"Again"

Neely likes reading more than ever lately. Her favorite books these last few days have been Robot Zot and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight. A few nights ago she outlasted both of her siblings at bedtime and just wanted to keep reading forever.

I think we truly read How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight between 20 and 30 times in a row. She'd point out things in the pictures and talk about them, and every time we got to the page where it says "Does he fall on the top of his covers and cry?" she'd want to linger there, touching his tears with her finger and saying "Dragon crying." She pronounces it "Dagon kying" though. Then on the last page she'd talk about how he "Hugs" and when we closed the book she'd say "AGAIN!? MORE MORE MORE" and start frantically doing the sign for "more" to be SURE we knew she really wanted to hear it again.
Then suddenly we read the last page and she was finally done and didn't ask for more.

The next day she wanted to read some more books. I like how it looks like my legs are hers in this pic. Ha.

Soopee Quat

Last night the girls and I rented Alice in Wonderland and had a movie night in our bed.
Jess and Cason got sleeping bags out in the living room and watched Superhero Squad.
In the morning Cason wanted to watch his Superhero show in our room, so we had a lazy morning watching it in bed. Neely loves it almost as much as Cason does, and she also loves watching him play the Superhero Squad game. She calls Superheroes "Soopeez" and Superhero Squad is "Soopee Quat". She gets very excited for the theme song, says "Dancin!" and dances to it.

Slip'N'Slidin'

Neely wore pigtails today. When I put them in she reached up and sort of petted one of them and said "Hair, pretty!"
Today was beautiful. Veronica went and bought a Slip'N'Slide, and asked if we wanted to come over. So the kids got their swimsuits on, I slathered them with sunscreen, and we walked over.
They LOVED it.
The babies were huge fans.
Neely liked to stand in it, or sit in it.
Aivree liked to flop around in it wildly, like the fish do when they're on land in the Mario Bros games.
I LOVE this one, even though it's blurry. Neely's telling Aivree something really exciting.
The big kids used it sorta properly, and sometimes just sprinted across. Miraculously not a single child was injured.
When she thought nobody was paying attention, Neely quietly went and got the little raft she'd seen the big kids ride across, and went to stand at the starting line. She stood there contemplating trying it.
Soon Paige came to help, and Cason came to race her. Paige pushed her across and Lily cheered wildly. Neely won by a tiny baby nose.
Then she hung out at the finish line a while.
In other news, this car the kids have has been passed down to them from Alex and Faith, who had it passed down from Colton! So it's been around a while and the color was pretty faded.
I saw someone in a magazine who painted theirs, and I loved it. So I tried the same, and it's pretty much done, except I need to repaint the steering wheel and parts of the tires black again, and touch up a couple of spots. They love it.

Easter Eggs and Goose Eggs

We colored Easter eggs yesterday. Neely didn't pay attention, but the other two had been waiting for it all week.
They were really good at it this year, I think only one egg broke.
Colton and I were working on his math and just watching them. It was pretty entertaining. I especially enjoyed this moment:


He also kept saying "Excellent". I'd never heard him say it before, but he kept saying it during the egg dyeing. He asked Jess "Daddy, are you using the pink?" Jess said "Nope." and Cason goes "EXCELLENT."

Then today we heard a great sermon at church, and then went out to Grammy and Grampy's house for a visit. We had good food and hung out for a couple of hours.
Then we came in for MORE good food and visiting with my side of the family. Then the Easter egg hunt.
And Neely hit her forehead not once, but twice, on the cement, and another time on a metal chair. The first one was a pretty hard crash and she got a nice little goose-egg above her right eyebrow. Mollie said at least all the injuries happened with lots of witnesses, so I shouldn't be in trouble with CPS at least.

Cason Lately....

sleeps in...
...cleans his own room and then poses in it proudly...
...and when his aunt TT leaves our house he yells things out the window at her. Things like: " TT! I LOVE YOU MORE THAN MAMA!!!"

Surprise Fort

Last week we took the kids to the park after dinner. We played freeze tag as a family and it was one of the most fun evenings I've had.
One time everyone was frozen except Neely, and of course Jess, who was it. Neely was our only hope, and we called out to her for help. She ran the other way, laughing at us over her shoulder. Totally left us hangin'.
She got what was comin' to her a second later. Ha.
We were laughing so hard, and even got some rare exercise. I love the pic above, of Neely about to be frozen. She kind of seemed to understand that we had to freeze and not move sometimes, but wasn't sure when it was supposed to happen. So she'd just randomly stop running and hold perfectly still, which is when she'd often end up getting caught, like in the pic above.

Grammy and Grampy came by this weekend with a surprise for Cason. Grammy had repainted doll houses for Paige and Lily, so she decided Cason needed something too. They built, and Grammy painted, an AWESOME fort for his superheroes. They unveiled it, and he was obviously happy, but we didn't get to see his usual awesome response to gifts, because I think he wasn't sure what it was for at first.

But once he found out, he was really happy.
The thing is so cool. It has 2 slides, one which leads to the outside, a firepole, and even what Jess calls a multimedia command center on the right side of the bottom floor.
He also got a locking treasure chest, but Neely sort of took it over.
Grammy set guys up along the roof of the fort, so the guys could shoot them down.
It's getting lots of use.

She Wuvs Him

My dad wants the world to know that last week Neely told him "I love you" when he was leaving, and he was the first person she said it to. She actually pronounced it "I wuh-oo", but I knew it was what she was trying to say because Paige and Cason were yelling it to him and she heard them and then tried to yell it to him too.