!

Hanging out on his boppy. Do you like the dino cover? I thought the pink we had earlier was a little too feminine. So whipped this up right before he was born.

Rylie and Daniel can't give Wyatt enough hugs or kisses. Wyatt just adores them. He smiles eveytime they come nearby. The other person who gets smiles is daddy. Mommy just doesn't seem to be interesting enough because I really have to do something special to see him smile at me. I guess I'm just too familiar.

Aren't they just too cute?

Daniel loves to be Wyatt's little helper. So cute to see how much he loves him. Daniel sure has grown up lately and is acting much more mature. One day he even spontaneously went upstairs to clean off the crayon marks that Rylie had added everywhere the night before. Wow, was I ever impressed.

Wyatt taking in his daddy. I'm sure he is thinking, "What an awesome dad! I sure hope I can be like him one day."

We laugh, doesn't Wyatt look like an old man. He is almost completely bald on top of his head, but has hair on the sides and back. Darin has determined he has some serious Backman blood in him. Also notice-- he has dark hair-- it really isn't red. It is nice to see a little bit of me come through, but I do love my red heads.

Preschool Environments

In preschool the past 2 months we have been studying Animals and Environments. We have created each scene in our preschool so now preschool is full of environments around the world. Here are some pictures of some of our projects. They were so much fun and the kids loved creating the different pieces.
This is our forest with beavers, squirrels, raccoons, bears, eagles and a moose. The finger print trees in the background were fun to make!

This is our desert full of snakes, vultures, spiders, cactus and sunsets.

This is our polar regions diorama. The students created penguins, whales and then colored other artic animals. Do you notice the global warming in picture number 2? Rylie just can't resist the styrafoam so we have been finding it spreading throughout our house for weeks now.

This is our pond. We learned about the frog life cycle so each circle is a representation of each different stage (egg, tadpole, frog...)

This is the rainforest. As you can see Daniel and Rylie loved helping paint the tree. We had tree frogs, Toucans, and butterflies.

This is our savannah with 3-d figures of African animals.

This is the ocean full of aquariums, oysters, jelly fish and octopi