9 months going on 13 years

"But I don't want to wear this dress!"

Welcome New Baby

a new niece for me and the hubby,

a new cousin for the girls

Stella Rose

Lindsey says hello.

Natalie is one proud big cousin!

Natalie teaches Ava how to dance like a Big Sister!

=D

A Favorite Poem

Bed In Summer

by Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

Cows!

Natalie loves

Thanks to their clever advertising, she calls it "Cow Eat."

The current toy in the kids meal is a little cow figurine.

Prior to today, we'd collected 3 of them. She named them: Natalie, Lindsey, and Ba, and then asked where the Daddy cow was. So we returned to Cow Eat today in pursuit of a cow figurine to be come Dayee. Boy did this turn out to be our day. After using a coupon for a FREE kids meal I found in the dark corners of my wallet, we discovered there were there TWO cow figurines tucked into her kids meal. Feeling through the package to find they were in the same stance, I went to Bobby, the customer service guru and asked if I could check another package to find the cow in the touchdown position for a trade. This would give us a set of 4 cows, each in a different stance.

(are you still with me?)

Bobby got the manager and the manager got an entire new box of cows. He let me have at it until I found one in a different stance, a touchdown. I opened it to find

a gold cow!!!

Now, while we're not in India, this is still a very special cow, for it carries with it a coupon for a free ice cream. Fearing that Natalie would not accept this gold cow, the manager found another one in the same position, gave it to Natalie to open and she found... another gold cow! So we left today with a total of 4 cows, with the guru's and the manager's blessings upon us. Now we have a family of 7 cows and free ice cream in our future.

What will all their names be, I wonder?
=)

Zoo Day!

Since it was only going to be in the 80s today Maggie's mommy and I decided it would be a good zoo day. Indeed, it was!

Snuggles with a Willie B memorial

a Giraffe

BFF

A Rhino

Flamingos

Train Ride

Lions

On the way home we got Steak-N-Shake milkshakes and I asked Natalie, "What was your favorite part of today?"
She said, "Zoo with Maggie!"

=)

"I look like Kevin!"

I love Baby Gap/Gap Kids. I love that they give out 20% coupons, even if I have to use them on a full price item, because every no and then I come across something worthy of full-price-minus-twenty-percent. Like this hat:

Natalie proclaimed proudly,
"I look like Kevin!"


She then tried it on and posed for me in several different styles:



Natalie's Uncle Kevin
and his omnipresent hat:




You should be pleased, Kevin, for you are very loved!

=)

Already?

Please note, I would love to put a post about what a great Fourth we had (and we did!) but I failed to get Natalie in her red shirt and bow, failed to get a non-blurry picture of Lindsey, and failed to get a picture of myself at all. So instead I'm going to write about how this year, for the first time that I can recall, I am ready for Autumn to arrive..

Perhaps it's the warm, cozy, colors.

Maybe it's the Pumpkins and Scarecrows.
It could be the smell of Cinnamon.
It's very likely the School Supplies.

(Natalie, October 2007)

So while there are a good 2 months of summer left to enjoy, I eagerly anticipate the change of season and the breeze, the crunch of the leaves, the sight of sunflowers, and the laughter and smiles it will undoubtedly bring this year.

Jumping and Crawling

We got some great videos of Lindsey yesterday, along with a little Natalie bonus.

(and they're not a Rick Roll!)

Enjoy!

Lindsey in the Jumper


Lindsey Crawling

Allergy Testing

Lindsey and I met her allergist this week.
We have bad news and good:

Bad: She had to have skin testing done. Good: She was a champ and fell asleep in my arms soon after to wait out the 15 minutes.

Bad: She's allergic to Eggs. And Soy. And Sesame. Good: She's not allergic to Milk.

Bad: All the energy spent on a diary free diet while I was breast feeding her when that wasn't the problem. Good: We're weaning to Similac Sensitive formula and she loves yogurt!

Bad: Egg or Soy is in nearly everything. Good: They're not in the Gerber Sweet Potato Puffs.

Bad: We have to worry about the potential for allergies that either didn't show today or weren't tested. Good: We have an Epi Pen Jr. on hand now just in case.

Bad: There's lots of absolutely useless information out there. Good: Websites like Blue Bear Aware are wonderful and the Muppets have actually done a skit to help teach people about food allergies.

Thank you, Dr. R and staff, you were wonderful!

=)

The Beach

We spent June 20-27 at Litchfield Beach, SC in a condo of sea-green, periwinkle, coral and white wicker! It was heavenly. Each morning we spent several hours playing on the beach, came in for lunch, then had an afternoon activity that varied from the Family Kingdom Amusement Park to lunch at Pier 14. The two exceptions were the day we went to the pool instead of the beach and the day we chose to stay out of the sun and went to Ripley's Aquarium. Dinner each night was at the Hot Fish, the beach home where the majority of our 23 person family was staying. I made a slide show of our pictures, so as not to post too many here but not deny you the fun times, either. Last year there were several problems with getting the slide show to disply in Blogger right, so this time you get a link. If you hover your mouse over each picture you'll pause it and get little caption. Or you can chose the "Gallery View" and it goes a little faster and includes the captions.

Here it is.

Things to note:
The bruise on Natalie's forehead which she obtained the first night
The fact that strangers can never seem to take a decent photo of my family
The way Lindsey's hair stuck up because it was so hard to wash all the sunscreen out

I can not wait until next year!

=)