All Sorts of Things

I guess I'll have to accept that I can't always blog daily any more.  :(  I don't like it though, I always feel like I'm forgetting to record things they've been doing and saying that I'd like to remember.  

One of Neely's new things is to say "THANK YOU!  HAPPY!" when you give her something.

She's still sleeping with us, but starting to get the bedtime routine a little bit.  She even cozied up with Caso the other night and let him "read" to her a while.

                         We've been spending time outside, on the playset or drawing with chalk.

 

Or wearing helmets and pushing T-Rex in a stroller.

 

Paige and Cason have also been doing jobs to earn money.  Paige saw the new Brave Barbies at Walmart, and one even came with the horse.  She begged for it, and Jess told her if she would work hard all week, doing some little jobs and keeping her room clean, she could get it on Friday.  There was only one left with the horse, and from our experience Walmart is NOT very quick to restock anything.  So Jess snuck back and bought it secretly, and we hid it at Grama's house all week.  Cason wanted to work to buy something too, so all week they helped me with laundry, washed windows, watered plants, etc.

 

 Caso bought a remote control Mario Kart toy on Friday, and Paige got her Brave, and her horse Angus.  She was really excited, and made me take this picture of them.  Ha.

 

She wants Angus to be a girl instead, so she told me she was changing the name to Amos.  I said "That's a boy name too, actually."  She goes "Oh, how about Anus?"  Hahahhaahahaha.  I told her that might not be the best choice, and as usual, she wanted to know why.  Ha.  That was a fun talk.  

I've been trying to get the kids to draw and color with me more, because it's something I could sit and do with them for hours.  Caso usually colors a couple of quick robots and then abandons us.  So the other day I tried having him draw something along with me, in steps.  She he and Paige and I each did a cat, and I love how theirs turned out.

 I just did a little cartoony cat, one step at a time, and he seemed to have more stamina with it broken down into parts.  He did a really cute drawing of a cat too.  I love the little stick front legs.

Neely still loves her Hayao Miyazaki movies, especially Totoro, or "Toe-roe" as she calls it, and Kiki.  When she watches them, she usually has this happy look on her little face:

She really likes cats, and especially the black cat on Kiki's Delivery Service.  His name is Jiji, and she talks about him a lot.  Hello Kitty is cute and all, but my favorite is Chococat.  The other day Jess bought me a little stuffed Chococat at the store.  He went to put it in the cart and he said Neely got excited and grabbed it, saying "JIJI!"

 

Paige started piano lessons two weeks ago, with Nicole's mom.  She loves it so far, and tells me all about C and D and F and how nice Miss Carla is, and how it's hard to remember to use her right hand too, because she always feels like using her left only.  Miss Carla lives in our neighborhood, which is nice.  We can just walk Paige down for her lesson.  After we pack up our stuffed cat and Batman toy.

Neely's hair looks like this each and every morning:

Qui

Quite a while ago Paige asked us why there's no Kids' Day when there's a Mother's Day and Father's Day.  We told her we'd make one up.  We finally did on Friday.  It was nothing big, we just gave them little gifts from the dollar section at Target, some balloons and a yummy breakfast-chocolate muffins and/or cinnamon rolls.

 

They were really happy.  Neely tried to sleep in, but finally the kids woke her up to give her her little gift.  She did that cute baby stretch with the puffy lips...

...then opened her eyes and kind of freaked out when she saw her little pink rubber monster toy.  She slapped it away from her face and said "NO!"  Haha.  She liked it a few minutes later though.