Boys and Animals

Expo #2 of the weekend was the Philadelphia Pet Expo.  Evan, my mom and I went to this two years ago when I was 7 months pregnant with Eric.  This year, Megan and Claire joined us.  The expo has all sorts of animals - people can bring their own pets.  Plus there were lots of animals to see up close - rabbits, birds, reptiles and a whole petting zoo.  You know these animal loving boys had a blast getting to feed some farm animals.  Here Evan is feeding a baby cow:

And Eric feeding the goats:

They really love their animals: 

And the llamas:

Fingers right in their mouths:

And Claire got into the action as well feeding this sheep:

We had quite the busy weekend while Brian enjoyed some quality time with the boys in Vegas.   We will be happy to have him home tonight!

Boys and Trains

Two great events took place at the greater Philadelphia expo center this past weekend.  On Saturday, I took the boys to see an enormous model train convention. I've never seen anything like it.  And neither had the boys who were completely mesmerized.  Having been to a model train store before and knowing that the model trains tend to be set on platforms higher than child-size, I had what might have been one of my greatest parenting ideas to-date.  I knew I wouldn't have the free hands to pick up both boys to see everything so, as silly as I thought it might look, I brought along a step stool.  See the first picture below:

It couldn't have worked out more perfectly.  Evan was content to carry it from place to place and I probably had 25+ parents comment to me about what a good idea it was.  Here they are checking out two trains passing right in front of them - real steam and all:

They had a real Thomas train that the kids could ride on.  Not too surprising but Evan wouldn't ride on it.  Eric, though, was happy to ride.  And even cried when the ride was over.

They had a children's train area with probably 6 train tables set up for playing:

And Thomas was all over this place - every size you could imagine.  You can see how that stepstool made all of the difference in what Evan was and was not able to see.  

I wish I could have taken more pictures but, with two little boys by myself, I was lucky to make it out of there with both of them at my side.  I didn't even attempt to bring my camera as I knew I wouldn't be able to manage it all.   I just wish this convention came to town every year, though it is more like every 5-10 years.  Evan is already asking if we can go back to the big train store.  He's got a LONG time to wait!

Like Father, Like Son

Brian is a 49ers fan and the boys received their own 49ers shirts for Christmas this year.  They got very excited to cheer on their dad's favorite team the last two weekends.  Let's hope they continue the winning streak - let's go 49ers!

Evan's First Year in Video

I have to admit we have had a video camera since before Evan was born.  We took some video when Evan was a baby but I never did anything with the video - it remained stuck in the video camera until a week ago when I was inspired by a friend to get my video OFF of my camera and onto my computer.  I then watched a few tutorials and learned how to use iMovie and spent my weekend putting together a video of Evan's first year or so.  It took me hours and hours but I was addicted and on a mission to get it finished.  It's 8 minutes long so it will take some time to watch it.  But I was happy with how it turned out.

However, for some reason, when I try to link to youtube directly through the blog, I don't see my video there.  And the video is too large to load directly.  So instead here is a link to the youtube video.

Evan's Early Days

Next project -  create a video of some kind for Eric despite having hardly any video footage.  By the time Eric was born, I had my good digital camera and took a lot more pictures but not as much video.  I'm regretting that right now, though I've made a promise to myself to take more video in the future because, in a few years, he'll look so much bigger than he looks today.  In the meantime, I can work with the limited video footage I have and the plethora of photographs to put together a montage.

Christmas #3 - Weiss Family

Christmas with the Weiss family continued on Christmas Day and the day after.  Evan was so excited to get his own Woody doll from Uncle Chip & Aunt Jessie - he even wrote his name on Woody's other foot:

Eric dancing next to the Santa that plays music:

Deedee with the Felt boys:

Evan and Deedee:

Evan & I right before we started opening presents:

Present opening with Matthew:

Claire was so cute - every time she opened a new outfit she wanted to try it out, which means she spent most of present-opening naked:

Here she is looking lie a diva with her new Ariel heels on:

Evan and Matthew playing iPad together nicely:

Deedee and Claire:

It was a good Christmas and now we are home relaxing until the new year.

Christmas Day

Christmas was so much fun this year.  It started with our Christmas Eve festivities at our friends' house. I dressed Eric up for no reason so I had to get a picture of him:

Sometime late on Christmas Eve night, Santa arrived. I was able to sneak downstairs to get this picture of Santa's visit before the boys woke up:

Evan was very into the gift opening this year and definitely understood what a visit from Santa would mean:

All he had asked Santa for was a bulldozer and he was happy to see this under the tree:

Onto another big ask - Legos:

And now onto opening Eric's gifts because he still wasn't all that interested in them:

Eric did like his Thomas pillow pet:

And Gordon train for the train set:

A picture of the aftermath from above:

But the gifts weren't done just yet.  We headed to NJ on Christmas Day in the afternoon to celebrate with the Weiss side of the family.  More to come soon.

A few more pics from Christmas #1

Here are the last few pictures from Christmas in Elmira.  A decent family shot:

And the family gets bigger:

And even bigger:

And a cute one of Eric: