"How You Doin?"

We've spent most of our spring break working on our yards, front AND back. We were out front one day, and Jess was building me a little flower bed where the oleanders used to be. I was sitting in the rocking chair watching, and our littlest smartie walked up to me and goes "HI. How you doin?" Haha. It was pronounced kind of like "Howoodoin?" At first I thought it just SOUNDED like she said it, so I laughed and told Jess. But then she smiled and said it again to him. Since that day she's said it a lot, and a few times asked "WHAT you doin?" It's so cute every time.

She's also learned to say the names of several characters from Yo Gabba Gabba: "Toodi", "Plex" (well, Pleksh), "Brobee"(Bro-ee), and "Moono".

As soon as she could walk she learned to climb the ladder on their playset, which she proudly does all the time lately, scaring us.
I've also worked on quilts for Paige and Cason and finally finished. Paige requested pink and blue, and I finished it a few days ago.
I finished Cason's this morning, and got another awesome reaction like when we gave him his bike.
They were both really happy, but I really do a worse job with each quilt I make. How can that be?

Neely likes to model all the quilts when they're finished.
Yesterday we had a nice visit with Jess's family because his aunt Joanne and uncles Ken and Rob are visiting, but our camera was lost between seats in the car so I got no pictures. Then we came home and picked up Lily for a sleepover. They all had fun, and there was very little arguing. Woohoo!

Da-EEE

Lately the kids climb up on the couch to look out the window just in case Daddy's home from work. The few times they time it right and he's actually pulling in, they start yelling "DADDY! DADDY!" Neely watched them do it a couple of times and now she loves it too. She sort of bounces up and down on the couch and yells "Da-EEE! Da-EEE!"
It's super cute, although Paige and Cason think so too, so they try to get her to do it all day long, and I have to scold them for getting her all excited when it just ends in disappointment that he's not really home.

SPRING BREAK!!!

We thought it would be fun to get a stomach virus as a family this weekend, to start off the spring break. Paige kicked things off on Friday night by throwing up every 2 hours from 11 pm to 7 am, and then one more time at noon.
I'd decided I wasn't going to get it, so I spent all day Saturday working on cleaning up all the old leaves on the side yard and pretending I didn't feel the nausea growing.

We even went on a bike ride, Cason rode on the back of Jess's bike and I pulled the girls in the trailer. I felt dizzy and overly winded when we got back though. Ha.

The kids played outside, and seemed normal, but by bedtime everyone in our family had caught it. Poor Neely and Paige had it worst, but even Jess didn't get too sick and we're all feeling a lot better this morning.

Shorts-Hat

I've been bad at blogging again. But a while ago Neely did something that reminded me of how cool our kids are and gave me renewed blogging energy. Ha.

We were all back in the girls' room, and I decided to go check on the banana bread in the oven. Neely was busy sorting through a big box of her outgrown clothes, so I decided to let her stay since I planned on coming back in a second anyway. I half-expected her to follow us out in a minute though. I checked on the banana bread, and then started to tell Paige and Cason we should go back to play with Neely again. Just as I turned the corner to head back, she came out of her room with a pair of shorts on her head and smiled knowingly at us. The kids started cracking up and pointing, so Neely took off running and squealing, proud of making her brother and sister laugh. I ran as fast as I could for the camera(I seem to do a lot of that) and followed them back.

She ran straight for her closet and hid in the space between her dresser and a wall, and just smiled at us. She stayed there for a minute while I tried (unsuccessfully) to get a clear picture of her.
But then, and here's the part that makes her even cooler than wearing a shorts-hat already had, she went to the bin and picked out a pair of shorts for each of us.
She chose carefully and then handed them to each of us and stared until we put them on our heads too. Technically only Paige got shorts,
I got a pair of bloomers and Cason got jeans.
My favorite part may have been how the leg holes looked on top of her head.
Once they all had hats they played together, wearing them the whole time.
I'm sure (or at least I hope) that everyone feels this way about their kids, but I really think our 3 are SO special. They each have something special that makes them so cool and funny and unique, I wish I could put it into words for them to read here someday.

Neely's something special often shows when she puts things on her head. Ha.

T-Ball

Paige had her first T-ball practice yesterday. It was just as cute as her first ballet class. And unless any girls show up to the next couple practices, she's the only girl on the team.
Paige is a definite girly girl, but she seems to be perfectly happy to play with all boys, too. Jess said he saw her hamming it up, laughing with them. And later in the practice I saw a boy let her in front of him in line to run the bases, and she was joking around with the boy in front of her and the one behind her too.

She's hard to predict, she is SO shy in some situations, but not at her practice.
Although she did get that shy look on her face for a minute when she had to hit off the tee with everyone looking at her.
The other two ran(and rolled) up and down the hill wildly the whole time. Neely was a handful, trying to escape the entire time, laughing whenever she thought we were chasing her.
Paige LOVED practice, and said her coach said she was doing the best job listening, and she was in a great mood all night after we left. :)

Yoga Sisters

Paige gave me another super cute drawing the other day:
I love the swirls up by the clouds to show that it's windy, and how she signed her name all fancy at the bottom.

She's been all into yoga lately. She asks to do it most days, so I'll put it on and she'll really do it for quite a while. Neely did it with her the other night. Mostly she climbed/stepped all over Paige while Paige did it.

But she did try the moves a couple of times too.

Like downward dog:
Also warrior:
Today we went by the library, but Neely had fallen asleep, so I stayed in the car with her and Jess took the other two in to get some books.
If you're wondering if Neely napped with one of her Little People in her mouth, yes, she did.
(Don't worry, as soon as I took the picture, I took it out of her mouth and fixed the uncomfortable angle of her head and neck)

"MY YOU!"

None of our kids have had any issues with jealousy, even when we were bringing home their new baby sibling from the hospital. But it seems the baby sibling is our possessive one. She doesn't like to share me, not even with Jess. She doesn't mind if he's hugging me or something, in fact that makes her smile and join in. But if ANY of them tries to cuddle with me on the couch or in bed at night she gets upset. She'll push their arms off of me and say "MINE!" The other night Caso tried to cuddle me and she was sobbing, pushing his arms away and then she looked at me and kept crying "MY YOU! MY YOU!" Haha.

We almost forgot our outdoor time the other day when it was really cold and windy. We were about to get everyone ready for bed when I realized and made us all go out on the porch swing. Everyone was being weird and hyper, which made it chaotic but really funny and a good memory. They all love when I break out the camera (and it's bright flash) when it's dark out.
Poor Gia had her teeth cleaned and a little mass removed from her side yesterday. Jess found out he had to go to Havasu, so I had to drop her off by myself at 7:30 with all 3 kids with me. I wore Neely in the carrier, and thankfully it wasn't busy so I didn't have to worry about trying to keep the older 2 really close to me. So it ended up going really smoothly.

Then Grama helped me pick her up in the afternoon, and stayed in the car with the kids so I could go in for Gia. Thanks Grama, for helping, AND for the ice creams afterwards. Ha.

Gia has shiny white teeth now, but she was really sad all evening. And drugged. She didn't move from the couch for hours, and her tongue was hanging out, and she'd whimper quietly every once in a while.
Paige fell asleep on the living room floor a little after 5 pm, which is really weird for her. We hadn't done our outdoor time so we carried her out to sleep on the bench out front. Ha. Cheating I guess, but she still got fresh air, so I'm counting it.
She did after I uncovered her head a little, anyway.

This last weekend we failed to get the last oleander all the way out. It was the worst one, gigantic thick roots everywhere. We hacked away at it some more and then team leg pressed it most of the way out. Ha.
Caso helped us work on the yard some.
And then he found a few little purple flowers growing. All on his own he had the idea to pick one and put it right by Paige's face, and he told me that way she would be surprised when she woke up and it was the first thing she saw. Cute little gent.
Neely just cruised around the yard.
Cason and Neely are a little bit sick today, so we're just hanging around at home for now.