Celia is 3!

Celia turned 3 last week! She requested a blue cake with Snow White on it.  She and Wyndee worked on it together.  Here she is with their creation:

And here is Celia being a cute little helper.  She was so excited to stir the batter.

Celia is potty-trained!

She still wears a diaper to sleep in at night, but hasn't worn one during the day for about three weeks now.  Congratulations, Celia!

While we're on the topic of Celia, here is her take on our address:

Me: Celia, where do we live?
Celia: In A-tucky, by the earth, in our house.

Other October events

More October fun! Lots of leaves in the backyard for the kids to play in:

Wyndee had a great idea one day: Outdoor Candy Land.  Wyndee inspired a few imitators around the neighborhood as well. The kids had a lot of fun with this for about a week until it rained.

Wyndee and I also took a nice walk along the Kentucky River Palisades. There were some beautiful views from along the cliffs:

Halloween

Well, lots have happened since our last blog posting. First in a series of posts: Halloween. The kids were both witches this year. Here they are in their costumes:

They also liked playing with vampire teeth:

We discovered a pumpkin plant growing in our garden this year. We're not entirely sure how it got there, but we managed to get a nice pumpkin out of it. Here is Celia next to the pumpkin while it was just starting to grow. It got bigger. And oranger.

Below are our family's pumpkins. Celia's pumpkin (the one above) is on the far left.

Jealousy

Celia got a new dress yesterday, and was wearing it when Nyla got home from school:

Celia: Nyla, do you see my new dress?
Nyla: Yes.
Celia: Are you jealous?
Nyla: No.
Celia: Yes you are.

Celia's vehicles

It was beautiful in Lexington yesterday, and Celia and I spent the evening outdoors.  Later on, we were reading a Sesame Street book about different methods of transportation:

Me: "Elmo rides his tricycle."  Did you ride a tricycle today?
Celia: Yeah!
Me: "Zoe rides in her wagon."  Did you ride a wagon today?
Celia: Yeah!
Me: "Bert rides in his submarine."  Did you ride in a submarine today?
(pause)
Celia: Not yet.

Nyla's Birthday!

Nyla turned six today. Here she is with her Rapunzel tower cake.

Sky Bridge

We went hiking at the Red River Gorge. These pictures were taken on the Sky Bridge Trail.

Here we are up on top.

Now we see it from below.

Nyla's artwork

Nyla showing off some of her beautiful flowers she drew.

cuties

Lego Orange Leaf

Wyndee and Nyla made a Lego Orange Leaf today. I thought it was fantastic:

Celia

Some recent cute Celia anecdotes:

• We gave the kids their old health insurance cards to play with as pretend credit cards, since their names appear on the cards.  Celia, who can't read, but can recognize her name, looked at it and said, "This one has my Breheny on it!"
• Wyndee just finished buying school supplies for Nyla going to Kindergarten in the fall.  Celia was jealous, so Wyndee bought her a notebook too.  She's been going around, hugging it, and calling it "my school supplies."
• We found a good local fresh fruit market and have been buying a lot of peaches and plums there (I can never find good peaches or plums at the supermarket).  Celia enjoys taking the peel off and giving herself giant purple lips:

Biking & Swimming

Nyla's never really been into riding her bike before, but we had a breakthrough the other day. We thought that maybe she wasn't that into riding her bike because our neighborhood is hilly. So we took her and her bike to a nearby, very flat park, and she rode for about half an hour straight (breaking her previous record of two minutes). And now, she rides her bike around the neighborhood too. I think she just needed the confidence that she could ride her bike, to be willing to push hard to get it up the little hills rather than just give up and assume she can't do it. Here she is on her bike:

Also, Nyla just got done with her swimming lessons, and has tremendously developed her swimming ability in the past two weeks. Her instructor said she did very well and recommended that she move up to Level 3 if she takes lessons again. Her favorite stroke seems to be the backstroke, because she doesn't have to worry about getting water up her nose. Unfortunately, it isn't really practical to take a camera to the pool, so no action shots of her swimming.

Trip to Iowa

In June, Wyndee and the kids spent three weeks back home in Iowa (I was there for one of those weeks). They had a great time. Nyla spent a lot of time with Go and Julien:

And Celia spent a lot of time with "my friend named Aiko", as she put it:

They had a great time with all their cousins, but most of those times are not captured on photo. They also spent a lot of time exploring Grandpa Benesh's farm and, in particular, the creek:

We also took the kids to the Iowa City Children's Museum; here they are shopping in the mock grocery store.

Finally, Kristy and Darren chose us to be godparents for their beautiful baby girl Sophia. Here we are at the baptism:

Hook

Nyla and Celia have both been really into Peter Pan lately. Celia's favorite character is Captain Hook, for some reason. She just digs pirates. Arrgh! Here she be thrusting her cutlass at that mangy scoundrel, Peter Pan:

Dance recital

Nyla's dance recital was this afternoon.  Above is a shot from her tap dance number.  She did great, and everyone had fun.

The Secret Garden

Wyndee and Nyla just finished reading The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Here is their lego tribute to the book.

Summer vacation

We just got back from our summer vacation in Florida: four days at Disney World and two days at the beach. It was a fantastic vacation -- everyone had a great time.

Nyla was really at the perfect age to go. She was old enough to ride on everything -- including Splash Mountain and Space Mountain -- but young enough to have her eyes light up and jaw drop when she would see Cinderella in person. And there were a lot of fun rides for Celia too. Nyla's favorite rides were Peter Pan's Flight, the Astro Orbiter (where you control your own rocketship), and the Barnstormer (her first roller coaster!). Celia's favorite rides were Snow White's Scary Adventures, The Haunted Mansion (which I thought would be too scary for her; go figure), and the Tea Cups. Celia loves Snow White, and was lucky enough to meet her:

Wyndee and I shared a romantic meal at the restaurant from The Lady and the Tramp:

Celia also loved The Many Adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh, which had the most fun line to wait in. I believe Celia is pretending to eat the honey in this picture:

Celia looks nice and gloomy (maybe more on the pouty side) here in Eeyore's Gloomy Place:

Nyla tried to pull the sword out of the stone, but alas, was unsuccessful. England must continue to wait for a new Queen.

Pretty much every day ended with Celia fast asleep before we even got to our car:

We even saw a rainbow over Cinderella's Castle -- how magical is that?

Then we headed to Fernandina beach for two days:

Nyla appears grumpy here because she didn't want to be in the picture, but it's the only one of all four of us. It doesn't reflect Nyla's actual mood at the beach, where she had a great time, as you can in the following picture:

The ocean was a bit cold and the waves were a bit rough for the kids, so we spent most of our time playing in a little pool that formed at low tide.

Wyndee: Celia, do you want to go back out into the big ocean?
Celia: No.  Little ocean.

So we called it the "little ocean" for the rest of the trip.  Here's a picture:

What a wonderful trip!

Derby Day

This is a bit belated, but here's Celia looking cute in her Derby hat on Kentucky Derby Day:

Sisters

Nyla and Celia have been fighting a bit lately -- they just can't seem to resist antagonizing one another.  I think they're just at that age.  We thought that the following exchange, which occurred after Celia called Nyla a name, was quite humorous:

Nyla: Celia hurt my feelings!  You're the meanest sister ever!
Celia (angry): I not sister meanest ever!  I great sister!

Lego fest!

We went up to Cincinnati this weekend for Lego Fest!  Nyla actually took this picture:

I'm glad we taught her to use a camera; otherwise it's hard to get pictures of both Wyndee and I together.

Wyndee and Nyla made Lego mosaics:

Nyla's (left) is two rafts floating in the water.  Wyndee's (right) is a beautiful, moonlight evening.  Most of the day was spent playing with Legos, whether in the big brick pile:

or in several of the themed building areas.  Nyla's favorite was the girl-oriented Lego Friends area, with lots of pink and light blue bricks, but also a lot of cool pieces for making houses: big windows, columns, arches, pillars, etc.  Celia is a little too young to really build a whole lot, but we watched one of the lego competitions.  In the one we watched, teams of kids had to build a lego bridge about 4 feet long and the winner was the bridge that could support the most weight.  The winning bridge supported 25 pounds.  Nyla also really liked vacuuming up Legos:

But the activity that made for the best pictures was our tour of the Lego model museum:

Unfortunately, Celia and I made Lego Bruce Banner angry:

Wyndee and Lego Hermione became friends:

A giant Lego shark ate our two children, but luckily they later emerged unscathed:

Nyla is reading!

Nyla is really reading lately.  We've been reading isolated words on flashcards for a while now, but she's actually starting to put it all together, sound out words without help, and read whole books all on her own.  We bought some beginning reader books (~20 pages), and she's already read the first twelve.

Cute kids

And they're both smiling!

Lately, Celia has taken to putting on Nyla's dance outfits and calling herself a "dancerina".

Girls in the snow

Well, it's getting warmer here in Kentucky, and I'm not sure it's going to snow any more. So, I thought I'd post the only picture we took this year of the girls playing in the snow (CORRECTION: Wyndee informs me that she took additional pictures of the girls playing in the snow):

Not a snowy winter by any stretch of the imagination, but the girls did get to play in the snow a few times.