Tayls of Life, Love, & Babies: Fall - Winter

We've been keeping busy over the past fall, winter, and spring. Things we've done:

The kids went with Nick and Billie to Frontier Days parade and craft show downtown while I worked that weekend. They had a ton of fun and Gabrielle picked out a giant stuff animal snake at the craft show......
We went apple picking and got fresh donuts and cider at the orchard in the fall
We all went to the Silver Bells parade downtown Lansing to kick off the Christmas season. There were a ton of people of course, but it was neat to do. Oliver got a little bored after a while but it was a fun time.
Gabrielle went to a birthday party at the aquatic center and Nick took Oliver for free swim one day.
We went to the light show at the zoo just before Christmas.
We saw Santa too, of course. All four of us went and there was a big line. Gabrielle wrote out a letter to Santa all by herself and we could read! Oliver was excited this year and told Santa "I want Thomas" because that's really all he wanted.
Gabrielle, Billie, and I went to the live Cinderella musical at the Wharton Center in the fall. There were a couple of times that Cinderella did some really awesome magic tricks that surprised the whole crowd.
We went trick or treating at Halloween time. Gabrielle was a fabulous beautiful purple vampire and Oliver was Thomas the train (to his distain). He still is completely against costumes but I made his wear his Thomas smock. That took some work though. It was cold and rainy but we trudged through. Finally Oliver fell in a giant puddle right before we were going to give up......he stood up in the rain, took of his smock, threw it on the ground, and yelled "I'm done!!" Kind of funny coming from a not-yet-three year old.
The four of us went to Impressions 5 for the afternoon. It was perfect because there was a big train exhibit for Oliver and a dinosaur fossil exhibit for Gabby.
We went sledding twice at the big sledding hill in town. We had inflatable tubes and the kids had a blast going down really fast, both together and by themselves.
Gabrielle and I went on a BIG girl date before Camille was born. She got her ears pierced February 13th 2016. Nick said she could get them done for about the past year but she has always been too scared and not wanted to. She finally said she wanted to do it. We went to Claire's in the mall and there was a HUGE line. Finally it was her turn and they were marking the spots on her ears. She has so much anxiety and was crying a little. I told her she didn't have to do it if she didn't want to and she said "no, I want to do it" and sucked it up. She got them done at the same time and didn't even cry. She felt better after them cleaned them off with cool cleaner and was so excited! We browsed the mall at our own pace and went out to dinner.
We also go to go to Great Wolf Lodge as a gift from Ron and Billie for Christmas. It was kind of hard to do that busy (wet!) weekend at 7-8 months pregnant, but we had a great time. We went with Jason and Isaiah, and Jason's friend Jenn and her two girls. Oliver did the medium sized water slides that were pretty big, and loved them! He also swam all by himself with a life jacket! Gabrielle did everything there! She even went on the really big water slides with Nick (I was too pregnant....)
Gabrielle and Nick went to the Daddy Daughter Dance at her school in the spring. She picked out a big, poofy pink petal dress out of the baby section (5T) at Kmart. She looked at all the dresses in the girls' section, but she knew exactly what she wanted and picked her big dress out! Nick got her a corsage and they went to Applebees to dinner before the dance. Nick said Gabs drank ranch dressing out of cup at dinner.....eww, though it doesn't surprise me. She loves ranch.
We finally got out Gabrielle's kite and flew it! It was tougher than we thought, but it got up pretty high!
Dyed Easter eggs
Oliver played Candy Land for the first time and does really well with it! He loves puzzles, to do mazes in workbooks, and is enjoying tracing letters. He is starting to get into monster trucks and likes watching Blaze and the Monster Machine on TV. He says "mommy, I want a Monster Machine birthday. And rainbow balloons with purple, pink, violet, and blue balloons. And hearts." Haha.....so random. He's also getting good at building train tracks with his wooden tracks. He says he plays with girls at school and likes Lexie and Estin the best. He loves riding his little red tricycle still, but is interested in getting a "bike with a chain likes daddy's" soon.
Gabrielle loves to play school (calendar, hot lunch/cold lunch, attendance, pledge of allegiance, Chirp Alerts, etc), she likes doing her girl Lego Sets, dancing, playing baby/day care, and drawing/designing fashion. She still enjoys nature and finds bugs, spiders, leaves, and worms all the time. She loves her friends and definitely loves her teacher at school. She tested 100% of the whole 1st grade sight word list in May of Kindergarten and continues to do great in school.