Hooray the Beach!

So, we're going to do Kylie first because I accidentally deleted her picture below and had to reinsert it. Kylie had a great time at the beach, and somehow managed to get sand in her diaper, despite being on the towel or held the entire time, plus the long sleeve outfit she's wearing. No idea how that happened.

Also, as you can see above, Kylie is sitting! Hooray! What a sweetheart. We all just love her to bits. And she is a super mellow baby - 90% of the time. Except she's got this thing about begging me to pick her up by arching her back and whimpering/whining everytime she sees me. It kind of reminds me of how my dog, Saydi, used to come to the window and beg for doggie treats every time she'd see me. And why, you may ask? Because obviously it works. Saydi got her doggie treats and Kylie gets picked up more often than not because it's just so fun to see how excited they get to see you! But the down side is there have been times that I'm hiding behind my kitchen counter to do unload the dishwasher so that Kylie won't see me and will stay happy in her swing. And it did lead to me pushing around a shopping cart backwards in Walmart today because Kylie was perfectly happy in her carseat while I was picking out items, but everytime I would come around to push the cart, she'd start beggin' to me. So I had to push the cart around from the front so that Kylie couldn't see me. Good times. And I got a couple of strange looks from other shoppers. Ah well. I guess it was my day to be "the crazy shopper at Walmart." Because there's plenty of them out there, I'll tell ya, and it's not always me.

Anyhoo, back at the ranch . . . Chris was able to come home for a FOUR day weekend over President's day, and it was AWESOME! He did a ton of projects around the house like touch up painting all the walls.(Thanks Chris. You're rockin' the Honey-Do List!) Then on Monday we celebrated by going to the beach again. This time it was around 70, so we didn't even need our jackets! :) It was tons of good stuff, from kites and crabs, to sandcastles and seashells. We even got into the water a little bit this time (or a lot, if you're Kate. She was soaked from the neck down.)

The other thing we did was go out to eat after the beach. This was a whole other experience in and of itself. After it was all over Chris and I decided that taking four small children to a restaurant after a day at the beach is a really good idea in theory (so that mom doesn't have to cook), but not so much in practice. We are lookin' kind of scroungy, for one thing. Plus everybody's hyper/tired and hungry. Aly and Lise wanted to crawl under the table and were being super giggly, and Kate used her sandwich bun as a bed for her Polly Pockets rather than eating it. We decided that, next time, Subways on the way home might be a better idea.

So, lately I've been thinking about the words "undivided attention". How difficult it is to give undivided attention to anything once you have children, and yet how that is what each child wants from you. So anyway, I'll give a little attention to each one individually below, but first a collective update on what each girl wants to be when she grows up:

Aly - An Author and a Teacher (Just like Laura Ingalls Wilder. Aly just finished the series and is now reading about her daughter Rose's life. So now Aly has been asking me all about what she was like as a baby so she can start writing her life history. Good stuff, but I think she should start writing about when she could remember, otherwise isn't it me writing the story?)

Lise - A Professional Bowler. This was decided after playing bowling on the Wii with Chris and bowling with a plastic ball and pins during PE. She must have done pretty awesome. Oh, and she liked the cool bowling t-shirts on the game.

Kate - A Dinner Maker. I'm not sure if this means she wants to be a Chef, or if this is just how she thinks I spend all my time (partially true.)

Aly's got a couple of quotes of the week. First of all, she brought home this "Love Poem" that she wrote at school for cursive writing practice. It went like this: "Love is . . . complicated, a hug, boring, disgusting, weird, that's all." Good to know I'm safe for a couple more years with that girl on the boy front.

Also, Aly told me at dinner tonight the trick of the trade for holding your breath twice as long. You take a deep breath and also puff out your cheeks with air like a chipmunk. When you can't hold your breath anymore, breathe out your nose and then swallow the air that was in your cheeks as a second breath. I'm not sure if that actually works (and yes, I did try it), but I thought it was very ingenuitive!

Analise lost her front top tooth last week and looks super cute - she's trying to be a jack-o-lantern for Easter. ;) Only oops! The tooth fairy didn't come that night and came instead while Lise was at school. How strange!

Also, Lise having her own room is a crazy phenomenon. . . because everybody is always in Lise's room! They are always doing art projects - paint, scrapbooking, signs & posters to play movie theater and restaurant and whatever else. Lise is really good to share, so all is well (for the most part).

Hey, is that Kate riding a purple dinosaur? Why yes, yes it is. I had some other pictures of Kate at the beach, but figured I'd post this one of her at the children's park instead. This park is conveniently located right next door to the library - good stuff. Amazingly enough, I have loved not having Kate in preschool for this 1/2 year while we settle in to Florida. Library storytime, the park, playgroup, and the pool - we are lovin' all this quality time together. I love to see Kate get so excited about everything.

Kate gave her first church talk on Sunday, and it rocked! I am not saying this because I wrote a spiffy talk for Kate; oh no, Kate wrote her own talk, more or less (I just asked Kate what we need to do to go back to live with Heavenly Father again and wrote down her answers). She delivered it like a champ! She had the whole thing practically memorized and just got up there, spoke in her loud authoritative voice, and that was that! Can you tell I'm super proud of her?!? Here's a copy of her talk:

"The Scriptures Teach Us About Heavenly Father's Plan"

Heavenly Father's Plan is for us to live with him again. We can do this by being nice and sharing (obeying the commandments), eating food and sleeping (taking care of our bodies), saying sorry (repenting of our sins), reading our scriptures and saying our prayers. That's what the scriptures teach us. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

The girls were outside doing sidewalk chalk when Chris pulled up last Friday. Aly made this beautiful mural. The girls get so excited when his truck pulls up. They always want to start hula hooping in the front yard about an hour before he's due home. So, all in all, a GREAT weekend. Can't wait for the next one. See you tomorrow, Chris!

I Like Bananas . . .

One of the girls' cousins made up this song and taught it to them over Christmas. So this is what I've been hearing around my house for the past two weeks. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do . . .

Love is in the air . . .

One funny sidenote about our Valentine's Day . . . I have made it a tradition to give everybody a small heart shaped box of chocolate at dinner, which is fun. The funny thing is, that over the last couple of years, the girls have turned it into a tradition to save these chocolate boxes and turn them into huge "lockets" by cutting out pictures of their friend's heads and gluing them inside where the spaces for the chocolates were. Analise started this tradition and now Aly is following suit. Very creative, and a little bit creepy. :)

I received some fun surprises from those I love most yesterday . . . 24 gorgeous roses from my hubby . . . and when I went to bed, Aly and Lise had made me Valentine's from the candy and cards they had gotten from their school parties. How cute is that?

Kate took the picture below. I'm crouching down so that she won't cut off my head like in the other ones she took. (In retrospect though, I should have kept those pictures, because the half headed pictures more accurately describe my current state - me with only 1/2 a brain, running around like crazy all the time!) Despite that, I've got a smile on my face because:

* The car is fixed and I am done with going to the DMV!
* As of tomorrow, all four of my girls will have gotten their physicals done, so hopefully (knock on wood) no more doctors for awhile.

*KYLIE IS SLEEPING THROUGH THE NIGHT!!!!

Can I just say that I love my girls? They give the best hugs and when they tell me they love me it just melts my heart. They have all been so good at being helpful while Chris is gone during the week with dishes and Kylie and everything. It's still crazy, don't get me wrong. But it's their sweet, crazy, zaniness that makes everything worth it - the broken plate and soap dish, the smashed jar of pickles, Aly dropping Kate on the tile and the goose egg that followed (can you tell that the tile floors have been a little rough on us lately - I mean, I'm sure we've dropped other things before, but I don't remember so many things breaking. Is linoleum made of rubber or something?) Good thing kids are so cute, huh?

Last weekend we were able to check out Turkey Creek. It's a 3/4 mile boardwalk along a lazy river which you can tube down in the summer. It was a beautiful stroll and very peaceful listening to the birds (except when Kate was yelling, which was about 1/2 of it).

In addition to sleeping through the night, Kylie has also made other big strides recently. We've started her on cereal (she's not quite sure about it yet, can you tell?), she's broken through her first two bottom teeth, AND . . . she can now blow a raspberry. Very cute, as always.

Kate has been developing some new abilities as well. She's learned how to use the mouse and play computer games at the library, and we even let her log on one of her very own Webkinz at home. Her artistic abilities are going awesome - her drawings are actually starting to look like what she says they are and, last week at church, she colored Jesus' robe in a striped pattern of red, pink, orange, and yellow! :) She has been building extensively with her legos, especially dog families, and let me know one day, "Mom, these lego dogs used to be persons, but then they died into dogs." We have been trying to teach the kids not to freak out if one of their lego creations gets wrecked because that is the fun of it - building and then tearing it down and building something new. Little did I know this would lead to Kate's belief in Lego reincarnation.

Earlier this week Kate started telling me that when Grandma got out of her "hole" she didn't see her shadow so she went back to bed and now it's going to get warm outside. It cracked me up to realize that the whole time we were talking about the Groundhog, Kate thought we were talking about her grandma. So mom, did you see your shadow? :)

And Kate's final story is about her and "Big Mike", our pest control dude. Mike showed up right as we were pulling in from the grocery store. So he started treating the inside of the house, and as I'm bringing groceries into the kitchen I hear, "No, I want a green cup." Kate is making the pest control guy get her a glass of applejuice. Oh man. Later on, I hear this conversation between the two of them:

Kate - look at the rainbows! (coming through our front door)

Big Mike - Yeah, and do you know what is making those rainbows?

Kate - the sun (like duh.)

You know, I'm reading the Junie B. Jones books with Lise now, but I'm having a hard time laughing so much because they're just making me a little nervous of what my future may hold . . .

And finally, here is a great shot of Chris and Kate enjoying the Wii. Chris has really been getting into the Wii with the kids. It cracks me up that Kate kicks his Heiney when it comes to beach Frisbee (that's Kate's favorite because of the dogs, and the only other one she can really do is skydiving where she falls like a crazy lunatic!) We so love having him home on the weekends! It's good mental health time for all of us.

SILLY

So, hooray for videos! In California, for some odd reason, our internet was slower than it was in Louisiana. Go figure. But I tested it out and, yes, in fact, our internet is fast enough here to let me put videos on my blog once again. So here you go . . . One day Lise came up to me and said, "you know, even tongues can do a little dance." And here is the video to prove it.

SILLY. For Aly and Lise, that is the way I would describe this stage. Just plain old silly. Since there aren't any other children on our street, the two of them have come to be good buddies, which I love. But all the time they are together it is a non-stop giggle fest about . . . what? I'm not quite sure. They will giggle that they dropped their fork at dinner . . . or that there's ketchup on one of their chins . . . or that they tripped on the rug . . . you name it. And they are constantly making up songs in these opera voices and just cracking themselves up. It's fun to watch, and I'm glad they are enjoying themselves, but it has come to the point where I've had to separate them just to get them to do their homework. And I know that I, for one, was NEVER, EVER, like that. ;)>