Dressing Up

As I was looking through our pictures, deciding what to post about, I was astounded at how many pictures I have of Ellie dressing up. I guess I shouldn't be surprised considering it is one of her favorite activities. Miriam got in on the action with the matching sunglasses.

This was on Father's Day. John is such a great dad! I admit I like playing dress up with them too. It is fun to see how they both just want their dancing skirts on if they feel like dancing.

Ellie likes to pick out my clothes while I am in the shower. One day, instead of trying to shove my shorts under the bathroom door like normal, I got out of the shower to see my girls trying them on. You know you have arrived as a mom when your kids play dress ups with your clothes. :)

I was trying to pull the same move as Ellie in her picture. Pretty fun. Also, I discovered that M now has enough hair to support TWO pony tails. She loves them (most of the time) and yells 'two' at me if I try to do her hair.

Ellie actually earned a real dress up dress as part of a reading goal. This girl loves to pose. The picture on the left is of her doing a curtsy. Oh the girlishness!

From my journal: A couple of funny things that the girls have been saying: Miriam has picked up on the grunts that mean yes or no. "uh-huh" and "uh-uh" It is really cute. She also says the word "okay" with emphasis on the 'kay.' We really love it. Ellie has started to use the word 'rather' a lot. Which is pretty cute. She also is constantly surprising us with her reasoning skills. A couple of the funny phrases she has surprised us with is "Daddy, you are such a smoothie, I could just drink you up!" "Mommy's head is bigger than all of ours." Punk kid. :)

I prepared a lesson for a parenting group, but no one came. I was actually kind of happy about it because the kids were in bed early. The house was cleaned up, and John and I were able to work on a de-junking project that evening. Five garbage bags of clothes and a box were taken to DI. Wow, we have accumulated a lot of stuff! That was just our two closets. We have a lot left to do!

Norma and Hema came for dinner. I served Indian food that turned out really well! Good job, me! :) I made saag paneer, spicy yellow lentils, and a veggie chicken tikka masala. Norma gave us haircuts, and we played our new game with them (7 Wonders).

John planned the date for last weekend, which included a "Would you rather..." game. Example: "Would you rather be 4 feet tall or 7 feet tall?" It was really fun. We also made some cookies with beans instead of butter. They were really good.

I Am Thinking of an Animal

The last day that John was gone we went to the zoo with my family. It was fun to go there with so many of them, including my grandparents. They are so sweet. Both kids really liked the monkeys.

The kids really liked playing with their cousins. One of the best parts--having three older boys who wanted to push the stroller for me. 

My favorite part was the bird show. They invited kids to come down and dance. To my surprise my timid little Ellie wanted to go down there by herself and dance. She is in this picture towards the middle left getting some pretty good air on a jump. She is so funny. At first she started doing her graceful princess twirls, but after watching some other kids do more hip hop she was all about jumping and wiggling. So fun. 

Miriam LOVED the bird show. She was fascinated by all of the birds flying every which way. Birds are her favorite. She calls them "toot, toots." Maybe related to 'tweet, tweet'? Anyway, she was enthralled by all of the big and little birds. 

Ellie has recently learned the game, "I am thinking of an animal..." It is always so fun to hear her clues for you to guess her animals. For example, she said, "I am thinking of an animal with short legs." After several yes and no questions, where I learned it didn't live on a farm or in the jungle, I finally figured out that she was thinking of a bear. I guess short legs are relative, right? :) 

The green wagon is the coolest!

Miriam went through three pieces of cake. She kept dropping it or going after someone else's and dropping it. 

Ellie decided to live life on edge and get a drink out of a lion's mouth. Pretty cool, huh?

We liked seeing the giraffes sticking their long tongues in the holes in the sides of the bucket to eat.

My sweet grandpa has been all over the world and seen who knows how many different kind of animals in the wild. He says that giraffes are his favorite.  

One fun thing that I don't have any pictures of is that when we were leaving there were a group of handicapped kids that came to the zoo. (We were late leaving.) There were a whole bunch of people who dressed up in character costumes for the kids. We saw batman, a ton of star war's characters, and the best...princesses!!!! We saw Jasmine, Belle, and Rapunzel. (I think.) Ellie was terrified at seeing Chewbacca and the Snow Monster. But Jasmine made her feel better because, "Jasmine is so fancy with all of her jewels." :)

Inviting Myself Over

Two days out of the week that John was gone to Turkey, we visited some of my family. I invited myself over to play at their houses all day. It was so fun!  Lesson learned: Invite yourself over, it IS that much more fun at their house. :)

The kids played in the water at Patti's house. So fun! I was grateful to borrow swimming suits for my girls while I was there. Although, seeing my sweet little Ellie in a two-piece was NOT okay. :)

Of course then there is Miriam. At least she has the common sense to like chocolate. So she really went after the donut that was about as big as her head. (Which is saying something. We make pretty big heads around here.) She befouled her borrowed swimming suit. I am so glad that Patti just has a lot of old girl swimming suits around, so the casualty wasn't too great.

So for some reason, seeing my four year old in a two piece was more offensive than letting my almost two year old run around with out clothing at all. Not the most rational I know. :)

After the water, Jane and Ellie had a great time playing in their house. Jane taught Ellie all the wonders of the pretend light-sabers. (You can tell which one has an older brother.)

The next day we played at Miriam's house. Of course the girls wanted to play princesses. Aunt Miriam was nice enough to curl Ellie's hair (and teach me how to do it too!).

Miriam was of course the most fascinated with their awesome playground! She LOVES swings, but slides are fun too! Thank you guys so much for entertaining me and my girls while we were trying to get through the week!!

Missing Daddy

While John was in Turkey, the girls and I hung out with my mom. My plan was that in order to keep me and the girls from missing John too much, we would try to keep busy. For the most part that actually worked. I love these pictures of the first day when we visited a nearby park. 

 

My girls were so happy to be there and play for as long as they like.

Miriam's favorite thing by far is swings. 'Wee, wee.' She could have sat there all day. 

They had such fun, but the kids sure were tired afterwards.

John got me a new Blendtec for Mother's day and we have been enjoying deliciously smooth green smoothies since. Miriam got this smoothie mustache one day and Ellie had to give herself one too.

We went to a splash pad near my parents' house. The kids loved it! I was surprised how okay they were with being in the cold water.

We also got some fun fingerpaints. The kids maybe got as much on their papers as they did their skin and clothes. We had a fun time with my mom, but we sure missed Daddy.