What crazy week. Thank God the gingers had no idea how crappy it was in the real world and just enjoyed their spring break.

Sunday:

Look! A totally uninteresting part of a 60 year old submarine! You STILL can’t see the interesting parts (where E works on the modern ones).

Running away from their BBQ pork. Obviously they were switched at birth. Both of them.

Reading with Aunt Erin

Monday:

7:30 am in New London, CT

The first time I tore myself away from the news that day the moon was already out

I let the kids stay up for extra cuddles and totally mindless children’s shows

Tuesday:

I spy ye, matey!

Even pirates need a cup of milk sometimes

Passed out with her (old) Easter hat

Wednesday:

Good morning, this is my tongue.

The gingers are doing their best impression of a cheesy movie slow motion run

Reading hat

Meal plan + shopping list = What’s For Dinner? will be back soon

Thursday:

Stroller Strides at the beach EFF YEAH

The view made working out less sucky

Children’s Museum Hat

A B C’S ARE BETTER WHEN THEY ARE AS LOUD AS THIS SIGN

Friday:

Caught red handed!

There are approximately 300 of these on my phone from this day, since the kids got the iDevices while I watched the news…

…and read ALL the Twitters.

Saturday:

And sometimes my view during Stroller Strides is LESS inspiring

Introducing the gingers to Moe’s

Swinging is fun

 And now school vacation week is OVER and I get some Suzanne-time back. I love love love my children more than life itself, but there’s a point during the day where I want to lock them both in a closet. THE WHINING OH THE WHINING. It’s amazing what a difference 5 hours a week makes to my sanity and patience. Oh and P.S. World? Try not to go totally INSANE again next week, ok?

SPRING!!! IT’S SPRING IN CONNECTICUT! We are officially outside-people until October. Feel free to join us at any park or beach within a 100 mile radius every afternoon.

Sunday:

This looks like the before half of a GIF where 4 kids fall into a stingray touch tank.

I’m sure kneeling on the state-of-the-art touch screen is good for it.

Mmmmmmm lemonade

Monday:

Bubbles bubbles bubbles bubbles bubbles my bubbles

A random fever on Sunday left someone exhausted on Monday

FLYING TODDLER!

Tuesday:

Really excited about school

Not super excited about her headband

The love throwing stuff into water. Keep your rock and antique coin collections far away from children.

Our evening walk as interrupted by FOUR firetrucks responding to a false alarm. Best walk ever!

Wednesday:

That is the face of a tiny temper tantrum over wearing her hat DURING gymnastics

Tiny girl, huge nuclear power plant

MOM. THERE ARE SPRINKLES ON THAT ICE CREAM CONE.

The most un-relaxing birthday dinner ever.

Thursday:

Gym self portrait

Dance party at the end of Tangled

This is the pirate ship that goes to find the treasure but they have to watch out for the SEA MONSTER.

Friday:

Tulip inspector

Hello money pit

Fancy.

Saturday:

Throwing food at some very uninterested ducks

Do they have chardonnay, dahling?

Once a year fancy hair for the Submarine Ball

That yellow medal is for shooting a guy at 50 yards. Or maybe for signing a piece of paper. One of those.

The MGM Grand ballroom is pretty fancy

That might have been the busiest weekend of our entire year. This week is spring break for the kids, which is a different kind of busy. I suspect there will be a LOT of photo posts this week.

Sometimes when you ask your almost-four year old what kind of birthday party he wants, he says “Goats!” and you panic. And sometimes when you ask again he says “Choo choo trains!” and you’re super happy about it because you can DO trains. Trains are awesome. You also happen to have a massive collection of electric trains in your basement from both your childhood and your husband’s childhood, so a theme is born. BOOM. Vintage train birthday party it is!

I will do this mostly in pictures, since that’s the best part. HUGE post, apologies, feel free to skip if you hate parties, etc etc etc. I’m going to put a truly insane number of photos on Facebook and Flikr too.

Decorations:

I printed banners and food labels on brown cardstock and cut pennants out of scrapbook paper (some new, some leftover from previous party supplies). The vintage stuff lying around (suitcases, globes, lanterns, etc) is from my own supply of junk collectibles or borrowed from my parents. All the train and sign clip art I made using a free fonts from dafont.com – Eisenbahn is the vintage train; old seals tfb and PostageStamps are on the water bottle labels; wmroadsigns, wmthe50s and wmtransport1 are the rest (for the record, the old fashiondy font on almost everything is CM Old Western Shadow, also from dafont.com).

My dad made the railroad crossing sign out of scrap wood in my basement and I painted the letters using a stencil I bought at A.C. Moore. Dad also built the wood table to set up the electric trains. Evan and E painted the Melissa & Doug wooden train on the food table together. The tablecloths are a collection of sheets/fabric I keep in a box just for occasions like this.

I made the Arrivals/Departures board out of just a piece of composite board painted with chalkboard paint. I made up trains and times based on family names and dates.

Food:

I made train cars with disposable aluminum trays and black cardstock to serve the food, including a coal car, veggie car, and a berry boxcar. I served lemonade in glass “milk” jars (actually Target frappuchino bottles I used for Caroline’s last two birthdays) with fancy straws, old fashioned root beer in bottles, “Chugga Chugga” water bottles and juice in Take’n’Toss cups for the kids.

Here’s my train inspired menu –

Steam Puffs – coconut macaroons
Coal – Krispie treats make with Cocoa Puffs
Train shaped cookies
Train shaped cucumber sandwiches
Rails – black licorice (courtesy of the American Licorice Company! Happy National Licorice Day!)
Railroad ties – vanilla sandwich wafers
Soft pretzels
Switch Cheese Sandwiches – grilled ham and swiss on wheat bread
Cheddar-nooga Choo Choo Sandwiches – grilled cheddar cheese on pumpernickel-rye swirl bread
Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Southwest Dip – Heluva Good black bean queso dip (REALLY delicious)
Veggies
Berry Boxcar – Fruit
Conductor Cubes – cheese cubes
Stoplight Kabobs – watermelon, cantaloupe and honeydew melon
Short Line Shortcake – mini cups of pound cake, strawberries and whipped topping
Golden Spike(d) Lemonade – I left the spiking up to my guests so no one accidentally got their kid drunk

And the cake is a good old-fashioned super sweet grocery store cake from Big Y. It was a Thomas cake until I took Thomas and Percy off and put a little Amtrak train on it. Boom! Custom vintage train cake.

Games:

I made the child-sized trains out of cardboard boxes I’ve been collecting for a few weeks. I covered the boxes in plain paper (the kind you buy at Ikea to go on their art easel) and cut out construction paper shapes to make them look sort of like trains. The tracks all over my house are electrical tape purchased at Home Depot. We used approximated 8 60-foot rolls (they come in packs of 10) and E free-handed all the tracks.

As a craft, I bought cheap paint, brushes and wooden cars at the craft store and let the kids decorate their own wooden trains.

My dad worked really hard to set up both model train sets so the kids could run them. That was all stuff we/he already owned but the Tyco HO gauge electric trains are really inexpensive on Ebay. The kids also played with the Thomas/Ikea/Brio wooden tracks and trains.

The kids took home their painted trains, conductor hats and train whistles as favors.

Sources & Supplies (if I missed something you’re looking for just ask!)

Vintage travel posters (plus a calendar I dismantled) – AllPosters.com
Train whistles – Oriental Trading Co.
Conductor hats – Oriental Trading Co.
Wood trains for painting – A.C. Moore
Train lollipops – Oriental Trading Co.
Train car serving dishes – ShopRite
Train shaped cookie cutter – A.C. Moore
Train shaped sandwich cutter – gift, available on Amazon
Sisal twine – Home Depot
Tiny clothes pins – Amazon.com
Photo book & prints – Shutterfly.com
Brown burlap – Home Depot
Orange burlap & fabric – Joann’s

Whew! That was exhausting but super fun. Now please come over and eat all this leftover cake before I do.

So so many thanks to my parents for their help and to Kim for letting me borrow some of her photos!

This might sounds strange – or it might make absolute total sense to you, because you feel the same way – but having two kids is WAY easier than having one.

I can’t actually prove that, either scientifically or anecdotally, since I’ve never had one kid at this age and compared it to having two kids at this age. Comparing what life was like with one baby or with one toddler while I was pregnant with a second hardly seems fair, since babies and pregnancy are both harder in general than preschool aged kids. Well, harder when it comes to the amount of serious hands-on work, not harder when it comes to handing acts of child terrorism and manipulation. And none of this applies to having twins, since the amount of work doubles at the same rate. I can’t even imagine how hard that would be compared to just having two semi-close together. Plus this probably doesn’t work on kids who are a lot farther apart – I don’t think having me was very helpful to my mother when she had my brother seven years later. I was too busy with seven year old stuff to play with a baby or fetch things or help out.

I think I need to start over.

Evan and Caroline together is WAY easier than just having one ginger Davis bebeh.

They don’t always get along, but I’d say we’re at about an 80% best friends/20% hitting each other ratio. After the zoo on Saturday, I tossed them both in the car while I loaded up the stroller with instructions to take their coats off and get in their seats. Caroline’s coat had velcro and a zipper, which was too much for her to figure out, so she turned to Evan and said “Help?” He immediately un-velcroed and un-zipped her coat, then said “Here Caroline, get in your seat and I’ll give you your juice.” It was adorable, and heart-melting, and a huge help for me. They do stuff like that all the time. Their teacher said every time they see each other at school (they’re in different classes) they hug or touch fingers through the playground fence or say “I MISS YOU!”

Hand-holding so no one runs into traffic, helping with coats and hats, fetching things for each other, finding shoes, finding lost toys – ALL THINGS I would have to do if they weren’t doing it for each other. On top of making my life easier, I like to think I’m making them better, nicer people. They’re both pretty good at sharing and taking turns for small, selfish children. They’re good at playing games with other kids or making friends or joining a group. I’ve been asked four times this week if they’re twins, since even strangers can see how close they are.

I don’t know if they’re going to be best friends forever. I doubt it, although I hope they always like each other. But right now having two kids to play with each other, help each other and help me is awesome. Two gingers are definitely better than one.