My sister (Sarah) and her family (Kevin, Summer, and Savannah) came to visit us this week. We met them up in Asheville and stayed there for a few days and then spent a couple of days in Charlotte. Here they are at Chimney Rock.
We went to the Biltmore Estate which is the largest privately-owned home in the US. It is over 135K square feet and has 250 rooms. Here's Claire running around and in the process of taking her shirt off.
Family photo at the Biltmore.
Claire called the Biltmore "the big house". It was great spending time with family.
Claire decided to get up and move all of her blankets and stuffed animals into the hotel closet and slept there. When we went to bed I moved her back to her bed and she got upset so we let her sleep in the closet all night.
1. Summer and Savannah at Chimney Rock. 2. Franks at Biltmore. 3. Ackers at Biltmore. 4. Summer and Savannah near the flower garden.
1. Summer and Savannah in front of the tulips. 2. Kevin and Claire Bear. 3. With our neices at Chimney Rock. 4. Jen and Claire.
I don't remember much from this week since I'm adding this to the blog in late April. I had to fly to NYC for work on Thursday and Friday due to one of my projects ramping up. That's actually the reason why I'm late to adding stuff to the blog. Here Claire is Skyping with Grandma & Grandpa Frank. She really enjoys Skyping with family.
Parker chilling in his bed. He's a good dog.
This weekend we went to Disney because Jen ran a half marathon with her friend Sara. On Sunday we went to Animal Kingdom. Claire liked petting the goats.
Claire enjoyed the pool even though it was very chilly. I know, the text doesn't fit the photo....
Disney photos.
Animals at Animal Kingdom. Claire's favorites were the girafes and elephants.
This Tuesday was Claire's 2nd birthday so we threw her a birthday party at Monkey Joe's with 13 of her little friends.
She was very excited when she woke up on her birthday. We were talking up her birthday on the days leading up.
The Zack family came into town over the weekend to help celebrate Claire's birthday. Here Eric is going down a slide with Piper and Claire.
The birthday girl got a cool balloon hat from the staff.
Here's Claire opening one of her birthday gifts on Tuesday.
Her buddy Max gave her a birthday hug.
Here are some of Claire's friends that joined in the fun.
Friends continued....
Friends continued...
Claire loves reading. Each night before bed she has bath time, then books with a small piece of chocolate and milk, followed by a tuck and lights out.
Chocolate after bath is always a highlight.
Parker and Claire are still figuring out their boundaries.
Claire is a sneaky one so we've had to come up with one more use for duct tape. In the middle of the night she will slide her arms into her jammies and take her diaper off. Every once in a while her diaper will be outside of her jammies which means she pulled it through the neck of the jammies. We've started putting a small piece of duct tape to ensure that she can't get to the diaper flaps. She's actually started asking for the tape each night and slapping it once it's on.
Parker...
Claire loves pop up books.
I've been very busy at work lately so I haven't had time to update my blog or exercise. It's now April 18th and I'm updating my blog from early February.
Claire eating a sucker that Luna (from across the street) gave her.
RECAP:
* Claire got sick with a fever and stayed home from school a couple of days
* Jen accepted a job offer and is now doing IT recruiting
* I sprained my ankle pretty bad playing basketball on Friday
Claire is lucky that she is looking more and more like Jen every day.
Coloring with her different colored pens. What she really does though is take the caps off, scribble a bit, put the caps in one area, and then put the caps back on. Repeat...
Claire and Parker are slowly learning their boundaries. He's very good around her but likes to lick her face. I'm not sure when kids typically learn to push the pedals on a bike but we figured the longer she's around it the more likely she'll be to figure it out.
She likes to do things on her own. Like opening the blueberries, taking one out, eating it, closing the blueberries, then repeating....
Claire is a bit of a daredevil in some aspects but reserved in others. She feels the need for speed.
It was Jen's birthday on Friday so we went to dinner to celebrate.
We celebrated her birthday with Claire on Saturday evening.
Some of Claire's favorite things at the moment are her Play Doh, coloring with pens or crayons, her bike, her friends at school, her froggie, sea horse, and nemo, LeapFrog alphabet and numbers videos while in the car, and her piece of chocolate each night after bath.
She's growing, but isn't quite filling out my shoes yet.
She's still a big fan of black beans, avacado, and cheese.
The Zack family came to visit us this weekend. Claire got to spend some quality time with her BFF Piper. Here they are at Discovery Place Kids in a Ford Mustang.
They climbed up the stairs, crawled through a tunnel, then went down a slide all by themselves after we showed them how to do it the first time.
This was a failed week on my part. Things were hectic since it was back to work and a short week. I don't think I took any photos and don't recall anything from the week. Claire, if you are reading this when you are older....I apologize for your gap in history.