Spring Fun

Spring is officially here and we are enjoying the nice weather! All of our girls enjoy being outside. Here are some pictures from the last few weeks!

Emma enjoys riding her scooter up and down the driveway.Heidi loves the trampoline and swing set and is our resident monkey.Rachel also enjoys swinging and she's recently discovered the Little Tikes Car (although she can only make herself go backward right now - those legs need to grow a little more).They each picked out their own St. Patrick's Day shirt and wore them on St. Patrick's Day (OK, well I picked Rachel's). Heidi's class visited a fire station that day too - thus the fire hat.Emma has started playing soccer again. They've had two games but I haven't had an opportunity to get any good pictures of her yet. But here are Rachel and Jason enjoying a post game snack. (I hope to get some pictures of Emma this weekend - if they aren't rained out.)And here are our girls, ready for bed.

Rachel at 18 months

Rachel was 18 months on March 4. She is a busy, busy, busy girl trying to do everything she sees her sisters do. It's a good thing I didn't have pictures scheduled on her 18 month birthday, because the night before she tripped and hit the pavement at the ice cream shop. I wish I'd had my camera 'cause she actually landed on her ice cream cone and it was all over her face when I picked her up. I couldn't help but laugh. (It was the last 1/5 or so of my cone, so not a lot of precious ice cream lost.) So she had some nice abrasions on her nose and forehead for several days.She is learning more and more words including bye-bye, boo-boo, various animal sounds, uh-oh, please, up, and probably others I'm not remembering at the moment. Heidi is always trying to get her to imitate whatever she's saying.

Rachel really likes to dance and play music. She'll play on her keyboard.And she's taught herself how to play the harmonica. :-)
Her two favorite songs these days are "If you're happy and you know it" and "The wheels on the bus." They end up on repeat on the CD player in the car. She does a great job with hand motions for both. Here is a video of Heidi singing Wheels on the bus and Rachel doing some of her motions.

She recently had her first lollipop, thanks to our pediatrician's office. She has been wanting one for quite awhile - especially when she sees Emma or Heidi get one. I finally let her have one and she was VERY excited about it. She probably only put it in her mouth a few times, but she enjoyed carrying it around.Finally she LOVES being outside! The Spring weather has allowed us all to be outside more and Rachel loves it - it's hard to get her to come inside when it's time. Once we get outside, she'll take my finger and lead me to the swing set or the trampoline. We'll enjoy it as much as we can before it gets hot!

Heidi Quotes

Heidi frequently wakes up before Emma leaves for school (so before 7AM). But during their Winter Break a couple weeks ago, I was stressing to them that they could sleep until the sun came up. If it was dark, it was still night time and they should just roll over and go back to sleep.

So, last week, Heidi asks me, "Mommy, why does Emma have to get up in the middle of the night to go to school?"
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Heidi's teacher emailed me this story. Apparently last week at circle time they were going around telling their classmates what they did over Winter Break. Heidi was towards the end of the circle. When her teacher asked her what she did, she said, "I don't really remember what I did, but I should have gone to Disney!"
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Heidi strikes me as a child who is going to want to do everything. And she's probably going to like everything too. She has been talking about wanting to do ballet at school like some of her friends do (they have an after school program). On the way home from school last Thursday she was asking when she was going to get to play soccer like Emma. Then she mentioned something about playing basketball. So I said, "Wow Heidi, you want to do everything - you do gymnastics, you want to play soccer and basketball and do ballet. Is there anything else you want to do?" And without hesitation, she answered, "Play golf!"
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Catching Up

Life has been marching on. And there have been some things I wanted to post, but am just now getting around to them. Hope this isn't too disjointed.

Jason's birthday was Sunday, Feb 13. The two of us spent that weekend in Charlotte at our regional BSF retreat (which was wonderful!). My mom stayed at our house with the girls. It was a bit of a rough weekend for all in that the Tuesday before, Emma got a stomach bug. She was out of school the rest of the week. Heidi got it Thursday afternoon and Rachel got it Thursday night. So that's what we left my poor mother with. (It's a good thing she loves us and our girls!!!) Jason and I left for Charlotte Friday morning. We both enjoyed the retreat Friday afternoon and evening. Then Jason got the bug Saturday morning and missed all but dinner and the evening session. Then I got sick after dinner Saturday. Between the two of us, we attended the entire retreat. But to add to it, my mother got the bug Saturday morning too. So it was a weekend we all muddled through. However my gracious mother managed to make a birthday cake with the girls for Jason. So we celebrated Sunday after we got home.****************************************
Heidi is continuing to take gymnastics and really enjoys it. They just finished up a session last week. Here is a video of her going through one of their circuits.
And here she is with her certificate! She'll start her next session this coming Monday.****************************************
At Heidi's school they had "Community Helpers" day last Friday. Each of the children was supposed to dress up as a community helper. On Thursday I was asking Heidi what she wanted to dress up as. She didn't know, so I threw out ideas like doctor, teacher, mailman, etc. She said she wanted to be a mailman, but then said, "no, I want to be a newspaper delivery person." Made for a relatively easy costume - just needed a bag of papers (so we collected a few from our neighbors). When she got home from school on Friday she wanted to "deliver the papers," so she rode her scooter up and down our driveway tossing the papers in to the yard. :-)*******************************************
Finally, this week has been "Winter Break" for our school system. However, it has felt much more like Spring than Winter - which has been lovely! Hopefully it'll stick around. So we've spent quite a bit of time outside. Monday we met a friend at the park and everyone had a good time swinging, climbing, sliding, and scootering.Heidi bouncing in a car with her good friend, Juliette.And Thursday we had a doctor's appointment with Emma, so Heidi and Rachel went to play at a friend's house. My friend told me they were eating snack and had this conversation:
Michael: Let's go play in the basement.
Heidi: OK. Let's play Jesus. I'll be Jesus, even though I'm a girl.
Michael: And I'll be God.
Michael's little brother: Who am I going to be???
Heidi: And when we're done playing Jesus, we'll play mermaids.

Apparently they also played Cinderella and pirates. :-)And we have continued to dance the days away to "The Shimmy Shake." Heidi is trying to teach Rachel. She's getting it pretty good. :-)

It's been a good Winter Break, but I'm ready to get back to our routine next week.

East Side Sock Hop

Emma's elementary school has a Sock Hop every February. We went last year, with no poodle skirts. But I figure if East Side continues this tradition, we will need poodle skirts for the next 10 years! So I bought 2 poodle skirt dresses at a consignment sale last Fall - and that will probably be my approach for the next several years. We'll end up with poodle skirts sized from 2 to 10 (or something like that). Let me know if you need to borrow a poodle skirt! :-)We all had a good time tonight! Food from The Varsity, cookies from the bake sale, then off to dance. Heidi enjoyed palling around with Emma's classmates (and they graciously took her in).Emma had fun dancing with her friends too.I caught Emma to dance with her a little bit. She likes to spin. We really couldn't let Rachel down much because there were literally kids running everywhere. She surely would have been knocked over. But she enjoyed watching everyone. Rachel and Jason did give "The YMCA" a try! Maybe next year she'll get to dance a little more.

Our Girls

They start computers so young these days! (This is a toy computer, but she's already trying to figure it out.)Lounging on the back of the sofa playing a hand-held game.
Emma with her two favorite things - her blue buckle and the remote control.
I had to include this somewhere and this seemed as good a place as any. Heidi stays after preschool one day a week and attends a music class. They make their own instrument each week and learn a song. At the end of the session, we received a cd of the songs they learned. One of Heidi's favorites is "The Shimmy Shake." She loves dancing to it. :-) It's a fun song!

Heidi Roller Skating

Last weekend we had GORGEOUS weather - very Spring like; it made everyone want to be outside. Heidi received roller skates for her birthday and pads for Christmas. So we took this opportunity to give it a try. She really enjoyed it.She did fall down a few times.And Rachel enjoyed spectating.She's far from actually skating, but she was walking along pretty good. I'm sure we'll be giving it more attempts as the weather gets better.