April Fun...

Playing mousetrap...  Gracie has been loving Mousetrap lately (she wants to play it almost every day).  We have fun playing it (although I don't get to do much, since she rolls for me, moves my mouse, and sets up the pieces for me...)  They like to test out the pieces all along the way as we're setting up, and Julia especially likes to dump the marble down the staircase over and over again.

 
 

SUMMER IN APRIL

We've had a stretch of 4 days of summertime temperatures (it got up into the 90s Sat-Tues of this past week).  So, we've been eating watermelon, playing on our new slip n slide, and trying to stay cool...
 
 
 
 
 

Gracie's Birthday

We had a fun day celebrating Gracie's birthday. She was walking around all morning singing "Today is my birthday" over and over. Here are some of the highlights...

Gracie's picks for her birthday meals... breakfast-oatmeal, lunch-peanut butter and jelly, and dinner-pancakes (with rainbow sprinkles & eggs).

Gracie trying on some of her new clothes...

Gracie's 4th Birthday Party!

We had Gracie's birthday party on Saturday at the park near our house. It was beautiful weather, and the kids all had a fun time running around and playing together. It was a fun and relaxing way to celebrate Gracie's 4th birthday!

Gracie's purple butterfly cake. (It was hot enough that by the time we ate the cake, the flowers were all melted off the cupcakes)

The whole crew at the party... Chloe, Corrinn, Serena, Gracie, Lydia, Andy, and Sami.

In Toronto

After Niagara Falls, we went up to Toronto.  We didn't end up getting to do as many things as we had hoped (between some things being closed still from the winter, and all of us (& especially Julia) being tired, we couldn't do quite as much as we had planned.

We did walk about 9 miles one of the days we were there (Chloe & Gracie walked all that way too).  We got to walk along the Harbourfront of Lake Ontario, rode subways, and did lots of walking between our hotel, the CN Tower, and a Tex-mex place that we found a few blocks away that we just had to go to...

We went up into the CN Tower...
 

They have a really cool glass floor up on the observation level that you can stand on and look down the leg of the tower to the ground far, far below. 
 
Julia walked right across the glass at first, but then looked down and realized how high she was, and then she wasn't so sure about standing on there anymore.

 
We also went to the Toronto Zoo.  A lot of the exhibits were still closed for the winter, but we got to see some of the important animals, like giraffes (which are Chloe's favorite land animal...her favorite sea animal is a dolphin, and her favorite farm animal is a horse...)
 
 
 

Here are Chloe and Gracie asleep in the hotel the last night we were in Toronto.  They were so exhausted by that last night that they went right to sleep, and when we looked over at them, we noticed that they were holding hands...  Such sweet sisters.  They really do love each other...most of the time!!

At the Butterfly Conservatory

One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to the butterfly conservatory in Niagara Falls.  The girls had a great time seeing all the different kinds of butterflies and all the amazing flowers.

 

 

Ben got some great shots of the butterflies (although I think we annoyed him to death trying to get him to catch pictures of certain butterflies that were close by).