Montage

Here are some pics of recent Ickler fam events. This was the last Avs game of the season, so of course we had to go.Rockin' out in the box.

Grumpy pants morning.

Our little biker gang!

Sleeping in tandem.

Worst Easter pic ever.

Cuter.

Cutest!

Just looking for a dipe.

Maren with her BFF Nora.

Here is gorgeous princess Addi just before leaving for her friend Maggie's princess themed birthday party.

Another family zoo day.

Both girls got to pick out something of their choice from the zoo gift shop because their behavior at the zoo was fantastic. Addi picked a baby elephant that she named Bango, and Maren picked out a book all about animals. Later, after we got home Addi drew an awesome picture of Bango that we just had to take a picture of -- and Maren wanted her baby "Sweetie" to be in the photo as well.
Addi has been extremely supportive of our efforts to potty train Maren.
The girls have been great lately -- completely maddening when they fight and bicker, but otherwise cute and hilarious.

Maren has been full of attitude and enjoys testing limits where she can find them. She pulls a complete fit when she doesn't get her way, so when she screams it is hard to tell if she is mortally wounded, or if she was simply unsuccessful at stealing a toy away from her sister.

Maren is enjoying her early literacy class at our local library, and is getting good at singing the songs and listening to the stories that are read by the teacher. Because of all of the hide and seek the girls like to play, Maren can almost count to 20 (minus 4 or 5 numbers in there, but still rather impressive)! Her sentences and verbal descriptions are becoming longer she uses new words every day. After going through speech therapy with Addi it is cool to see Maren learn how to make new sounds on her own, the same sounds that we had to work on with Addi.

Addi is in her last week of preschool. I am having some mixed emotions about the whole thing, but when I told Addi that Wednesday was her last day of preschool she responded with, "Yeah, now I can start Kindergarten!!!"

Addi constantly amazes me with her enthusiasm for knowledge. Her latest obsession is animals. Every once in a while we will watch a show on Animal Planet to feed her obsession. She doesn't seem to get overly upset when something sad happens to an animal on such shows (ie. a cute little gazelle getting taken down by a lion), but she loves to talk about predators and prey and how they all interact. The other day we watched show about a guy who collects venom from snakes and lizards so he can send it to research labs to be used to make new medicines and anti-venom. After the show she packed up her back pack and ran around the loft catching plastic animals from her wild animal park with kitchen tongs and then used a toy block to milk them for their venom. It was quite awesome watching her do exactly what she saw on the show and throw out animal names like "crab spider" "viper" and "Iranian monitor." That's our girl!

Although she is getting to be quite the animal expert she still has much to learn about the real world. A couple of weeks ago Brian went on a short business trip to Seattle. As we sat at the kitchen table eating breakfast when he was gone Addi commented on how sad she was for Daddy. "Why do you feel sorry for him honey, he will have a good time on his trip," I said. She replied with, "Well, Mommy, he will be gone working all day and then he won't be near home, so he will have to stay up all night!" We had a little talk about these crazy things called hotels and she felt much better for him.