And just one more for good measure...

Ella loves talking to Nico, especially since he's so responsive now. Here's what happened the other day when she told him to make a funny face. Maybe he's taking after Aunt Lisa.

(A sidenote: I especially found this funny in opposition to his oh-so-serious Che t-shirt.)

Playing in the tube...

Dijar came home one day last week with several giant trash bags and an idea. Add in some duct tape and one trusty blower motor, and here's what resulted. Don't you wish you were here to join in the fun?

Spring flowers...

A couple of weeks ago, the Es got the planting bug, so D and I took the kids to Home Depot and let them pick out flowers. Both of them were excited to plant, but Ella has definitely shown more interest since then. She's very good about reminding me that we need to go out and water them every day. Egan's typical mo is to skip the flowers and go straight to playing at the sand table. These photos are from yesterday's watering/bubble-blowing/sand-playing session.

And here's one of Ella "checking email" on her laptop. How strange it is to think that she'll never know of a world without that kind of technology. At three (well, four tomorrow), she's already adept at using a mouse, navigating a web page, even playing PS3 games (thanks to Dijar).

Ella's Birthday Party

With Janie home over spring break and planning for Ella's birthday party, taking pictures and blogging have taken a backseat. In fact, I didn't get any photos at all from the party last weekend. Thankfully, Dijar backed me up with his trusty camera phone, so I've got some to share. The composition and character of these is great even if the quality is a bit lacking.

Here are several fun shots from pre-party.

And here are a few of Nico with Jessica after Sunday morning waffles.

If you'd like to see more great photos of EEN (and family) from the last couple of weeks, you should check out Janie's blog at http://ladyponies23.blogspot.com/.

Me no likey

Nico's a pretty easy-to-please baby. He doesn't get upset very often. But then we had the great idea to put all three kids in the bathtub together to get clean and get some cute photos. This was his reaction. Not sure if it was the big bathtub or the rowdy siblings that got to him, but either way, guess we'll stick to bathing him separately for awhile longer. (BTW, he got so upset so quickly that we didn't even get pictures of all three of them. We'll have to try again in a month or so.)

Gender differences in action

Now that Nico's sitting up, Ella and Egan have been playing and interacting with him a lot more. This includes adding to his wardrobe. Can you guess which hats were added by which child?

(Egan also added the "necklace" to the fireman ensemble--he likes to keep us on our toes in terms of staying away from gender stereotyping.)

Beach trip, el fin...

So even though it didn't get much above 70 during our trip, there was no getting out of putting on bathing suits and braving the cold ocean waves. The Es and Dijar managed to stay in for five minutes or so, while their wimpy mama kept her clothes on and only walked in up to her ankles. Ella had been begging to surf on her little kickboard, and she got her chance on Wednesday.

After that quick dip, we headed back to the hotel hot tub (or as Egan calls it, the "hot pool")to warm up. All of us enjoyed ourselves there. The hotel had a really nice pool area--it's too bad it wasn't warmer.

On our last full day in Galveston, the sun came out for awhile and we headed for one of the newly reconstructed beaches to work on the sand castle we'd been talking about since before we left home. Here's a photo at the beginning and one towards the end of construction. Dijar headed up the building, while Egan did the digging and Ella hunted for shells and rocks to decorate with.

Nico and I sat on the beach and played. He's sitting up pretty well by himself lately and had a great time trying to get the sand into his mouth.

Those of you with keen eyes may have noticed that everyone in the first sand castle photo was dry and everyone in the second photo was wet. That's because they took a break in the middle for one last dip in the ocean. The previous trips had made them brave enough to explore out into deeper water. Ella came running back in to visit N and me, and this was her response when I asked her if she was a surfer girl:

No words necessary, huh? Egan had fun too, as evidenced here:

We ate at the Rainforest Cafe twice on this trip, even though the animals moving around really scared Egan. He spent most of those meals glued to my hip or in my lap. Nico thought the whole thing ws great. He especially liked the fish pattern on our table and being able to sit in the highchair and watch us all eat.

And thus ends the first beach trip we've all taken together. Overall it was a really good experience. All of us had fun and it wasn't quite as hard as I'd anticipated to keep all three kids (and two adults) occupied and happy.

Exploring the marshes and the aquarium

On a couple of mornings last week, the kids and I explored the saltwater marshes. Galveston suffered extensive damage during Hurricane Ike, so there was a lot of debris to work around, but the Es loved seeing the giant boats and the birds. We saw some spoonbills and egrets, but I only got a picture of the great blue heron.

In the afternoon on Tuesday, we went to the aquarium at Moody Gardens. The Rainforest Pyramid and the Imax were closed for repairs, but we got to see a shark exhibit and the kids especially liked the seals and the penguins.

Here's one of the best non-people pictures. Who doesn't love a pufferfish?

And this is one of my favorites with people. I love Ella's reflection in the tunnel wall. (Just FYI for anyone who hasn't been to this aquarium, it's a good one for little ones because they have neat features like this tunnel and it's not overwhelmingly long. We were there for about and hour and half and got to see all exhibits, find all of the shark stamps for the scavenger hunt, and play for awhile at the touch tank.)

Here are Ella and Egan inside a diver's cage. Ella kept telling me not to get too close because she was a shark and she would eat me. I tried to explain that the sharks (hopefully) stay outside of the cage, but she liked her game better.

Nico was awake and happy pretty much all of this excursion.

Ella convinced Egan to get low and talk to these fish. I wish I could've gotten the view from the other side.

I've got some more pictures from this trip that I'll get posted later today or tomorrow. Hope you're enjoying them as much as we enjoyed taking them.