Simpsons in Seattle

Despite the rain, we made our way to Bellevue to go to the annual Arts Fair this weekend. While we didn't buy any art this year, the girls had a good time entertaining themselves: Forgot the double stroller? That's okay, they can both fit into this one!

I finally caught the little jelly legs jellying along for more than just a step!

Evie and Daddy went on a Daddy-Daughter overnight boat camping trip, so Saturday night was all about Mommy and Nora! It was a pretty mellow day - we did a little bit of shopping and a lot of playing. This was the first time that I can think of where I had so many hours with Nora all to myself without having to rush to do something like get dinner on the table for everyone or having to get back online to do more work and you know what? It was a lot of fun! Nora is at such a fun age where she's so expressive and loves to giggle and clap her hands and explore. It made me feel a little sad that Nora doesn't have our full attention like Evie had when she was this age. Poor second child. Anyway, we vowed we'd do more of these one-on-one times with each girl because it got us all recharged! Little Miss Giggles

Cougar Mountain Zoo is just around the corner from us and after 2 years of living here, we finally decided to give it a try. We've heard from friends that this is a small but very good zoo and well.... it's small. You can walk the whole thing in about 15 minutes, and that's at a leisurely pace (no joke!). The nice thing though is that it's not crowded (read: we saw maybe 10 other people there during our trip) and you can get  pretty close to the animals. In fact, you can get close enough to feed some of them, and close enough that they post signs that you're in the tiger "spray zone". There were also lots of volunteer rangers in many of the animal areas and they were very friendly and happy to talk about the animals. The highlights were the baby wolves (super cute! But alas, I didn't take pictures), the tigers and the mountain lions.  Cranes? can't remember what these are, but they're neat! The zoo has the largest collection of pri

Being 4 means you get to do some pretty grown up stuff - like staying up late to watch fireworks on 4th of July! Here in Seattle, that meant Evie stayed up way past her normal bedtime hour because it gets dark so late that the show doesn't begin until 10pm. Evie was a champ though and had a grand ole time. It was too tiring to carry her for the whole show so  for a lot of it, she could only see the fireworks that were shot high up over everyone's heads. That didn't matter to her because the real treat was getting to hang out with her friend "Blakes". The two of them wore matching princess jammies and really only payed attention to half the fireworks show - they were too busy playing make-believe or waving their glow sticks around. Still, it was so fun to hear  them exclaim "Amazing!" and "OOOH!!! Purple!!" or "That looks like glitter!" or "UNITED STATES!!!" (when Evie would see an American flag on someone's house.) It wa

We had quite a scare this weekend! Poor Nora came down with a sudden fever on Saturday that spiked to 103. She didn't seem to have any other symptoms but after several doses of tylenol and Ibuprofen, her fever was still pretty high- it came down slightly to 101. We were worried so took her to Urgent Care first thing on Sunday morning. After ruling out an ear infection, lung infection and UTI, they sent us home with a "we think it's Roseola or Scarlet Fever." Not all that reassuring, but they assured us that it was likely Roseola which is very common in children (90% of kids under 2 years get it). True to the nickname of Roseola (aka 3 Day Fever), Nora woke up on on the 4th day (yesterday) with no more fever! She's seems much better now - eating and drinking a bit more and back to being smiley, but the skin rash that's associated with the infection appeared today. Very scary looking! She has it all over her trunk and it creeps up into her neck. Her face even