Silly Faces

A couple more...

...pictures from a Very Hawkeye Birthday.




In other news...tomorrow's post will probably be about a new baby cousin for Henry and Clara!!!

Hawks and Birthday

First Hawks game of the season. I went with Sandy, her sister Sarah, and Carrie. We had a great time and the Hawks won.
It was also the 2nd birthday of my sweet nephew Anders. Here he is with Clara and Henry.
Anders had a fun birthday party at City Park. We had some pizza and rode the rides. Hooray!
These pictures are all from Pete's camera. I'll post some more when I load mine.

Happy Birthday Anders!!

Our favorite little boy cousin is turning one today!!!
Happy Birthday Anders! We love you SOOOOOOOOO much!
We're so sorry we'll miss your party. We will party it up with you soon. You know what that means, don't you? More cake!!!
XOXOXOXOXO
Aunt Betsy, Uncle Pete
Henry and Clara

Cousins

We had a chance to go up north and visit my nephew Anders this weekend. Here's the little dude in his turtle pajamas. Look how cute he is. I'm quite fond of the little fellow. I kept noticing how much he and Eleanor look alike. Then I would think to myself 'but my kids don't really look much like them' (though I do sometimes see similarities). But, as Will pointed out, Anders and Eleanor share dads with very similar genetic makeup...which is probably a closer match than the genetic makeup I share with their dads.
On Friday we had some beautiful weather. We took it easy in Anders' back yard. Clara really enjoyed his swing. I'm not sure if I've written about this before, but Henry has never enjoyed swinging- from the time he was a baby. Even now he'll only swing a little bit before he shouts "stop!" I can't quite figure out how any child of mine can't enjoy swinging.
Will has been working on this crazy old bike....what the hell's it called Will? And he hooked it up to the Burly and took Henry and Anders for several trips up and down the alley.
They are pals.
Will also got out his steam engines to show Henry. I got the feeling he's been itching to do this. I'm sure he can't wait for Anders to be old enough to play with his toys with him.
Clara and Anders spent quite a bit of time poking at each other. Clara seems to have learned some bad affection habits from her friend Sebastien. She likes to grab on tight to people, babies, animals...and pull them in and bury her face in them....often with her mouth wide open. It's especially bad when she tries it on the hind end of the cat. She is also very into pointing out eyes, ears, nose, mouth....but she sometimes misses and gets her finger IN your eye (or ear or nose or mouth). This is not such a big deal with us, but it's not so pleasant for little babies.
Dad was driving up to his place in Wisconsin and came over for a night so we could spend some time with him. Here's Clara brushing her hair for the wedding (oh yeah- we were in MN to attend the wedding of Pete's cousin. Thus "Cousins"). Please note the adorable green dress with the eyelet lace.
And here she is brushing Grandpa's hair. Dad thought Clara was a little unsure of her Grandpa, but I could tell she was actually quite fond of him.
Finally, here's a family picture from Mary's camera. This is all of us at the wedding.
I'll try to post some more from that event tomorrow. I'll just add blogging to my list of things to do on my "day off" (laundry, planting, grading, bathroom cleaning, meeting at school, etc.)