Ah, the kids are all asleep, I may get on a roll here...
Yes, yes, it seems hard to believe we were all bundled up only a month ago. Heidi practiced blowing bubbles all weekend and Harrison got to show off his first lumberjack coat. Brendan spent literally most of the weekend shovelling off the deck. This sounds like cruel child labour, but it was his idea, and it didn't matter what sort of fun things we tried to entice him to do "c'mon, Brendan, you've been shovelling for a long time, lets go tobogganing" he was adamant that he was busy working. I guess he got his father's gene for love of hard work. He sure as heck didn't get it from me!
We may have the best dressed kids on the planet. Between the matching Australian Emu boots and the coordinating hand knit sweaters they're a pretty lucky pair!
Nothing says fabulous like leopard print leggings!
Speaking of well dressed babies, I think a segway to our newest neice "Baby Ellie" is in order here. Brendan was a doting big cousin on their latest visit here. As an aside, Brendan has developed a group (hard to tell how many) of imaginary kids that he teaches things to, praises, encourages, nags, bosses around and disciplines (with gusto). I had assumed he was their teacher, but I asked this weekend, and no, apparently he's their dad. Too cute! Anyways, back to Ellie; we got to see her the pictures from her first professional photo shoot (a modelling career awaits, I'm quite sure). I'm not exactly sure what exactly the ettiquette is on posting photos of other adorable babies on the twins blog, but it would literally be a crime against humanity not to share these...
The twins were completely unaffected by their first train ride and first bus ride, but I felt compelled to capture it on film anyways...
Easter. Ah, Easter. Easter is a very big deal for the Coles. It involves 3, count them 3 seperate Easter Egg Hunts, a train ride, epic egg decorating and an intensive voting process, daily walks to the bakery, obscene amounts of chocolate, and this year, we also went for a lovely hike on a boardwalk near Port Burwell. That's 240 photos worth of fun, but I've peared the selection down a little for you.
The first activity on the schedule is the family egg hunt, in mom and dad's garden. We bought a new bike for Brendan this spring, an awesome Louis Garneau police bike with realistic motor revving noise maker handles and blue and red training wheels to replace the rather askew hand me down he has been riding up till now. It was the big prize at the end of the easter egg/treasure hunt and Brendan was very happy. He takes his role as bike police officer Brendan very seriously. Perhaps a little too seriously.
The next day we went on the OPP parade across the lift bridge (pictured here, Brendan with his idol Wyatt, or Widgee as he calls him for reasons unknown to the rest of us) which culminates in our next easter egg hunt.
The L&PS Railway in Port Stanley runs an easter train which is always the highlight of Brendan's easter. We all board in Port Stanley, ride the train 20 minutes to a park where they have scattered chocolate easter eggs in the grass and then ride back. It's lovely. This year, halfway through searching for eggs, Brendan spotted the large bunny stand in present for photo ops and ran over and began to wait "in line". When the rest of the kids had cleared away from him, Brendan went up to him and started to tell him all about all the trains he had gotten recently and about which trains he would like. I think he thought the Easter bunny was sort of like a Santa for train related gifts. It was very sweet. Then he ran off looking for more eggs.
Mr. Milkface here has been cut off drinking his bottle in the bouncy chair. He usually drinks it as the bottle is suspended from one of our wonderful bottle hangers, but now can get such a head of steam up bouncing that milk ends up EVERYWHERE.
Sunday means two things - chocolate and egg decorating. Brendan was really into decorating this year, making his mother very, very proud. I also had a very good year; winning 3 categories, including best use of marker and best named egg!
We went on a lovely hike along a boardwalk at the harbour at Port Burwell. Heidi thought the bouncing of the stroller wheels over the boards was HILARIOUS and giggled the entire way. I thought she was going to make herself sick she was laughing so hard at one point. I'm a little worried she's going to be an adrenaline junkie...
Heidi was extra-ordinarily well dressed this Easter; she had 6 different pink bunny motif outfits in addition to her fancy Easter dress (which incidentally was a dress my mother smocked for me when I was a baby!). Now that's dressing for an occasion! Sadly, I missed taking a photo of her in her pink velvet Peter Rabbit jumper, but you get the general idea...
And finally, that brings us to this past weekend at the cottage. We got a few nice pictures when we went for a walk down the cottage road and one extremely unflattering picture of Rob (sorry, dear) as he deals with the SQUIRREL carcass which he had to extract from the bathroom sink drain. It must have come in through the roof vent, and subsequently died in the elbow underneath the sink. Our only tip off was that the sink was draining slowly. I'm betting Rob wishes he had decided just to live with a slow drain since the process of getting it out was severely disturbing. Now how's that for a parting image, after all these cute-sy photos!
