The New Swing at Papoo's Farm

When we were at Grace's ballet recital the girls found a tree swing and rope swing on the church property and really enjoyed playing on them. So Papoo went back to his farm and recreated the swings for the girls. He made a swing on one of the big trees in his backyard that overlook a large valley. The ropes are really long so the swing can go really high! I swung on it first and had to tell him to stop pushing because it was high enough! Then he also put a single rope with a knot on the end for them to hang on and swing out over the valley. They really like them. They are pretty fun to swing on, I have to admit. My pictures don't really convey how high they are swinging. The valley is full of poison ivy so I couldn't really get under them to get a good picture of how high they were going.

Father's Day

Here are the pictures of Grace and Lyla making Eric, Papaw Gardner and Papoo Wade's Father's Day gifts. I forgot to put them with the earlier post about Father's Day.

Lyla Camp

Last week Grace went to Writer's Camp with her preK buddy, Addie. Addie's mom is a kindergarten teacher and does this camp each summer for kindergarten and first grade kids. I told her I'd take Ford each day (Addie and Ford are brother and sister) for Lyla to play with while she took Grace for camp each day. She told Ford he was going to Lyla Camp for the week. They had a great time playing together. On one of the days I took them to the Nature Center. I tried to snap a couple of pictures. They're so cute together. I wish they would go to the same elementary schools. That's the difference in a small town and a big city!

Bike Wreck!

Last weekend I took Lyla to a birthday party on Sunday afternoon. Eric said he was going to take Grace for a bike ride while we were gone. When I pulled in the driveway after the party Eric's truck wasn't there, which I thought was odd. Then just a couple of seconds later, he pulled in the driveway. I looked over and saw that his chin looked bloody. Then he held up his hand through the window and I saw a dark place on the palm of his hand. I thought he had an accident and was coming home from getting stitches! He had actually driven to the Rec. Center with their bikes in the back of his truck. Then they went riding on the trails around the Rec. Center and into downtown Franklin. At some point on the ride, Grace was in front of Eric and she hit her brakes rather quickly. Eric gripped his handlebar brakes out of reflex and it made his back tire come up off the ground. He popped a wheely in reverse! He flew over the handle bars of his bike and landed face first on the asphalt bike trail. He scraped his chin and shoulder and put several scrapes and cuts on his hands. He also hurt his chest on the handle bars of the bike. He ended up going to the doctor later in the week because his chest was hurting so much. They said they thought he might have cracked a rib or two but it didn't seem like anything was out of place. He had me help clean up his scrapes though. It was really gross. I don't handle blood very well at all. I got sick at stomach and had to sit down and eat a granola bar so I wouldn't feel like I was going to throw up. I definitley couldn't be a nurse!

My Dad Rocks

Grace and I found a cute craft idea for Father's Day in my Family Fun magazine. The idea was to put three rocks in a row and paint them to look like a dad. The top rock would be the head with yarn glued on for the hair and googly eyes. The middle rock would be painted to look like a shirt and then we would write with a Sharpie "My Dad Rocks". Get it? Rocks? Anyway, the bottom rock would be painted to look like a pair of pants. This was going to be their Father's Day (or as Lyla calls it, Dad's Day) present for Eric. We even went on an adventure to the river to gather rocks. We came back with an entire bucket full of rocks. I tried to explain that in order to actually make this craft it would require a few different steps. We would have to paint some, then let it dry before glueing things to it or writing on it or painting more things on it. They said OK but when they finished painting their 3 rocks each in less than 10 minutes they didn't want to stop. This meant that the craft idea went out the window. I suspected that this might happen though. They're not too good at multiple step projects yet. They ended up just painting all over most of the rocks in one sitting. Oh well, it was a cute idea.

Summertime!

Joni bought a pool for her backyard this summer. She asked me if I thought she should. I told her that I thought the girls would love it but that would mean we would be at her house every single day. I didn't know if she would want that! She bought it anyway and the girls love it!!! It is only a few feet deep but a perfect size for them. Reesi is very calm in the pool and wants to "relax" with her floaties most of the time. But Grace and Lyla are wild, as usual. They want to jump and splash and be crazy. This doesn't go over well with Reesi, the pool diva. I wish Grace and Lyla had a little of the relaxing mentality most days. Reesi is putting up with them and I appreciate that. I really haven't taken very many pictures of them in the pool yet. Here is what I have so far...

Better late than never...

So I just figured out that I totally forgot to post these pictures. They are from Lyla's "Moment's with Mom" party at preschool in May. Every year at preschool we have a party to celebrate the moms. The moms get special handmade gifts from the kids and a special photo and picture matte. Lyla's teachers gave each child a little end of the year gift as well. The white sunglasses were in her gift.

Lyla liked her teachers this year. Ms. Sherry and Ms. Mallory. It was funny that the class of kids didn't really call them by their names though. They just referred to both of them as "Teacher". When Lyla would talk to me about them she would say, "you know, the short one".....or....."you know, the tall one." I thought that was pretty funny.

I think I look funny in this picture (and most other pictures). But I was saying something in this picture which always messes up a picture.

This is Lyla's best buddy, Ford. We love our Fordie!

Next year will be Lyla's last year of preschool! Can you believe it? I can't. She just doesn't seem big enough to be in pre-k.

Weekend at Aunt Julie's

Last weekend the girls spent the night with Julie and Mom at Julie's house. They love going to Julie's house. The big bathtub and large king sized bed are big hits! They went to a sprinkler park, a movie and had a their toes and fingernails painted pink with white polka dots. Grace loved her new nail polish. She even had Lyla pray for them one night at dinner. Lyla was praying and Grace whispered to her to pray for her new nail polish. Lyla prayed, "and thank you for Gwrace's powish cause she wikes it". So cute. Oh, I'll throw this in too. In the same prayer at dinnertime Lyla also said thank you for pirates and then made the pirate "argh" noise with the arm motion and everything. I couldn't help but to turn my head and laugh at Eric on that one. Hilarious. I really need to secretly video tape Lyla praying. It's so funny.

Anyway, back to the girls' weekend at Julie's. Julie announced to the girls that she's pregnant. She is due Feb. 8, 2010. The girls were excited. Lyla just kept smiling really big. Then she asked Julie "Why you wanna have a baby?" Reesi said, "Well, I hope it's a boy. This family needs a boy." Grace gave Julie a hug and then lifted Julie's shirt, poked her belly and said, "Oh, it's already big!" Julie said, "I guess it's going to be a big baby." Grace said, "Yeah, I guess so." Kids, they say the funniest things.

The other day the topic of having babies came up and Grace asked if my belly is "lumpy" because I had a baby. "Yes" I said. "My belly is lumpy because I had YOU and LYLA! Thanks a lot Grace." Grace said, "will it always be like that?"

Well, this post has gotten a bit off track. Back to the girls' weekend at Julie's. They had a great time. I asked Lyla what her favorite part was and she said riding in Jason's jeep. Here are the pics... Lyla is in the turquoise blue swimsuit. I recently bought them the suits with shirts on top b/c I get so tired of smearing sunscreen ALLLLLLLL over them every single day of the summer. At least with the shirts I save a little bit of smearing time.

Grace is in the pink and black swimsuit.

Birds...everywhere!

Beware (Joni)...if you don't like birds, you may not want to look at these pictures~

We have birds all over our yard right now. Eric has a bird feeder next to a bird bath in one corner of the yard that always attracts them. But, this year we have been working on growing new grass in our backyard so we have put A LOT of grass seed out with a lot of straw! The birds are loving it! They are in the yard all day. A week or so ago Eric spotted a nest in one of the trees in our yard. The bird has used the straw from our yard to build a nest and now there are baby birds. Eric took these pictures. They gross me out but the girls think it is really cool. They've been throwing dried bread in the yard to try to get more birds too.

Grace's Ballet Recital

Last weekend Grace had her ballet recital. She began ballet in January. She took ballet for a semester back when she was 3 but hasn't done it since then. She seems to like it. She doesn't really talk about it much or go around the house in her ballet shoes but when I asked her if she wanted to do it again inhte fall or try another sport she said she wants to do ballet again. I wouldn't mind that. I think ballet is so graceful and beautiful. She was actually in class with a few little girls that we go to church with too. One of them was one of her good friends. They had fun together and looked adorable in their costumes.

The recital was quite a bit longer than we expected on Saturday. I had no idea this dance program was so large. They had a full recital on Friday night and then the one on Saturday. Saturday's recital was a little more than 2 and a half hours. Of course, Grace was third from the end on the program! I felt bad for her. She had to be in her classroom in full costume and makeup at 9:15am and didn't dance until about 12:15pm! They had the girls sitting in the room watching the recital on the TV.

They did a great job though. It was very sweet. Here are some pictures.