The Family Farm.

Here is a brief summary of the Farm.

Mark's grandparents, Grant and Mary moved to the Pasco area from California in 1955. Here they are then (approximately?):

Here they are a little later in life! Mark's Grandpa passed away in 1985 but his Grandma is thankfully still alive and relatively healthy, we all love her sooooo much!! Mark's Uncle Karl took over the dairy and is still running it today.

Here is a picture of the dairy farm they started, I think this picture is from 1970 something....it looks MUCH different now!

They obviously have a lot of cows....

And horses, I think this is one of my favorite pictures of Grandpa!

And corn!

And LOTS of fun things too, like a trampoline:

And a swimming pool, go Grandma B!

We were so excited to finally take the kids to see the farm!! Mark grew up near the farm and worked on it as well. The kids are so into farm animals right now too so we thought they would enjoy it. We started off with the calves:

For some reason one of the calves was out and literally the ONLY sound that Elizabeth made the entire time was when Daddy got too close to the calve and she started crying!

Other wise, she was like this:

Little Mark didn't make a sound either, not one little peep, I guess they were just trying to take it all in!

We had to get in some kind of tractor:

Which they both tried to steer:

We also saw lots of cats everywhere, they liked watching these ones climb the trees:

And roosters:

And even a bull, which they refused to pet!

Mark was so tired after all that excitement, he got home and started laying/rolling around on the floor until his bottle was ready. He's so busy these days, he never stops, so we knew he must have had a good time!

Big kids now!

We finally got with it and bought these 2 some bowls to eat out of! They liked the bowls for the most part, even if it did slow them down a little. The spoons....well, they were never actually used to dish up food but as you'll see Elizabeth had a blast playing with hers and even though in the following pictures Mark is holding his spoon, the majority of the time he chucked it on the floor so that he could eat his pasta with 2 hands!

Sometimes if I dished it up for them and then handed them the spoon they would pick the food off of the spoon and then eat it, that's as close as we came!

Mark LOVES these noodles, in case you couldn't tell. It's just a mixture of ditalini pasta that I cook for a good 20 minutes, a tiny, tiny bit of butter then lots of parmesan cheese and oregano.

It's always a party with Elizabeth at meal time! Don't you love to see her teeth?! She has 2 more that recently cut through on the top too, soon she'll be able to eat like her brother....well actually I don't think that will ever happen, boys eat a lot and Mark is no exception!

We have hair folks!

A few weeks ago we decided to try putting Elizabeth's hair up. I have basically been waiting for this moment since I found out I was having a girl! She REFUSED to let me put an elastic in it but if I was fast enough I could sneak one of Aunt Anna's cute clips in. Without further adieu, here is my girly with just enough hair to fit in a clip!!!!!!

We did it while she was eating, the food was a perfect distraction, forgive the mess.

We can't leave Little Mark out....so here he is being his goofy, funny self!

The Park.

We had fun at a new park! At first they had to share a swing until another one opened up:

Then once they got their own all they wanted to do was stare at all the other kids!

See what I mean?! And yes she is holding a spoon, we fed them lunch before we left and somehow Elizabeth made it out with the spoon and didn't let go until we were done at the park!

Then Mark finally got some giggles out of them!

I just love this one because Elizabeth was laughing in the back ground as Mark was being tickled!

When Mark went to go get the stroller out of the car Elizabeth was laughing and having soooo much fun on the swings the whole time he was gone! Come on spring, get here and keep the rain away!!!

Mark Mark's newest game

Grandma T has been trying to play this game with him on skype for awhile now but he hasn't been able to figure out why it's so funny.....until now!!!! This video is 2 or 3 minutes of him mostly laughing really hard at this new game!

Stroller fun!

At Grandma B's over the weekend these two discovered the baby doll stroller and Daddy decided to create some fun with it....and see how good these two can walk, push in a straight line and watch tv at the same time!! It's kind of hilarious but so cute! He let me sleep in a little (like he does on most Saturday mornings, yes he's that good) and when he came to wake me up he showed me this video:

Once Mark got the hang of it he was practically running with her in there and she loved it! He only came close to tipping her out a few times:)

Elizabeth was a little more side tracked by the tv and I think she had more fun being in the stroller, such a princess!! She was pretty proud of herself though for pushing him so far.

Mark's 1st steps!!!!!!!!

At the end of last week and especially over the weekend Little Mark started letting go of things (usually without knowing because he had a toy in his hand that he decided he needed both hands for:) and standing by himself!!! He now prefers to stay standing when I go to put him down so here he is last night after dinner:

And here he is this morning.....taking his first few steps at 1 year and 12 days old (corrected age is 10 months and 18 days)!!!!!!! I know the video isn't right but I have to wait until Mark gets home to see if he can fix it or if the program we have will do it. I am too excited to wait that long, so just crank your head a little for now, hahaha!

WE LOVE BOOKS!!!

These two LOVE books! They used to just love it when we read to them, Little Mark would do his excited laugh and Elizabeth would bounce up and down. Now they love looking at them too, well and tearing them off the book shelf!

We have dedicated the 2nd from bottom shelf to their books and usually as soon as I get them put back up they are both crawling over to rip them down. They have so much fun doing it! This day Elizabeth was too interested in looking at the books so Mark was left to tear down the books himself!

One of her favorites right now is Hungry Caterpillar because she likes to put her fingers through the holes and turn the tiny pages. Sometimes Elizabeth will spend almost of all of her play time sitting and looking/playing with books!

Until Mark comes to take it away, which almost always happens. She will whine and then go find another one and then when he sees she has found another book he will drop the 1st one and go steal the next one, then Elizabeth goes back for her original book and finishes playing with it! Most of the time this is what happens, it depends on how tired or hungry they are:)

We bought them more books for their birthday. They love touch and feel, farm animal ones and peek a boo books. Just this past week Elizabeth has started to point at things if we ask her. For example in Goodnight Moon, if we ask her where the moon is (always in the window) she will point to it! Mark will stare at it and I'm pretty sure he's wondering why we keep asking him...he's probably thinking, 'hello people, I'm staring right at the moon!' Hahaha!

Valentine's Day

Yup, you're lookin' at it! We had a lazy, still not feeling 100% day. This is the only picture we remembered to take all day and I'm a little disappointed we couldn't do more since Valentine's Day was the twins 1st holiday!! In fact it was 1 year ago on Valentine's Day that we introduced them to you on the blog at 4 days old! Owell, they always enjoy nightly reading time with Daddy, even when they're tired. In fact, sometimes Little Mark will lay his head on Elizabeth's shoulder while they read and one night Elizabeth didn't want him there and starting shaking her head side to side (think Night at the Roxbury) to get him off!! It was hilarious!

Happy Valentine's Day!