Pics from today

And since tomorrow is our 8 year anniversary, we all made cards for Papa...

Party Like a 2 Year Old

Matea's much anticipated "Elmo Booday" finally arrived this Saturday and I think it lived up to her expectations. She got to play with her cousins, eat ice cream cake, and test out her new gifts. She got some bears from Great-Grandma that she immediately fell in love with, a pink bike from Grandpa and Grandma Cindy that Bella's breaking in for her, some pink Crocs from Devin that she insisted on putting on right after opening, a trampoline from Grandma, and lots of cute clothes and just a few toys (a mommy's dream!).

I can confirm that she's acting like a 2 year old now. Bella has scratches on her face to prove it! And, she threw a book at me in the library this morning right in front of one of the employees. I'm going out of town this weekend on a scrapbooking retreat and I'm feeling like Friday won't get here soon enough.

Good Friends, Good Weekend

I'm stuck in the recliner, waiting out a migraine so I figured it's as good a time as any to get around to updating the blog.

These pics are from a few weekends ago when our friends, The Olson's, visited. Bella and Avery are almost exactly a year apart and Matea and Riley are just over a year apart. All of the girls got along really well even though Matea wasn't quite sure what to make of Riley. Matea's never really been around a mobile baby and seemed pretty put off by Riley's obsession with her pacifier. I think she was excited about a baby coming and getting to play mommy but Riley wasn't interested in that. She was more interested in Steve. Seriously, this baby girl loved him! She kept planting kisses on him and gazing at him from across the room. Very sweet - except to her daddy who wasn't getting nearly as much attention.

Jaron, Jenni, Avery, and Riley live in San Jose so we only get to see them a few times a year. We all wish they lived closer - if only Jaron was willing to take a 75% pay cut to work in this area.

Bella's been talking about Avery since they left and wants us to plan a trip to their house NOW. On their last day here, we all went to Morro Bay and then they headed home from there. Bella didn't realize they weren't following us back home and cried for quite a while when she realized Avery wasn't in the care behind us:(

Happy Birthdy Matea!

It my booday now Mommyyyyyyyy?

I've heard this question at least 20 times this morning. And when I tell her it's not until Thursday (which of course, means nothing to her), she yells, "NO! It my booday!". I also keep hearing, "It mine Elmo booday pah-ty". I think the girl will have lots of fun this weekend.

Swim Lessons: Part Two

Today was Bella's last day of swim lessons. She had fun but after 10 days and $70, I sort of thought she would have learned something. I don't know that playing motorboat and holding an adult's hands while jumping in from the side of the pool is going to help her if she falls into a lake.

















































She did go off the diving board for the grand finale today. She insisted that an instructor be there with her and spent a lot of time negotiating with them about when they would drop her, when she had to let go, etc. She's like her mama, very cautious and careful, so I was just happy to see her try something new and scary.

Fourth Fun

We had a really fun holiday yesterday. Spent the day hanging out around the house and then crashed our friend's neighborhood block party. Bella spent hour after hour on the water slide and since Matea was too tiny to crawl up to the top, she occupied herself with eating treats.

Both girls did sparklers but Matea couldn't seem to grasp the concept of only holding on to the very bottom of the stick so she only did a few. Once the real fireworks started, she kept covering her eyes and saying, "I'm cared, I'm cared" (scared).

Swim Lessons

Swim lessons got off to a rough start. Lots of sitting on the steps doing nothing while the teacher repeatedly asked the kids, "What do you want to do now?". I'm not paying you $70 to ask her what she wants to do, I can do that at home for free. So after speaking with the 18 year old head honcho at the end of day two, we arrived to find a new and much improved teacher yesterday.

Bella's really enjoying class but has no problem letting the teachers know when she doesn't want to do something. Yesterday she actually gave her teacher the "talk to the hand" while saying "no, no, no, no". Luckily, after persistence from the teacher and an evil eye from mom, she always follows through with the task and ends up smiling.

I still think they're kind of babying the kids and am hoping they'll take a few steps back from the wall and just let them go soon but we'll see.

Happy Birthday Papa!

Wednesday was Steve's 31st birthday. I took the girls shopping at the Dollar Tree where Bella picked out a blue and green stretchy worm for Papa and Matea found a ping pong ball gun. Then they completed his gifts with pink butterfly and flower balloons, just what Papa likes. We set up a "celebration station" and jumped out and screamed "Happy Birthday!" and blew horns when he got home from work. We went out to dinner at Applebee's, came home and watched a movie and had delicious cake from Coldstone Creamery.

Update

3:00pm. 93 degrees in the house. "Shut the world out" plan officially not effective.

Freakin Hot!

It's been over 100 degrees here the last three days and it's miserable. Yes, it may get hot where most of our family lives but you bastards have air conditioning. Our house was a sweaty 90 degrees at 7:00 last night. We've been eating dinner outside because it's just too damn sticky to do anything inside and we've been avoiding any meal that requires use of the stove or oven. We've done lots of swimming this week and went to the beach last night but didn't get much relief unless we were standing with our feet in the water.

Today, we're trying a new plan of attack. All windows closed along with the blinds, tank tops and undies for the kids, crock pot cooking in our laundry room, and trying to be so lazy, we can't work up a sweat.

Weekend Videos

"Happy Father's Day?"



"ABC's"

Genius

My grandpa was right, Bella is a genius. Ok, maybe not a genius but she does love to write and in general, really likes to learn new things. Yes, she watches her fair share of tv, but I think it's very balanced with books, art, and pretend play.

Anyway, she's been spending 2-3 hours everyday writing notes to her friends and has even learned to spell her friend, Hannah's name without any help from us! So, now she can spell her name, Papa, and Hannah all by herself. One morning, she decided to draw pictures of animals and then asked me to tell her how to spell them. She did all of this just by me dictating the letters to her, not me writing them and her copying them. You can see she definitely needs some work on her "s", but Steve and I were both really impressed.

Dinner at the Beach

We had another beautiful, warm day here today so I suggested that we eat dinner on the beach and then play in the ocean for a while. Matea is still grumpy - either because she's still not feeling well or she's just practicing being two years old -but as usual, Bella had a fabulous time. She absolutely loves being at the beach and since we have an annual pass and can drive right on, it's a super cheap and easy activity to do with the kids.

I think we're amazingly lucky to live here and we really try to appreciate the fact that we get to live at the beach. I mean, how many people can call their spouse at 4:3opm and say, "Hey, lets go eat dinner next to the ocean tonight"?

Health Update

Bella had her post-op appointment yesterday and the doctor was pleased with her healing (so are we). He said that the scar needs to be kept out of the sun for the next year or there's a small chance it could turn black. Say what?! He suggested I keep a band aid over the area...for the next year! Um, how in the hell do you think I'll keep a band aid on her lip? First off, it's moist area, there's no way the band aid will stick. Secondly, the girl yaps away all day long about various pretend scenarios we're living in, I can't imagine a band aid would stay put through all this talking. So, we're doing the next best thing and being very liberal with the sunscreen. I'm already very careful about applying sunscreen to both girls and I bought Bella some special chapstick with SPF 30 that I guess we'll just apply all the freakin time and keep our fingers crossed.

Matea has been battling a fever since Friday and it finally appears to be breaking today. She's had a really low fever before, but this is the first time she's consistently had a high fever for several days. It got as high as 103.5 and just like big sister, she was a total trooper. Other than being a little more fussy and clingy, she's handled her sickness fairly well. After lots of activity over the weekend, I let her spend most of the day yesterday hanging out in the recliner and watching her shows.

Graduation

Our niece (Steve's older brother's daughter), Haley, graduated from 8th grade last Tuesday and we drove over to Lemoore for the evening to celebrate with her. She was one of the top students in her class and did well in academics, athletics, and extra curricular activities. We're so proud of her and hope she continues to do this well through high school and college. We've decided that she's going to go to Cal Poly and live with us. She'll be our live in nanny and Steve will accompany her to parties. It will be a win-win situation (for us and Haley's parents, for Haley, not so much).

Doesn't she look like Steve? I'll have to dig out a picture of her as a little girl. She and Bella look a lot alike.



















And here are my babies showing off the matching dresses I made them. One of the few items I've made for Bella that she approves of and willingly wears.

Weekend Camping

We decided to take the girls camping at a local spot last night, actually the first place we ever made a family camping trip with Bella when she was 15 months old. Everyone had a good time despite the most annoying neighboring campers ever. Not only did we have to listen to this lady scream at her grandkids the entire time, but a stray camper around 8 years old showed up last night and helped himself to our marshmallows. Steve tried to give him a lesson in good manners but I think his efforts were wasted.

The girls got to see lots of wildlife including turkeys and deer and last night Steve and I spotted a skunk heading toward our trailer. And we learned an important lesson...don't serve beans with dinner when you're all sleeping together in close quarters. Matea's hiney played a symphony of toots all night long.