The Circus and Stuff

The other night my visiting teachers wanted to meet up at Baskin Robbins for ice cream. The kids helped "push" the car out of the driveway for me. They love to do that.

A little over a week ago Emmy and I met some friends at a really small children's museum in downtown Bethesda. It was such a unique little place. Basically it had lots of different themed rooms like this one.

After playing for awhile we walked to the famous Georgetown Cupcake. I am often disappointed in these types of places that everyone raves about, but my lemon coconut cupcake was AMAZING. I brought Flat Stanley with us who is visiting from Las Vegas. 

We didn't do that much walking, but I was having lots of contractions when we did. These were a little more crampy and painful than all the tightening that has been going on for a couple months. They subsided with some rest, and I haven't had any like that for a week. 

Natalie has a great friend out here named Risa. She invited Natalie to her birthday party at an ice cream place called Carvel, and Natalie looked forward to it for weeks. 

 One Saturday night Nate and I decided kind of last minute to take the kids to the circus, but it was going to be a surprise. As we got close to our destination, it was actually Emmy who guessed where we were going. Natalie was the most excited. Jansen had a rough start to the evening because it was fairly windy. 

After this picture I took Jansen inside, and Nate took the girls to ride on an elephant. 

It was one of those nights when you let the kids have all sorts of things you usually say no to. Cotton candy, sno cones, popcorn, etc. Cotton candy is disgusting. 

The elephants made me sad. To be honest, I don't think I had ever given it much thought till now. But that night I felt so bad for their life in a circus. I'm just going to have to tell myself that they are happy. And I am a fairly patient and understanding person in most circumstances, but I was getting pretty annoyed with the little girl (not her actually, her mother) who stood on her chair through the whole circus. 

I had to get my military ID renewed, and let me tell you, I was thrilled about having a close up picture of my face taken when I was 37 weeks pregnant. Emmy asked me to take this picture of her and Nate. Emmy gets dragged to all sorts of appointments and meetings, and she is so good about it for the most part. At all my OB appointments Dr. Stephens lets her hold the doppler to my tummy to hear the baby's heartbeat. I love having her with me all day.

This is her sweet friend Ava that we have lots of preschool and play dates with.

Natalie has so many little toys, but lately she has mostly been playing with these little paper dolls she made. I just love it.

A little bird has a nest in one of the trees right next to our porch. Natalie set up a feast for them yesterday.

And Emmy set up this nice shrine??? on our front porch with a few of the things that are important to her right now. I'm sure it has made the UPS guy smile.