(Pre-)Valentine's Day Fun!

Valentine's day with twins... what to say? Remember how the kids love helicopters? Well, Lea decided that the kids should get helicopters for Valentine's day. They had both liked the "Harold the Helicopter" that they played with at Barnes and Noble, so Lea ordered one for each of them (we haven't quite learned to share one of anything yet, in fact sometime even sharing two of the same thing is difficult). The Harolds had arrived some time before V Day, and it took a good deal of will power to hold off on giving them to the kids - especially when they still run to the entertainment center everyday (several times a day) wanting me to fly the remote controlled helicopter.

Our wills finally gave out on the 13th. The kids have really started to like opening presents:


And more than opening them, they enjoyed flying their new helicopters...


And since we were in the business of giving Valentine's day gifts early, the kids and I gave Lea her gift on the 13th too. I'm all too often a lame present giver, and I tried to step up my game this time. As is probably well known, I'm not a fan of overly ornate anything, let alone jewelery. In my browsings around on flickr, I came across photos of jewelery from a small outfit called pineapple seed. Their jewelery was simple and beautiful, and I found a lovely necklace there for Lea.
( Lea says: I have been wanting a "Mommy Necklace," but most of them are just not my style, nor Michael's. He did a wonderful job of finding this lovely necklace made of a simple, larger silver hoop with a clear crystal that represents the "Mommy" and two smaller hoops that represent the "babies", one with a pink crystal and one with a blue crystal. I was very surprised by the gift and I love it!)


Not being one to wear much bling myself, Lea knew what I would really like for Valentine's... COOKIES! Behold "The Chewy"!

I wasn't the only one to enjoy the cookies either, both C&G partook of the chewy goodness.


All in all, a great (pre-)Valentine's Day!

Helicopters

So Lea and the kids were kind enough to get me a miniature remote controlled helicopter for Christmas. Observe the look of joy on my face as I practice flying it before we head North for Christmas proper.

Well it turns out that the kids LOVE to watch it fly. They Love the Helicopter. They love it so much that when I come home from work, they run over to the door in the entertainment center where I keep the it and pound on the door until I get the helicopter out (this pounding is behavior that we'll have to modify, but anyway...).

Well, it turns out that it's not just actual flying helicopters that they like but even non-flying ones too. We went on an outing to Barnes and Noble today so that we could get them some new books. After playing for a while in one end of the kids' section, we migrated down toward the other end. There we discovered a train table outfitted with Thomas the Tank Engine trains. Among the trains Gillian discovered the "Harold", the helicopter that goes along with the trains. After finding it, she started to fly it around the kids' section:

(I apologize for the poor quality of the video, it's my first cell phone video). When Gillian eventually got tired, Colin had to pick it up and fly it around too. They're OBSESSED with helicopters! I see this as a hopeful sign that they'll be engineers.