Sunday fun

A few Sundays ago Jacob got out the camera and snapped some pictures of us having some peek-a-boo fun.

Ryan can hold his ground against any 2-year-old in a tantrum-throwing contest.

Then he's happy again.

We wrapped up the fun with a little group project of making no-bake cookies.

Rachel is very proud of her cross-eyed ability. She thinks she's hilarious. And always makes Annie laugh, so I guess she is hilarious.

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy

Rachel had her last ever Ballet Belles performance on Friday. Her teacher's kids are getting older and busier, so she's doesn't have time to keep her ballet classes going like they have been. She'll be teaching at a ballet company nearby and we may take Rachel and Annie there if they want to dance in the future. Or we may just try out gymnastics since Rachel has been so into that lately. 

For her dance performance Friday Rachel's class danced to Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. She did a great job.

 

 

Annie and Ryan enjoyed the dances for the most part. 

Rachel was front and center to start the dance, then switched to the back row and I was at the exactly wrong angle to get her on video for the last half. But she did pretty well.

Annie got a little bored during the awarding of certificates at the end.

Instead of bringing a bouquet of flowers for Rachel like a lot of other families did for their dancers, we made her a flower that she appreciated a bit more, since it was growing in a pot of Skittles.

That's our little dancer!

The rest of the pictures

Here are a few random pictures left before we can be caught up on the pics we have. 

Ryan is a regular blabber mouth these days. He calls his binky a mimi and was calling his blanket mimi, too until the last couple of days he's actually calling his blanket "bank-y." He gets glasses on or does something he thinks is awesome he says "coo!" (cool). And my favorite thing that he says right now: wha-ooo (where are you?). If someone is hiding or he can't find his blanky he'll say "Annie, whaa-ooooo?" or "banky, whaaa-ooo?" I should really try to capture that one on video. It's hilarious.

A small selection of other words Ryan says: gilk (milk), soos (shoes), dock (socks), urt (shirt), ose (store), car, gook (book), Annie, -achel (Rachel), water, Mommy! (for daddy, too, sometimes, especially when he first gets home), Daddy, bye-bye, ate-uh (later, like "bye, see you later"), cat, kikky (kitty), goggy (doggy), pickle, izzuh (lizard), hiding, toes, up, ep (help-with sign), eep baa (sheep-baa), dah duh (all done), guck (duck). And more. I love one-year-old talkers. They're so cute. And this Wednesday this one-year-old turns 18 months, so next week: NURSERY!!

A picture of everyone enjoying a good rainstorm last week. 

 

Ryan loves eggs. And pans. Whenever I'm cooking he gets in the cupboard that has the pans and unloads them all onto the ground. And his favorite pan is the one we use to cook eggs in. This particular day we'd had scrambled eggs for breakfast and the pan was still out, so he decided to "cook" for himself.

 

 

Last week I convinced the girls to try some hair curlers Saturday night for an easy Sunday morning hairdo. Annie's didn't stay in more than 10 minutes after she laid down for bed, but Rachel's did okay. She had a bit of a frizz fro the next day, but she loved it and it was still pretty cute. We'll try with a scarf wrapped around Annie's head next time. Or wait a year and try again. :)

 

Backyard fun

We've been enjoying our back yard, though the grass has me a little worried right now. It looks like it's got a fungal disease, or at least had one. Hopefully the monsoons are over now and the humidity will die down and the grass will come back thick where it's gotten a little sickly looking. And there are definitely some parts we'll have to reseed when it's a little cooler weather. But here are some pictures of the kids enjoying the grass before the brown spots began to make the lawn less pretty.

An almost brand new box of the kids' favorite Saturday breakfast, Trix, dumped out for the birdies to enjoy. Thank you, Ryan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Annie has become a high flier on her favorite swing, pumping about as high as it will go. By some miracle Ryan has not yet had to be rushed to the ER from getting conked on the head by her swinging like a maniac.

Ryan also LOVES to swing and will spend a half hour in there happily. He doesn't even seem to mind sitting stationary when I'm inside working on something, but whenever I poke my head out to check on him he immediately says and signs "More!" So I give him another push or two and he's content for another 10 minutes. Rachel enjoys the swing well enough, but lately she prefers doing tricks on the bars on the side and top of the swingset. It may be time to sign that girl up for gymnastics again. 

Labor Day

Labor day was my first vacation day since our summer trip to Idaho and Utah.  We managed to pack in a full day of activities as a family, but only took pictures at two of them.  Oops.
The past couple of weeks, the weather has alternated between overcast/rainy and clear/sunny. When the sun isn't shining the temperature is in the 80s - which is quite pleasant when you consider that on a clear day the temperature is in the 100s.

We took advantage of the overcast weather to take a family bike ride on a paved trail not far from our house.  The trail is called the Julian Wash Trail.  Colette, Rachel and I rode our own bikes, and Annie and Ryan rode in the bike trailer behind me.  It was lots of fun.  We took the camera with us but forgot to use it.

Colette told Rachel that when we returned to the house that we would take the training wheels off her bike and teach her how to ride without them.  We took everyone over to the church parking lot and let Ryan and Annie ride their "bikes" while Colette and I took turns with Rachel.  She picked up on balancing quickly.

Here's a shot of Ryan riding his "bike".

You can see that Annie is having a blast riding her bike while Colette helps Rachel to learn to balance.

Here are some shots of Rachel riding all by herself!  Go Rachel!

After bike riding, we hurried over to Justin and Marie's apartment to go for a quick swim.  It was fun and short: Ryan was starting to shiver after about 15 minutes and not long after we left the pool, it began to rain.  Once again no pictures.

After lunch and naps and some Sean the Sheep, we went shopping for some some hot dogs and refill of our propane so that we could barbecue to end the day.

Here are some shots of the kids prior to our shopping trip.  Annie's new-found talent is being able to swing on the see-saw swing all by herself.  She really gets into it, swing as high as she can and pulling the feet of the swing set out of the ground.

All three kiddos swinging at the same time.  Annie has recently learned to swing all by herself on the see-saw swing where she is in this picture.

Ryan loves to swing in the red swing in the center.  He's all smiles until the swing comes to a stop.  That's when he makes the sign for "more" and says "mo! mo!" (more, more) so that you'll get him swinging again.

Ryan loves to swing.  He'll sit here, content, for long stretches of time.

Backyard revealed

We got a back yard! We got a back yard! We got a back yard! Hey, hey, hey, hey!

After over a month of tearing down our shed, building up new raised garden beds, removing some of our patio, extending the brick edging, trenching, putting in a sprinkler and drip system, and prepping the ground, planting grass seed, and not walking on it for a couple of weeks while it began to grow, we finally can be outside whenever we want to enjoy our new back yard. Here's the finished product:

The grass is a little thin in some places, but I am told it takes a couple seasons for it to come in nice and thick. But the best part of the grass is that it stays green year-round. We don't have to overseed with winter grass like a lot of people here in Tucson do. Or like we did at our old house, just let the grass be brown for the winter, when we are outside enjoying the weather more than we do in the hot hot summer. We get to enjoy green all year. It's a special grass designed and adapted for Southern California weather, and only sold there. But my friend here in Tucson ordered some seed a few years back and their lawn is awesome. Our weather is similar enough to So. Cal., not getting too cold in the winter, that the grass works great here. Hopefully it works out as well in our back yard as it has for them. So far, so good. :)

Happy birthday, Jake!

Jacob had a birthday last month. All my plans for his birthday presents died one by one, so when I finally went out shopping for him I was kind of roaming aimlessly, until I realized that his birthday was the day after our lawn would lift its "do not walk on me" restriction from recently seeding it. So he got a new back yard for his birthday. I spent that morning shoveling one and a half tons of pea gravel into the swing area so he wouldn't have to, then put together our new patio furniture. The kids helped decorate some of his wrapping paper, and were very happy that the weather cooperated and rained like crazy to cool it off, then stopped raining soon enough to dry out enough to eat outside on the new table and chairs.

We ended up getting him a few back yard games to play, and an ergo-keyboard--his one request that I actually filled. And yes, that is a toilet seat. We love our new house, but apparently he misses the toilets in the old house: elongated, rather than standard sizes. I thought about getting him a toilet, but didn't want to carry it up the stairs all alone. The toilet seat equates to the promise of a new toilet. 

Maybe we'll have to go to Home Depot toilet shopping soon. Jacob got a Tim Hawkins (comedian) video for his birthday from my mom that had a funny bit about just that thing. I looked for a clip online, but couldn't find it. The main gist of the bit was: "You haven't lived until you come around the corner and see your kid USING one of the display toilets at home depot." Oh how I hope we don't have to experience that. :)

We're glad to have Jake around another year. As they say, birthdays are good for your health. The more you have, the longer you live. Happy backyard birthday! (And yes, we have been much enjoying our new back yard with actual green grass. In Tucson.)