Another Thing That You Shouldn't Have to Say

"Ladies! I said NO NAKED GYMNASTICS!"

As It Should Be

from Chickadee, who began pre-k last week but had her first full day today:
"Mommy, let me tell you a secret!"

-OK.

(whispering) "I really love school."

Mourning the Loss of Summer

We said good-bye to summer this morning, at 5:30 a.m. when my rude alarm clock started yelling at me. I went back to work today and the kids will go back on the 22nd. Fortunately, we had an awesome last day yesterday with time at the pool and pizza and Olympics in the living room for dinner to celebrate my birthday.

The good news about this year?

We will all be at the same school. Not just the kids. Me too.

Hoping this is a good year!

That Time We Said Good-bye

Three years and one day ago. I'll remember that day (and the day they came back) forever.

We are Alive

As it turns out, I am much busier staying home with the kids in the summer than I am working full-time during the school year.

We are alive and well. I will blame our silence on the swimming pool, Uno, and our trip to Colorado.

Lake Dillon, Colorado--July 2016

Sunshine's Locs

regarding the seven views of Frozen....

This is actually the celebratory "we are finished" viewing of Frozen.

In May, Sunshine and I started learning about locking her hair. Putting locs in one's hair takes a TON of time but the end result is beautiful. With the help of a consultant and many, many movies, I locked Sunshine's hair over a 3 week period. She sat oh-so-patiently in her chair while I put each loc in. They are tedious...each one took around 10 minutes with the first two taking over 15 minutes each (side note: I had to pick those two out eventually because they were soooo bad compared to the rest).

Here is the picture of her head when I naively thought I was about 2/3 finished:

Rows and rows and rows. In reality, this picture was probably taken when I was about 1/4 complete.

Here is the end result:

Sunshine LOVES her hair. There are 217 locs in her hair and for a good long while, we will be babying the heck out of them. In the end, they will "lock" on the ends (think of dread locs) and they will be very low maintenance. Sunshine is enjoying her wide variety of headbands. She has just this week, about 1 1/2 weeks since we finished, gotten tired of people looking, examining and asking.

Here is a picture of the girls watching a youtube video sent to us by the consultant on how to wash the locs for the first time. 

Chickadee is ready for her locs now, but I am not ready to do more. We will wait to see how things go with Sunshine's and lock Chickadee up in another summer or two.

The Start of Summer

We are greatly enjoying the start of summer. So far we have had 2 weeks of swimming lessons, which ends up being a couple hours at the pool every day, and one week of Vacation Bible School. Here are random pictures from the phone:

These shoes were once worn by Baby Beignet. Well, way more than once. When she moved to her adoptive home, her mother sent them back to me declaring them not useful. I have to agree but there is something about "high" heels and the five-year-old girl set, so the shoes have emerged once again from storage bins in the garage.

The kids have made the grand switch from "nap time" to "quiet time". As would be evidenced by these photos, they still need naps sometimes.

This one is actually from right after quiet time. Not sure what he was doing DURING quiet time.

The pool was closed for all but swim lessons the other day. The girls sat with friends and squirters shooting water into the pool, yelling at the top of their lungs: WE ARE PEEING IN THE POOL!!!!!

Chickadee wore her full Doc McStuffins outfit, in addition to her cowboy boots, to her well check recently. The doctor LOVED it.

More evidence of horsing around at quiet time.....Chickadee likes to put her undies in "special places so she can find them" while she has a pull-up on. You never know where you might encounter these.