38 months, 8 months, Breakheart Pond, all that sunshine

Last Monday, Madeline turned 38 months old.

She's grown a lot since this!

Then on Thursday, Oliver turned 8 months old.  Sadly, we missed his picture that day and took this set Friday.  First, sibling love:

Then, our little eight month old Beetle.  (Here, by the way, is his sister at eight months.)

On Saturday, we met up with Ilan et al. for a hike around Breakheart Pond.  (I could tell it was going to be a fun excursion when we found a flattened and mummified frog in the parking lot at the pond.)

The kids did a great job walking, even when weighed down with rocks they'd collected.

We saw a snake!

And then stopped for a snack.

Ilan was kind enough to share his roll with Madeline, in this lovely picture that Tamar took.

The day was beautiful, as was the location.

Once we'd completed the loop, the kiddos were still full of energy.  They collected sticks and pine cones to drop over the upstream edge of a bridge over Breakheart Brook and watch emerge from the downstream side.

Afterward, we had lunch at the Middle of Nowhere Diner, where the younger generation continued to display considerable energy while the elder generation were mostly very hungry.

Today was Easter, which of course meant that the Easter Bunny visited!

Madeline was very excited by this.  Oliver was unfortunately sick but still in pretty high spirits.

While Oliver napped later, we dyed eggs.

Madeline snacked on one that had cracked during the dying process.

The eggs turned out quite nicely!

After some ibuprofen and a long afternoon nap, Oliver was more like his usual self, as you can see in this picture that is adorable even though it depicts Madeline being a bit naughty.

For dinner I fired up the grill while the others lounged on a blanket on the grass (well, in truth Madeline doesn't generally lounge -- she ran around doing various things that she deemed very important, like baking a cake from dirt).

After dinner, Madeline was asking for bedtime by quarter to seven, and then at bedtime asked to skip songs because she was very sleepy.  Must be all that sunshine.