Actual birthday pictures below...
Birthday party video below. If you look carefully you can see Anna and Roby. Eli was hanging out in the back, not sure about the chaos.
Trains. They love all "things that go" but they especially love trains. They love reading about trains, playing with trains, seeing trains, going on trains, drawing trains (Sarah Jane is particularly good at doing this for them), making train sounds, and pretending to be trains. They can sing all the words to "I've been working on the railroad" and do so quite often.
Their sisters. The boys LOVE their sisters. They get up in the morning and run straight in to the girls' room where they crawl into bed with Sarah Jane who reads to them until we are ready to get started. (Yes, Dave and I have won the life lottery. We are enjoying this phase.) The girls and the boys play and play and play. And sometimes they fight. But mostly they play.
Patient subjects at the hair salon...
Games...
Playing at Ava and Nico's. Dave recently made a tiny kid sized door in the fence between our house and our neighbor's. Ava is 11 and Nico is 9. My kids are BIG fans. They come hurtling in the front door at 6pm home from the park or the library or wherever they have been out and about and run straight in, blurring past me in the kitchen shouting the one word, "mom-I-go-Ava-n'-Nico's?" and then they are out the back and through the little door and into their own secret place. Sometimes Ava and Nico come play but more often they have the yard to themselves. I know they are ok by the squeals that coming singing over the fence. When I call, "kiddos, it's dinner time!" they come shooting through, one, two, three, four, race to the table, eat as fast as possible, then say, "Mom, I be scused?", toss their plates on the counter and are back out the door until bath and dessert. I love that they have a special place but I miss them too.
Books: The boys LOVE books. They love looking at books and being read to. They start and end their days with books. Sarah Jane reads to them in the morning and at night they fall asleep clutching library books like they are lovies.
Blue & Red: Eli have fully embraced their assigned colors. Eli is blue and Roby is red in all things. Even their school art projects.
Other accomplishments: We've kicked bottles. The boys are no longer holy terrors at night. They actually go to sleep and it only takes 30 minutes instead of the dreaded 90 minute fight. Words cannot express how much better our life is as a result. They now take their nap on the couches instead of their beds. That switch inexplicably was linked to when they got easier at night. No idea why. 
Eli can write his name. Roby can spell his name. They can both count things to 10 (not just say the words.) We are close on diapers. We've had no diapers during waking times for a year. We're now working on night. We've made it through one night with no diaper and no accidents. All the other nights, I've done laundry. But I still have faith. Below is a picture from our first victorious night, 2 days before they turned three.
What the boys don't love: Their soccer team - they sometimes participate but mostly not. Roby still refuses to eat any fruit except watermelon and orange juice. Thank goodness for that or we'd have scurvy. Eli still doesn't like dessert or the less than healthy things on his plate. And offered the choice between vanilla and other, he'll always choose vanilla. They also despise non-soft pants of any kind but other than that, they are easy to dress. Oh, except they prefer to wear their undies backwards.
Hard to believe that just three years ago we were here...
