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.

Picture Time!

Last week we had our pictures made in downtown Franklin. Katie Mosley (www.kmosleyphotography.com) took the pictures and I love them!!! I love her style and how she edits them! The only problem....not getting to buy them all. :( It's so sad to me to have to "lose" good pictures because I can't buy all of them. Anyway, I am very pleased with how they turned out. Take a look at them yourself at www.pictage.com/640161. Just click that link and it will take you to the website. You may have to sign in as a guest to see the pictures. You can see which pictures I've tagged as my favorites on that site too. Just look for the "Favorites" button. Of course, the superhero theme was inspired by Lyla. :)

A Puppet Show

The girls got creative the other day and went crazy making puppets with white paper sacks. Here are a few pictures....

Fun with water balloons

Last week I bought a package of water balloons at the grocery store. I thought that would be a fun activity for the girls on a hot day. The package looked little and I wondered if there would be enough balloons. I almost bought two. I'm glad I didn't. Not because the girls didn't love them. Mainly because I got really tired of filling them up! I was grateful to have Joni there to help though. I filled and she tied.

The girls were so excited. I intended on filling all of them at once and then letting them go at each other all at once. They couldn't wait though. We had to do it in a few rounds because they were so impatient. They were standing over Joni and me letting out spontaneous screams of excitement. The funny thing was that the balloons wouldn't pop when they threw them at each other. They would bounce off and pop on the ground. That wasn't very fun because the girls were expecting to get "soaking wet". Joni and I even tried throwing them at the girls. We thought that maybe they weren't throwing them hard enough. They wouldn't pop when we threw them either. They might have popped if we were throwing them at each with all of our strength, but we were holding back on the girls. So, the girls started popping them on themselves. They would just squeeze them on top of their heads to make them pop and get themselves wet. There was a squeal of delight after each pop!

I love Reesi's "Karate Kid" pose in this picture!

Look at this picture! The water coming out of the balloon is so weird! It looks like a jellyfish or something. I can't believe my camera caught it like that.

And here is one of Reesi's screams of excitement!!!!! I wish adults got that excited!

Lyla's 4 year old check-up

Lyla's four year old check-up went well. Everything is normal and she's growing consistently. She's actually made a jump in weight. Until now she has pretty much been on the low end of the curve for weight and height. But this year she has jumped up into the 50th percentile range! It amazes me how she can grow and eat so little. Maybe I need to take a lesson from her!

Anyway, at the four year old visit they give you the option of having your 5 year old shots now so you can get them over with and be free and clear next year. When Grace had this visit she strongly opposed the idea of "getting it over with". Lyla, on the other hand, was fine with the idea. I asked her several times before the visit and she said "get the shots now" each time! I was surprised. Grace was more nervous than Lyla. All morning Grace kept saying every time she thought about Lyla's shots it was "giving me the willies". I finally told her to be quiet because I was afraid she was going to make Lyla nervous. When the time came for the shots, she did get scared and said she didn't want to do it now. By that moment it was too late. The nurse had already prepared the shots. I had to hold her down. She got a finger prick and 4 shots! She cried hard but not for long. After the visit we went to Wal-Mart and got an Icee and popcorn. The rest of the day she would walk with her hands on her legs where the shots were. She said they were sore.

The pictures below show her having her hearing checked. Then she's in the gown. The last two are right after the shots. Grace was very sweet and helped to console her while her crazy mom was taking pictures of her misery. I hope Grace is always there to help her little sister. That's what sisters are for.