What a face!

Nyla blowing out her birthday candles.

Geography according to Nyla

Nyla's new shower curtain has a huge map of the world on it, and she's been learning some impressive geography for a 3-year-old: she can point out Africa, China, Iowa, and Kentucky. However, I was a little suspicious that she was memorizing the specific colors on that map, and would struggle on a new map in which Kentucky was not necessarily blue. Over the weekend we showed her a new map and asked her where Kentucky was. She looked at it, puzzled for a while, then said, "There it is!" She was pointing to Lake Superior.

Nyla quotes

Nyla continues to be fond of big words. Some recent examples include the following.

Nyla to Wyndee in the morning: "You're tired in the morning. I'm tired too. I recognize that."

Nyla on whether she would would like to move back to our condo: "No. It's too suspicious."

Nyla after spilling some cottage cheese on herself: "Mommy, I had a disaster."

Another cute thing she says lately is "not exactly," which is quite amusing coming from a 3-year-old. As in, "Does your grilled cheese sandwich taste good?" "Not exactly." "Do you want to sleep with this [really creepy-looking] stuffed Yoda doll in your bed at night?" "Not exactly."

Happy Birthday Nyla!

Nyla and her birthday cake.









































Nyla on her bicycle. She has been asking us for one for a while now. She was super excited to get it as a present. Her reaction was the ideal reaction a parent wants when they give their kid a gift.

Campus

The Brehenys headed out for a walk around campus today. We all enjoyed the pretty flowers:

Nyla sat on a 300,000,000 year-old fossilized stump:

And everyone enjoyed the amphitheatre:

Boxes

We finally got rid of our boxes. Getting rid of a few at a time via curbside recycling was going much too slow, so I flattened them all down, packed them all into the back of the van, and headed to the County recycling center (on the way, I passed an ideal spot for the next time I have to conduct a shady business transaction).

However, we did save two boxes to build Nyla a cute little house:

Wyndee's getting bigger

Wyndee's really starting to show these last few weeks:

New car

Well, we actually bought our van a little while ago, but we've been slow to take pictures of it. We decided on a used (2007) Mazda 5:

It's what's called a "mini minivan". You probably can't tell from the picture, but it is quite a bit smaller than a regular minivan (and gets much better gas mileage as well).