1 year pictures - e+c

at the beginning of april, our friend shelly took eleanore and claire’s pictures. I wish I could say the girls were just perfect for their photo shoot, but it was not so. claire was cranky and took a long time to smile and when she finally started smiling ellie was sick of it. so we didn’t really get many of the girls together, but probably the best we will get for 1 year olds.

here are some of the girls together. ellie. claire.

this one is a bit blurry, but it captures ellie’s squinty eyes and claire’s smile perfectly.

here are claire’s best shots. I love this one of her blowing through her lips – something she always used to do.

she finally started warming up when she could grab hold of a stick.

broke it. she’s pumped!

prabee claire’s best shot.

we were using dandelions to try to entertain them.

climbing.

 

here are ellie’s pictures. since ellie was happy and smiley we thought we had enough good pictures of her so we tried to get more of claire. well-it turns out we have a lot of claire and not that many of ellie. sorry ellie!

love this one.

this is of claire, but could be either of the girls. I love seeing their little hairs and lashes.

thanks shelly for taking these beautiful pictures. the girls are not easy subjects!

old april photos

I forgot to post these pictures from the end of april. they are pretty cute of the crew.

eleanore.

claire.

another visit from the gunderson girls

last week, my friend kate drove down from woodbury with her twin girls – eva & elise. charlie has a special love for these two girls and it is so sweet to see. this time the girls were a little more shy around charlie, but he still continued to try to hug, kiss, and help them – even though it scared them a bit. pretty funny to watch. we didn’t have much time to take pictures with 5 kids under 3 (even crazier – 4 of the kids were under 16 months).

here are the 4 girls cruising around.

we attempted to take a kid picture. here are the “best” shots. pretty funny huh?!?!

eva, elise, charlie, eleanore, claire

charlie was trying his best to holding his elise and ellie together.

they had had enough.

it was a fun, crazy day and I can’t wait until our next playdate!

silly ellie

here are some pictures of ellie cracking herself up. when we had bill’s mini birthday party she had a blast with the balloons. thankfully none of them broke on her.

she would chomp down her little chompers.

then she would pull back.

then she would let go. spit would go flying. and she would giggle giggle and giggle. it was the cutest thing.

and more giggling. she did this forever.

ellie also loves to climb up and check out claire if claire is still eating and she is done.

happy sisters.

the girls were driving me crazy the other afternoon so I took the highchair off of the big chair and let them climb around. they had a blast.

claire hanging out.

ellie.

doing her squinty eyes.

the other night we were facetiming with my parents from mexico and ellie always does her squinty eyes smile when she facetimes. I was cracking up.

this is another squinty eyed shot. I love this!

she cracks me up! we love you ellie.

oxbow with bubba

last week, laura and I took the kids to oxbow zoo – a little zoo in byron. we had a great time and the weather was beautiful!

me and the kiddos.

the eagles are situated right when you walk in and they squawked at us. it was crazy!

the squawking stunned everyone!

I have said it before, but bubba is incredible at playing pretend with charlie. they have their own little world going on sometimes. I am so grateful for this because I definitely struggle in the “pretend play” department.  I love hearing bits of their stories and watching charlie’s face get eager with excitement as he waits for bubba’s next line. so throughout the zoo she was bringing in the animals into their little world. here she is hyping him up about the big bear. thankfully he hasn’t had any dreams about them.

this turkey freaked me out. it would puff its feathers and make this wack sound (I think air between its feathers moving) and it would make me jump almost every time.

do you think the girls were interested?

stunned. I love how similar they look in this picture. claire is on the left, ellie on the right.

then we headed over to where the buffalo and deer roam. the grass was so green and the kids had a blast running around.

getting really close to the buffalo. this buffalo got in between two fences, which freaked me out. but apparently they are just fine. I was convinced the buffalo was going to push over the fence and maul my chitlins.

then it was snack time. claire was trying to feed ellie.

on the swing before leaving. can’t wait to go back once they have the calves, mini goats and chickens back!