Natalie and Noah visit

My kids had the best time playing with Natalie and Noah the last few days.  As they left yesterday, Amelia said she was so sad that they couldn't stay and play with her forever.

The kids spent a lot of time playing together independently, and there were only a few incidents when Becky or I had to step in to remind them to share or not to push each other.  Here's Noah during hide and seek:

 While they were enjoying play time, Becky and I were so productive - we baked, we made tool belts for Natalie and Noah's birthday party, and we made a baby quilt.  Amelia and Noah helped with the quilt by pushing the pedal to make the sewing machine sew.

On Friday, Amelia wanted to freeze water to make an ice skating rink for Barbie.  This turned into filling all kinds of containers with water, plastic animals, and food coloring, freezing them outside, then using warm water to melt them to rescue the frozen animals.  The food coloring made it pretty messy, along with the fact that water got poured or spilled all over the table.  But they had fun!  Noah's shirt got wet early on, and he took it partway off because he doesn't like to wear wet clothes.

Since we were already messy, we decided to move to painting.  We tried rubber band splatter painting, but only Amelia and Becky were interested in doing that.  Becky created a whole series of paintings complete with creative names.  You can see from Natalie's face that she did not like the paint splattering all over.  Then we did some fold the paper in half, dot with paint, and smush projects.  Everyone really liked those.

Then it was bath time!  It was the first time Natalie and Noah had had a bubble bath, and I think they liked it.  Noah stayed in the tub at least 15 minutes after everyone else got out.

On Saturday, the kids played dressup.

Noah dressed up as the bee prince, but then changed into an evil witch outfit with a princess crown.  He and Amelia kept turning each other into things - it looked like a duel!  Natalie was being a silly monster in this photo:

And while Becky and I finished up a project and made dinner, the kids got to watch an episode of Dora.  They all sat together on the couch snuggled up under a blanket.  They look a little scared here, but it was fun to listen to them answering Dora's questions.