Radio silence explained

(Not that I've ever been great at posting regularly...) Here it is, the reason I've been a little distracted lately:

Yes, we're expecting! And no, the baby didn't do a flip mid-picture. There are .two. : TWINS! No fertility meds, no family history, just a happy fluke. I'm 13 weeks now, we've known for about 5 weeks, and every morning I still do a reality check. I'm just about as scared as I am excited, but Jeremy's like a kid at Disneyland. He's over the moon. I'm getting there, but I find myself trying to find a balance between emotionally investing myself and staying objective. We truly are delighted and can't wait to meet the two little ones that will be joining us hopefully not until September. As if it knew it was going to have to be replaced, our '97 Subi finally started giving us expensive-sounding trouble, and we decided to look for a minivan. We found a perfect fit on craigslist and, by coincidence, signed the papers on a Sienna the same day we found out about the twins. So now we can at least all fit in one vehicle when the time comes.

We finished out winter with massive storms that hit us weekly for 6 weeks. The boys had a blast. We had one primo snowman snowstorm for Jeremy and Scotty to build this guy:

And several gorgeous ice storms...one thing I will truly miss about northeastern winters:

The rest of the winter was spent mostly this way:

...or this way (Jeremy found the absolute most perfect recipe for lemon bars and kind of couldn't help himself from making them over and over again):

...except for our own personal Tilton family musicfest. Jeremy and I have a bucket list of musicians we want to see before we (or they) die. For whatever reason, two of them, along with a handful of other musicians we both love, decided to come to New York and Philly all within a month of each other. So we decided that we'd go to as many as we could. And we did. I went along for three. (We're getting our dates in while we can!) Jeremy went to two more. My favorites were Charles Lloyd -- fantastic live performers:

and Hillary Hahn. We got seats months ago, and ended up about 15 feet in front of her. She's from Baltimore, and studied at Curtis in Philly. The performance was the Philadelphia premiere of a violin concerto written for her by a Philadelphia composer, Jennifer Higdon, who won a Pulizter Prize for it last year. Historical. I'm not a crier and I totally teared up on her opening run of the evening. Hard to put that performance into words. I'll never forget it!

We also went to Wayne Shorter who's not long for this life but still put on a great show. Here we are just before-hand at the reeeeeeed steeeeps (I think they're a bit creepy):

And Jeremy went to Chris Potter and (? I forget!) with his buddy Scott.

Scotty's preschool put on a Circus for parents and --surprise, surprise-- he chose to be a STRONG MAN. Half and hour very well spent! Here he is strutting his stuff:

strong, but not so fierce:

.so. heavy!

hm... maybe not so bad after all?

the barbells:

his teacher's reaction to him twirling the barbells like a baton:

and finally, posing with his friend Clara, one of the ring masters:

Another highlight of our too-long post-holiday winter was this:

Do they come any cuter?? Katie granted us our very fondest wish and came for a quick visit to share Daphne with us. We spent a few days in MD visiting Ben, Jenn and Joe, and old friends and neighbors. We even got to go to our home ward -- I wasn't prepared for how fun that would be! Then we came up here and mostly just vegged. I would have liked to have been cooking her all sorts of deliciousness, but she'll just have to come back for that trip. Thanks for coming, Katie!

Scotty's rocket jammy groove

and more cuteness:

The boys love love loved her, especially Scotty. He's told me since she left, "Mom, I miss baby Daphne. I wish she could stay with us forever and ever." And "Mom, I really really really want a baby sister!" Maybe just maybe he'll get at least one?

Or maybe we'll get two more of these: (and I wouldn't be one bit sad about it!)

Last weekend Uncle Ben took us to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. I could only take pictures of the outside sculpture garden which I loved. I mostly enjoyed the museum. I have to admit some of it was a little beyond me (like the flatulence room), but the "aftertaste" was good. It was definitely unique, and I'm glad we went.

Until next time... (and I promise it won't be 3 months)