29

I had a wonderful birthday.  Jess had to work, but he and Paige and Cason went on a late night trip to the store last night to get a few things.  Then they made me go to bed, so they could do some "secret things".  When I woke up this morning I found Paige had taped some streamers on all the walls in the living and dining rooms for me, and there were chocolate muffins waiting for our breakfast, along with a sweet card from my loves. 

Paige had piano this morning, so I dragged the tired children out of bed to eat their muffins with me.  They looked like this:

 

We walked Paige to piano, and came home.  Cason was "sooooo tired" on the way home, and was so slow that we had to pretty much turn around and walk back to pick her up the minute we got home.  I did make him trade his bike in for a wagon, which I pulled him and Neely in to speed things up a bit.  Ha.  Miss Carla told me Paige is doing great, which didn't suprise me, because I'm always amazed after her lessons how much she can tell me.  

Jess picked us up at lunch, so we could take the car.  Aunt Mindy's in town, and Grama's home from her long trip, so we were excited to see them both.  They'd gone to lunch, so we were driving around killing time.  I randomly decided to take the kids to the park.  It was pretty spontaneous, so we just went to the nearest one, which didn't involve any playsets, but they have been asking to go to this one for a while.   They were so happy and grateful, it made me feel guilty.  Obviously I don't take them to the park enough.  Paige kept saying things like "Thank you SO much mama.  It's your birthday, YOU'RE supposed to get special things."  Ha.

They ran around, trying to climb little trees.  

 

Neely of course told me "Climb, climb, MONKEY!"

  

There was dancing.

 

Posing.

 

Hanging.

 

Running.

  

I love Neely's hair here.

We had a nice visit at Grama's, where I forgot to take out the camera.  I did get a pic of them in the sweet shades Grama got them though.

Tonight the kids helped Jess "secretly" bake me a treat.  They decorated it with everything they found in my baking cabinet, lit candles, and sang to me.  :)

Jess and I finished all but a half a row of the floor in the living room.  Tomorrow we should be all done!  A wonderful birthday, and to top it off, God gave me a nice thunderstorm! 

I'll post pictures of the floor tomorrow, as well as a post about Neely's ballet.

Good Riddance, Carpet

No matter how much I love everything about having a newborn baby at home, (mostly miss them cuddling with me all day) every stage they go through is awesome.  It seems to get more and more fun.  Neely is so dang funny lately.  So many little faces, peeks at us out of the corner of her eye, and just cute ways of saying things. 

She has quite the imagination lately, and will play quietly by herself for quite a while.  Her favorite is to have me fill up her watering can.  She brings it over to me and asks "Drink o' waters?  More?"  It's usually just a little toy one, but she'll spend close to 10 minutes slowly pouring out water on the sidewalk, before I have to refill it.  She likes using our big one too.

I like finding toys in funny positions or situations, where she left them.

The other day there was a car accident involving a dragon.  Superman was at the wheel.  Not sure if that other Little People person on the ground back there was involved.

Neely's newest things to say, as of this weekend, are "Awesome!" and "HEY!  No fairs."  She has no idea what "no fair" means, or at least she doesn't always use it correctly.  But she hears her brother and sister say it, so she says it now too.  At dinner tonight she was looking at her peas and telling me "Apples.  Oinges(Oranges)."  Then she started making kissy sounds with her lips to call Gia, and threw her some peas, one at a time, saying "HEY.  No fairs." every time she threw a pea.  Ha.  Weirdee.

My birthday gift from Jess and also partly from my mom-in-law and dad-in-law is wood laminate floors!  A guy who owns a flooring shop in Bullhead was selling this wood laminate flooring on Craigslist for pretty cheap.  So Friday we drove down to pick it up.  We thought it looked pretty good so we got enough to do our dining and living rooms and the hallway.  I'm SOOOOO excited.

After we picked it up I got to run into Joanns, so it was pretty much a perfect day.  Ha. 

Then we stopped at the river to let the kids get in the water for a bit. 


 
It was pretty hot out, so after only 5 or 10 minutes I brought Neely to sit in the air conditioned car with me.

 
Then we headed home and began demolishing our house, since the flooring had to sit for 48 hours before being installed anyway.  Tearing up that old carpet felt awesome!  We found a couple weird layers of sticky tile flooring, and spent a few hours chipping that stuff up.  Then I convinced Jess to take down the weird siding in the dining room.  Thankfully there is drywall underneath.  So we just have to finish it and paint.

The kids alternated between being really helpful and entertaining themselves while we worked.  Cason blew bubbles for Neely, who loves chasing them and popping the ones she catches.

There was of course some Mario.

Some drawing.

Some "work".


Finally we started putting down the floors yesterday afternoon.  It was slow going at first,

but we finally started to move more quickly.
 
 Then it got a bit late to be using the saw, so we had to stop.  We only finished a little over half the dining room, but I love it so far.

So do the kids.



Thank you Jess, Karl, and Barby!

The 4th

Mollie and Tim's 4th of July/Mollie's birthday barbecue wasn't until 4 pm, so all day Wednesday the kids asked "How much longer until we go to Uncle Tim and Aunt Mollie's?  They were so happy when the time finally came and we hopped in the car.

It was fun as always, hanging out with the family.

 

Even though Jess played the super "fun"(scary) game the kids love, where he pulls them around on something, running in circles, and centrifugal force sends them flying off, spiraling through the air, completely out of control.  

Fortunately there are so many kids now that it's too heavy for them to go very fast anymore.  Even when  Uncle Matt helped Jess.

It was a smaller group than usual, that stayed for the fireworks.  It was nice though, quiet and I could really watch our kids as they watched the fireworks.  In fact, I barely saw any of the fireworks at all.  I just stared at the kids.  Paige and Cason were pretty amazed by the fireworks, as seen through binoculars.  Neely really watched this year, saying "WOW!" every once in a while.  So cute.

 

And Mollie provided lots of extra fun as usual.

We were out back after the fireworks  and noticed the sky looked awesome!  My little camera couldn't quite capture it, but here's a tiny taste.

It was a full moon, so it was bright behind these clouds, looking all pretty and spooky.  You could see the silhouettes of the mountains and these palm trees and it looked so cool.  Wish Michael had been there with his camera and photography skills.

Ant-Sisters and the Poopy Day

Last night Paige was especially inquisitive.  She was asking us to tell stories from when we were little.  Then she asked me "Mama, do I have any ancestors?"  I said yes and she asked who they were.  So I explained what ancestors are.  Then she asked "Do I have any ant brothers?"  It took me a minute, and then I couldn't help laughing.  She gave me one of her sheepish smiles, like this one:

The first time she said "Ant-sisters" it sounded close enough to ancestors that I didn't catch it.  So cute.

I made pumpkin muffins last night, (guess we're pretending it's fall) and I let them each have one for breakfast.  Neely ate hers in the nude, since the chocolate chips end up all over her.  Sure enough she had chocolate smeared on her belly.  A few minutes later she was standing in the kitchen, looked down and saw the chocolate on her and said "OOOOH NOOOO!  POOPY DAY!"  Haha.  We were cracking up.  She thought she somehow had poop all over her and she was NOT happy about it.

Forward Facer # 3

I posted the other day about how Neely asks to "Wop the doy" when she hears the other two start asking as we turn on to our street.  Well, apparently she doesn't need to hear them first, she knows the rules of the game herself.  Today we turned on to our street, and as soon as we were around the corner Neely said "Mama, wop a doy?!"  Haha.  The other two hadn't even thought of it yet, so she was the clear winner.

She did NOT want us getting too close, either.  She'd give us a feisty look and try to push us away, afraid we were going to unlock the door for her.

Since Cason has moved into his booster seat, they started asking when Neely can be turned to face forward.  They're allowed to once they're a year old AND 20 lbs, but they say it's safer to wait until they're closer to two.  Since our kids have all been between 25 and 30 pounds at a year old, she really could've been turned around a long time ago.  But I like to play it safe.  She's 20 months old today though, and that feels close enough to 2 that we decided to go ahead and do it.  The other kids were super excited about it, so we expected her to be too.  But at first she was very unhappy.  

I think that was more about having to go for another ride than it was about facing forward though.  Because a few seconds later she kind of realized she had a better view.  She quieted down and stared out the window.

 

Pretty soon she started to smile, ignoring the brother trying to tickle her feet.

In the end we thought she seemed pretty happy about the change.

 

Help

Neely's new game.  Turning the toy box upside down, climbing on top, perching there and pretending to be unable to get down.  She calls for help from one of us.  Thinks she has us fooled.