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We went to Brian’s cousin’s wedding outside of Indianapolis this summer. It was in a beautiful state park.

We’ve been busy the past few months, trying to pack lots of fun into our nice-weather season. I’ll post a bunch more photos soon, but here is one that sums up summer well: 

We went on a boat ride yesterday to see Boston Light, which is the oldest lighthouse site in the U.S. Charlotte loved the boat ride, and spent the trip there and back looking out the window at the waves.

Charlotte wondered why the bell didn’t have a clapper in it. The park ranger told her it was because the bell was replaced with electronic sirens.

This is an old anchor, which Charlotte thought was a rocket ship.

View from the top of the lighthouse. Way off in the distance is downtown Boston.

Charlotte on the boat ride back, with a rock she found on the island.

The big American flag hanging by the wharf when we got back to Boston.

This past weekend we went to New Hampshire with my family. We took Charlotte to Storyland, which is an amusement park for little kids with a fairy tale theme. Charlotte was very impressed and turned out to be quite a thrill seeker on the rides.

This is Cinderella’s pumpkin and that is Charlotte’s Little Papa (what she calls my grandfather) with her.

Here’s Charlotte on the teacup ride. She loved it and afterward kept saying “we went really fast!” Luckily, she didn’t seem to feel sick to her stomach like Brian and I did! We also went on a ride later that went up and down and Charlotte kept yelling “High! Go really high! Higher!”

Here’s a view from Cinderella’s castle: 

We went to New Mexico a few weeks ago. Charlotte met her grandpa and we also met up with friends in Santa Fe. The trip was a lot of fun. We went to the zoo in Albuquerque and ate a lot of yummy food–everything had green chilis on/in it. We saw a lot of great artwork and outdoor sculptures and continued to eat a lot in Santa Fe.

The trip home was rough, though–our flight to Dallas got diverted to Oklahoma City because of bad weather, and we ended up stuck in Dallas overnight with no luggage. We finally made it back to Hartford the next day and had to rent a car to get back home. Charlotte was really good for the most part. She is full of questions these days so we heard a lot of “Why is plane not going? Where’s flight attendant going? What’s that button? Who’s that taxi driver?” (we heard that one about 15 times consecutively). She did get to see the cockpit on the plane, which was pretty exciting.

Here’s Charlotte at the Albuquerque Zoo:

This is in Old Town Albuquerque:

This is a church in Santa Fe with some cool sculptures that moved with the wind.

We went to Taos Pueblo, which is a 400-year-old Indian village:

We took Charlotte out on her trike the other night. We went to an empty parking lot nearby so she could ride around, though she ended up mostly running laps around the lot. This is all part of our ongoing plan to wear her out before bedtime. Sometimes it helps, but it still takes her a really long time to fall asleep at night.

Charlotte learned about blowing dandelion seeds. She kept telling us to “blow really hard” on our dandelions.

Here’s Charlotte in her Easter dress. We had a nice warm sunny day. We dyed Easter eggs and hid them for Charlotte to find on Easter morning.

Charlotte was ecstatic to find a chocolate bunny in her Easter basket. She ate most of it in about a minute.

Later Charlotte decided that her Red Sox hat was a better accessory. (She also changed into her rain boots.)

Charlotte has had this train table and tracks for a few months, but it’s still her favorite thing to play with. Most mornings she says “Play with choo-choo train tracks one minute,” while holding up one finger, as a delay tactic for getting dressed or eating breakfast. She likes to put all the trains together and calls it the “longest choo-choo train ever.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E22J0rrJlIk

These are some of Charlotte’s latest dance moves. She says that she’s skipping and dancing at the same time. She’s also expanding her song repertoire into “Farmer in the Dell” along with some incomprehensible ones she learned at school (possibly in Spanish, we think).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1_HQBwBo3M

We are pretty sure that our long winter has finally ended. We’ve had some beautiful spring days lately, and Charlotte often asks to go out on the porch and watch cars going by. When we were outside tonight she made a train out of rocks and looked at ants (she goes back and forth on whether she actually likes them).