Are you 6? Stop!

Six years ago today. Wow. Time flies.  Beckett had a great birthday.  He's super excited for his lego party scheduled for this Saturday.  Pictures to come of that fiesta later.

New Soccer Season

Saturday was a beautiful day. Time for the first game of the soccer season. Beckett was excited to see how good he could play now that he was one of the kids from the older grade in his age group.


Here's Beckett doing a good job of listening to the coaches.


Ciaran was there to cheer on our hero.


Here he is saying, yay Beckett! Good little brother.


Beckett wasn't really in the middle of any of the action shots I took, but here he is ready to pounce.


I got a new phone and put a cool camera app on it, so I played around with making pics fancy. Here is Beckett with Borders.


Here's Beckett in half sepia tone.


And here he is all rosy cheeked after the game. Not that it matters, since the kids are only 4-5 years old, but Beckett's team won 5-1. And my dude scored all five goals. Go Beckett!


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Some twinner pics

Here's a couple of quick excuses why we never have any pictures of the twins:

1. You don't want to choose favorites by only taking pictures of one baby.

2. But then you have to try to get both of them to smile at the same time.

3. But they both think the camera is a toy, so they end up whining and screaming every time you put the camera in front of them.

4. Which equals no cute pics.  

A couple of weeks ago I was alone with the boys for the morning on a Saturday while Dawnell did something, and I thought that the boys were looking cute, so we took a couple of pics.  For this set, the guy in the black jacket is Lachlan.  The orange and blue shirt is Aidric.   

 In case you can't tell, the one on the left is Beckett, the one on the right is Ciaran.  They were also cute and a little better at smiling on command.

 I thought these pics did a good job at showing off the pretty little blue eyes of the twins.  Yet, for happy babies they aren't very good at smiling on command.

D.C. Day 3

For the final day of our trip to Washington D.C. the Moon family took a trip to the National Zoo.  So, here are some interesting facts about the National Zoo:

• They have pandas!!!  Beckett's favorite animal is a panda.  He has a book about a panda named Beckett.  Pandas are pretty cool.
• The zoo is free.  I mean, parking isn't exactly cheap, but coming from New York it seemed like a pretty good deal.  
• The best time to visit D.C. is definitely during a national holiday.  No one is working, so traffic is manageable, but all of the tourist attractions are still open. 
• However, the best time to visit the zoo is not mid-February.  We stayed about as long as we could in 40 degree weather, but we eventually had to give in.  I guess Memorial Day or Labor Day would be the best days to visit.

The pandas only hang out in their grottos when it's nicer weather.  While we got to see them, it was in the inside.  Here's one of them eating his sweet bamboo.  

 Beckett and Ciaran were excited to see the bamboo dudes...

This is a red panda.  Apparently red pandas are not actually related to pandas, but are so named because of their facial resemblance.  (Or so I recall, that may not be accurate).

 Here's all of the dudes and their headless mommy.

 Since we couldn't get near the panda we took a picture near the panda cutout.

 It wasn't all pandas though. This was a howler monkey I think.  We enjoyed these guys who were hanging out in the small mammals area.  The large monkey building was not a favorite because it smelled very bad.

 Beckett doing his best Meerkat impersonation.

 Dawnell and Ciaran liked this monkey with her little baby monkey on the back.  Very precious.

Washington D.C. Days 1 and 2

We took the boys on a weekend trip to Washington D.C. A couple of weeks ago. Actually, I went down a day early for a conference of LDS attorneys. The conference ended on Saturday though, so that still gave us some time to chill out together as a whole family.

Here is a picture of the whole gang on Saturday at the Air and Space Museum. You might notice a couple extra kids in there. We actually went down with our friends from law school. I went to the conference with the husband, and Dawnell and the wife hit the museum. They must have been quite the crew. Our dudes are 5, 3, and 1 year old twins, while our friends have a 4 year old boy and 2 year old twin girls. I actually stole this pic from their blog because Dawnell forgot the camera on Saturday.




Sunday we went to the Post Office Museum. It was okay, but very dark, and again, we forgot the camera, so you are stuck with pics from my phone.

The highlight for the boys was driving a big rig postal truck. Whooooooo whooooooo! That is Aidric trying to wrench the wheel from Ciaran's hands.











Here they all are on the Stagecoach. I don't know who that little girl is. She ain't one of the friend twins.





As huge fans of all things Utah, this sign was probably the highlight of the museum. Magna in the house!

We also showed our love of Utah by eating at Cafe Rio in suburban Virginia on Saturday night. An unexpected and delightful surprise when we drove by it on our way into the city on Saturday morning.






The boys probably had more fun swimming than anything else on the trip, so we have learned to always get a pool at your hotel. Good to know.

Coming up, day 3 of our trip, with a trip to see the Pandas at the National Zoo. We didn't forget the camera for that stop.

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Reading is Fun..damental!

When I was a kid, one of my favorite authors was Matt Christopher.  In case you aren't aware, he was a prolific author of sports novels for kids.  And we're doing our best to instill in the kids a love of books.  Over the past two weeks Beckett and I read his first chapter book ever, book 1 in the Matt Christopher "Soccer 'Cats" series.  I read one page and Beckett read the next.  Not bad for a dude in kindergarten.  




And I'm not the only one privileged to listen to Beckett.  He came home from school today with an award.  Yea Beckett for reading to the principal!  

Up next, book 2 in the Soccer 'Cats series!

Sledding

Snowstorm Nemo came with a vengeance this weekend. We weren't hit nearly as badly as New England. The foot of snow was just enough to make the hill by our house into a perfect sled run.

Beckett and Ciaran were both ready to fly down the slope.


Ciaran is on his way!




Beckett is pretending to slide down with his feet in the air.



We also made this 8 ft tall snowman in the park. Okay, we didn't make the snowman, but someone did, and we thought it was impressive.


Here are two videos, one of each dude slip sliding away... They have both had a super fun time flying down the hill the past couple of days.

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New Year's Resolution (and 2 1st haircuts)

Nobody cares about my weight loss and exercise goals, so I won't share those unless I actually have success in achieving them. But one of my other resolutions for the new year is to better capture proof of how my dudes are cute. I feel a little guilty that the number of baby Beckett pictures probably is at least ten times the amount of twin pictures combined. So we are going to try to change that. The goal is to make at least 26 blog posts this year (essentially one every two weeks).

So here is the first one...

So late in December the twins (finally) got their first haircut. Lachlan went first.




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Then Aidric...







In the end, they both did a great job, especially considering that Ciaran and I were also getting our hair cut at the same time. And they looked cute together (pay no attention to the bumps and bruises caused by being toddlers).








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Halloween 2k12

For Halloween the Moons dressed up as Angry Birds.  I know it's not Halloween yet, but our Ward's Halloween Party was Saturday night, and with a hurricane coming straight at us it's unlikely that we're going to go out trick or treating on Halloween night.  Here are our pictures.  

I asked the missionaries to take a picture of the whole family at the start of the night.  I wish they would have noticed that I had my eyes closed.  Oh well.  

As you can see, we are ANGRY Angry Birds.  Even King Pig daddy.

This is Aidric.

 Mommy and Aidric, two of the three blue birds.

Ciaran thought it would be a good idea to be an Angry Bird Vampire.

We made the twins dress up with bird hair also.  Here's Lachlan with his spiky 'do.

And Aidric with his not-so-spiky 'do.

Beckett and Ciaran at the end of the night.  They were begging to take off their heat trapping costumes ten seconds after this picture, but we had a lot of fun.  No award was given for best costume, but in my professional opinion we would have won.  Thanks to Mom and Grandma Elaine for all the hard work in putting together the costumes!