The Zoe and Silas Show

We made plans to go apple picking with Iris, Steve & Peter and Timery, Steve & Jason after our last very fun group outing to Drumlin Farm . Unfortunately the weather this weekend has been the antithesis of autumn in New England - today it was almost 80 degrees and VERY humid. We managed to have a great time nevertheless! We got to Russell Orchards  in Ipswich, MA at 10am and it was already really busy. Thankfully we only had to stand in line for about 10 minutes to get on the hayride out to the orchard. The kids loved this part because we were pulled by a tractor. Once we got to the orchard, there was a map and all the rows were labeled with the different kinds of apples grown there. There were definitely a lot of people out today, but things didn't feel too crowded once everyone dispersed in the orchard. Derek headed up the picking process and organized the kids. There was more eating than picking going on most of the time! The apples wer...

There are so many great things about being a twin. Reason #247: there is always someone around to push you in a homemade push car (and say "stuck" with you over and over and over). Seriously, they're the best of pals! They sat this close to each other for the entire bath today :)

My sister recently turned me on to Pepperplate , which is officially one of the three most useful websites in my life right now (the other two are productivity apps I use for work - Wunderlist and Evernote). You can automatically import and centralize all of your online recipes, as well as manually enter your own family recipes. The interface is really pretty (click here to see it closer), The best part for me is the Planner function. I can plug in what I'm making for dinner (as links to recipes or just text notes), in conjunction with playdates and family outings. Putting everything on one calendar let's me see what's do-able for a meal idea and what might be too much taking into account our busy kid schedule. I haven't tried it yet, but from the planner you can also generate a shopping list. It's like magic! Happy meal planning (which is what I was doing in this picture before S&Z hijacked my lap for a little storytime)!

My friend and colleague, Margarita, brought us a glockenspiel from Germany last year. It's just been more recently that S&Z play it instead of taking it apart. I don't know who's having more fun, Derek or the kids :-) Thanks for such a cool present, Margarita!

As I wrote last week , we recently started an art class at the local community center. Today we got to pick up the painting that Silas did last week. It's so awesome that I hung it on my door at work. Both kids completed a painting today, so I'll have more to add to my growing art collection next week :-) The art project today was a cute and simple idea. Miss Donna cut out leaves of different shapes. The kids colored the leaves with markers, and then we sprayed them with water so that they got a watercolor effect.  These went up on the fridge with the apple project from last week. LOVE IT!!!!!

Now that the kids' language has taken off, Julia is working hard to teach them some spanish. Both of them say 'chico' and 'niño', and they call Julia 'Tia'. More recently, Zoe can recite basic numbers following Julia's lead...  We love Julia!!!

My stepmom, Mary, collected Beanie Babies back in the '90s when they were in their heyday. Over the years I gathered quite a collection of my own, like 'Garcia', 'Ally', and 'Spike', and 'Stretch'. They all had a connection to nicknames and things I was into at different points in my life. I have moved the box of beanies from place to place, and ultimately from Minneapolis to Boston. I hung onto them because I thought one day I might have kids of my own who would like to play with them. I unpacked and washed the beanies last year and put them in one of the bins in the toy chest. It has just been more recently that the kids are interested in playing with them, naming them, etc. Today we had The Brennan's over for brunch. S&Z had a blast playing with Holly, almost 4 years, and Kylee, a newly minted 1-year-old. At one point I suggested we pull out the beanie babies. The kids were SO CUTE and absolutely enthralled. Then Derek got into...

I love pictures. Specifically, I love pictures of my family, my children, places I've traveled, and my friends. My refrigerator has always been covered in photographs up until last summer when we childproofed our house. We were worried about little magnets and little mouths and fingers, so we took all the pictures off the refrigerator. Gradually I have put up a few birth announcements and 1-year-old pictures of friends' kids, but it's just not the same. Since the fridge pictures went away, I did put together two kid-friendly photo albums for Zoe and Silas. One album is filled with pictures of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. The other photo album is filled with pictures of my best friends, S&Z's "aunties". They have always loved these albums, first chewing on the pages and then looking at the pictures. More recently, Silas started taking the aunties photo album to bed with him. He gets tucked in while looking at pictures of Tracy, Timery, Rache...

Derek is up early and the kids are up late - it's the first night of Monday Night Football, with the Patriots vs. the Dolphins!!! Autumn is definitely here!

The handprint and footprint canvases that we made last summer have always hung above Silas and Zoe's cribs. I was so excited the day we finished them that I hung them rather haphazardly. Recently Silas has been able to reach his prints and he pulled them off the wall, along with the nails. At Target today we finally got the brackets that I needed to hang the canvases more solidly. After S&Z woke up from a 3 hour (!!!) long nap today, we got to work on the project. First we nailed the brackets onto the canvases, Then we hung the canvases on the wall in their bedroom. The wall along their cribs is quite large, so we also picked up a wall applique set that is inspired by Eric Carle's book, " The Very Hungry Catepillar ". I think it turned out pretty cute, and the kids can't stop talking about it! The wall also has a meaningful theme for us - Silas and Zoe's little baby footprints and handprints, surrounded by the story of a catepi...