Last week we went to Pittsburgh to stay with our friends, Eric and Erin, while Matt and Eric attended a conference together. For dinner one night the Elsers with their 3 kids and the O'Connells with their 4! kids joined us, too. Its always so funny to see our spawn running around playing with each other. I hope and pray that they stay buddies through the years and odds are that some of them will end u
p at Nyack! :)
Tonight I went out with just Emma. I was planning to go to the library by myself, but at the last minute Matt and I decided to divide the kids up. I do want to try to do something separately with each kid each week; we'll see how it goes, but its a good goal. I know that everyone with multiple children can attest to the fact that any time that one parent has less than the total amount of kids makes for a much easier outing.
We took the girls to a splash park last Monday, on Matt's day off. I highly recommend a place like this because Siri could run around in the water without having to be constantly supervised as in a pool. Siri was very brave, running through the very tall fountains and falls, while Emma enjoyed climbing on a whale and stepping on the small fountains. It was great for our family day and having McDonalds for lunch topped it off!
We were invited to a book release party, and we had to arrive late, but we were really glad that we went because the kids had so much fun. There were others from synagogue there and Emma got her face painted for the first time. She sat so well! Siri loved the outside of the bouncy castle because it had princesses on it, and she got a balloon (that girl loves her "bms")! They also got to eat lots of cake! It started raining towards the end and all the parents rushed to get the kids under the tent; after wandering around under it for a few minutes Emma went to stand out in the rain by herself. It was pretty funny, and soon Siri and the other kids followed. Us adults are so worried all the time!
ough still cautious to get her head wet. Siri stayed her distance for quite a while. I finally took her hand and walked her around, through the little sprays, and she still didn't care for it. The kids played on the stairs and walls, and Emma mastered jumping down 2 stairs! (It was a very funny process to watch.) Then finally Siri started small: putting her hands in the little streams, then she gradually was running all over, totally soaked. By the time that we left, about 2 hours after we had arrived, 2 1/2 hours after Jessica and the 
kids had gotten there, Zack started to get interested! It was certainly a fun, FREE, day!
Today was supposed to be rainy (it did not drip one little bit!) so we took a little trip over to Ikea. It is 1/2 hour away, and Siri has not been doing well in cars lately, but we made it and got to park in a family parking spot, right up close! I wasn't sure if the supervised play area would work, and as it turned out Emma was exactly on the line for height, so we skipped it. There are little mini play areas all throughout the store, though, interwoven in all the room layouts and specific "rooms" of shelves, furniture, etc, so we just took our time walking through the store. There were a few times that we had to rush through the section, like when they wanted to crawl on every single bed, and Emma wanted to get under the covers of every bed! There was a little slide in the section with kids' rooms. We ate an abbreviated lunch and ran to the bathroom, and then made our way throught he marketplace. That's where most of the breakdowns happened. Siri was still hungry, and Emma just wanted to play, but we finally made it through the checkout!