Sharing girl

Mara has been looking forward to playing trains with Audra since we brought the trains home at Christmastime and she wasted no time this morning. After breakfast she pulled them out, drove one around the floor a couple of times then put it on Audra and looked up at us and said "sharing". Enjoy!


Kissing.


More sharing.

Audra Neel Hall is here!

Please welcome Audra Neel Hall into the world. Below are some pictures from the hospital. There are also more images here.

Easter

We had a blast dying Easter eggs on Saturday and celebrating the risen Lord on Sunday at our friends. I don't know when I'll get a chance to do a full photo post so here is a link to the online album. I'll add some pictures of Easter Sunday when I get them from Libby's camera.

Hamming it up

Despite being sick today Mara has totally been hamming it up for the camera.

She had a fun chat on the phone with her aunt.



And she had on quite the outfit this morning resulting from some zthings she chose to wear and a bracelet I put on her.

Loving some birthday gifts

The rocking chair:



The art stuff:

The Birthday

The birthday celebrating has come to an end with the Well Child visit this morning. She was an angel and is developing beautifully. But it is no wonder our daughter doesn't fit clothes she is 75% for height and only 40% for weight, hard to believe that for much of the first year she was in the 90s for both.

We had a fun party at the park on Saturday afternoon with our friends. Mara loved playing with all her friends and finally got to taste the cake she had been talking about all week. Note, cupcake decorating was especially a hit with the three year olds. The picture on the left is Mara's reaction to the Happy Birthday song (also notice the candles had already blown out).

Mara is now the proud owner of a rocking chair like Mommy's that I am sure will see lots of use in the weeks to come, as well as, some great new books, art supplies and princess dress-up staples. It was amazing how much present opening had changed even since Christmastime. The funniest (for Mom and Dad) though was flip-flops from AK, there is a reason they don't sell them in 2 year old size I think. Unfortunately the video camera had a dead battery but this next series of pictures is in order. Notice how the putting on technique had to evolve.

A day at the aquarium

First the great ones.

Mara is checking out some star fish, which she thought were neat since she knows that shape. She was even brave and touched some later in the touch pools.


We got to watch some scuba divers in this tank. We watched them feed a big fish some small squid. Mara thought his flippers were mittens.


By this point she was tired of being in the dark and kept walking out of the exhibit. We only got her to watch the big shark tank for a few minutes and then only by pointing out the schools of small fish swimming around like "Swimmy" (a book she has recently taking a liking too).

Mara says enough pictures already.







And finally Pacific Grove to see the butterflies. We now believe that Aunt Heather isn't crazy after all, though we caught them in their last week and saw only a few thousand rather than the 19,000 we learned that there are at the peak around Thanksgiving.