"firsts"

I spent the day with my children. They helped me clean this morning, we went on a walk to the park and then we played school all afternoon taking a break for recess and snack. It was a nice day and everyone experienced some firsts that I enjoyed watching.

Ali is learning multiplication. I thought that they teach it in second grade and so we better get ahead and start learning. It is amazing that she is learning the concept so quickly and it sure is fun teaching her. It makes me wonder if I would like home schooling?

Ashling is learning to read. Today she had some simple works and was able to figure out how to spell each of them and she wrote each of the words down. I can't believe she has another year until kindergarten! She is going to be reading by then!

Annika and I were eating breakfast together this morning and I was playing a game with her. Each time I fed her a bite I said, "mmmmm" and she thought it was so funny. We enjoyed our breakfast and the time spent together. Tonight at dinner Cameron was feeding Annika her food while we were all eating. After a bite Annika said, "mmmm." I noticed that it was what I had said this morning. Then each time she was ready for a bite she said, "mmmm" instead of screaming which has been her normal approach. She thought that this was a great way to communicate and was very pleased with herself. I am very happy that she will not be screaming at the dinner table whenever she wants a bite! (Hopefully she will turn the "mmmm" into "mama" before long too. I would love to beat Daddy for the first word!

I am glad I am at home with my girls to experience all their firsts. I couldn't think of a better job and I am happy to play with them each and every day.

practicing...

The air inside is hot and the air outside is cool. Cameron commented that he was sleeping outside tonight and the girls thought it was a great idea. Really though we are sleeping on our bed because with a fan the air is cool inside too.

My girls are camping on the deck tonight. Aren't they cute? We are contemplating taking everyone on a three day, two night, 3 mile backpacking trip and so we are practicing sleeping in a tent alone and tomorrow we are going to start hiking. Hopefully it goes well. We bought a new back pack carrier for Annika that has a much better design. Instead of the baby reclining the baby is pressed against your back and you don't feel like you are going to fall over backwards. I am so excited to wear the backpack and go hiking with the girls. Our adventures start tomorrow.

Annika is 5 months old!

My little girl is now 5 months old. I know it is a little late but life has been busy with camping trips, trips to the beach, hiking, swimming, visiting aunties and grandma's and enjoying the summer. Annika loves it all. She especially loves to watch her sisters and wish she could do things with them. She is calm and lets them treat her like a doll and loves every minute of it. She loves to giggle and laugh at everything. Some of her favorite things are singing songs to her and playing games like peek a boo and patty cake. She laughed so hard at me tonight when I was playing that game.

Annika is getting very good at rolling over and she is also getting very good at scooting around on her back like an inchworm. She is still very awkward at sitting and doesn't do it very well at all. Annika loves to eat rice cereal and eats so much of it we worry it will make her sick. She also loves applesauce which makes me happy since I made so much of it last fall in anticipation of her arrival. She does not appear to like bananas at all... when we fed her them she made the funniest faces and after awhile I stopped feeding it to her and made her plain rice cereal. Cameron tried the bananas again and she cried and refused to eat anymore. Tonight she was grateful her dinner was not tainted.

I don't know how much she weighs this month but she is a skinny tall baby and seems to be headed towards being skinnier and taller. I bet she will be crawling soon and I am worried about what we will do when she is completely mobile. We love having Annika in our home. She is a joy to have as she is always happy and smiling at everyone.

My job

I have been a little confused about what my job is for months now. At least since Annika appeared in my life and made me a mother of three I have had too many jobs to do. I have felt that I must be living just to do the laundry that my family makes each and every day. Or to pick up messes that my children leave as a path across the floor when they come home after a long day. Or maybe to clean dirty bathrooms or vacuum floors to perfection. Possibly my job consists of making delicious dinners and washing the dirty dishes I have created. But all this cleaning has made me cranky and my kids neglected.

Lately though I have learned that my job only has fringe benefits of occasional cleaning. My full-time job is the best. I get to play, laugh, tickle, hug, read to, and dance around with my beautiful daughters. I get to go to the park, the library, watch movies, play games and hold these special girls. We can look at bugs and butterflies and explore the world around us.... and if there are clean clothes to wear then this is a fringe benefit of my staying home full time.

My full-time job is not to keep the house clean but to at least make a dent in the mountains of laundry. My full-time job is not to have a perfectly vacuumed, mopped and dusted house... those will come later along with sliding doors with no finger prints. I have invited people over lately and played with the kids instead of doing laundry and everyone is happier. So if you come to my house and notice it is not completely clean just remember what my real full-time job is.

Summer is arriving!

Tomorrow is the last day of school. I feel like a child again about to get out of school. I am so excited I can hardly sleep. I remember being so excited for Ali to go to school but now I feel selfish about the time the teachers get with her instead of me. I can't wait to have my children all to myself. I get to plan their life instead of some teacher who gives them projects, assignments and homework. I get to decide which books they will read and what activities they will do. We will spend time exploring our world and I plan on getting outside as much as possible.

I can let them stay up all night just to watch movies and then sleep in all day. We can go to the park when we want and just drop by the library next door to find something to read for nap time. If we want to do an art project then we will and if we feel like staying in our pjs all day-we can. Butterfly catching can happen at will and we will swim in every body of water from small to large that is within 30 miles of us. Of course we will visit the beach-lots. And camp and hike and ride bikes and play with all sorts of balls. We will cuddle in bed when we wake up and we will gaze up at the stars at night on a blanket. Barbecues and pools are for us for the entire summer. We will eat fresh peas from the pod and bite on tomatoes as if they were apples. We will make smoothies and lick popsicles and play house. We will run in the sprinklers and lay on the warm cement to get dry. We will swim and swim and swim. I am so ready. It starts tomorrow. We are going to the beach camping!

A swimming weekend!

We went to Stacey and Tony's house for the weekend. Everytime we go to Phoenix the weather is horrible here and wonderful there. And I always want to move there. It was about 90-95 the entire time and I loved it! I guess it is nice to go there during cold fronts because the weather is more pleasant there during cold fronts.

Stacey and Tony just moved in to a nice new house, (with a pool,) and needed a little painting help and we needed a swimming weekend. We got both. We swam a lot and painted a lot. I don't have any finished product pictures but soon I bet Stacey will put some on her blog. They chose a light blue/green color for the kitchen and accented it with chocolate in the living room. It lookes really good. The theme of the room with eventually be beach themed.

While there we had a barbecue and swim party with Cameron's cousins, Rich and Jenn, and their 3 girls. They are our examples. They got married a year before us and they have a little girl a year ahead of Ali and one a year ahead of Ashling. Then they have one more little girl who is just barely 3. The girls had a blast playing together and Jenn got pictures that I will post if I can get her to email them to me. Her oldest Abby and Ali played together so well it was amazing. It is always nice to have family!

The proud owners of a new house!

guess who learned to swim.... Ashling. Ashling kept getting more and more used to how to move in the water but she insisted that she could not swim without her floaties on. I did a couple small lessons where she mostly cried and screamed and everyone tried to help her to swim. Then I took her out by myself to the pool. Of course she again screamed and screamed. But I just ignored it and told her calmly what to do. I let go of her and told her to swim under the water to the steps. And she did. Then I gave her lots and lots of praise and told her she was swimming. You should have seen the big grin spread across her face as she realized that she could swim. Then she jumped back in the water to me and swam back to me. She repeated this a couple of times under the water and I realized she was right at the top so I told her to come up and take a breath and then she was actually swimming! I am so proud of her because she is not scared at all now. She even jumped off the diving board without the floatie

here she is swimming under the water without floaties.

Ali is a little fish. She swam all over the pool and learned to dive. Her dive is not perfect but is much better than I can do. I think I will have to take a class so I am in the know on diving. She loved playing in the water and got lots of exercise swimming around.

Ali loved the mask and the snorkel. I think I found my perfect snorkeling buddy. Hawaii here we come! (when we have enough money.)

She also loved diving to the bottom of the 8 foot pool to get things.Their pool was amazing. With an automatic cover that protects the kids from falling in it stayed at almost 90 degrees the entire time we were there. (I am so jealous of the pool that the only color I can see is green!) Annika enjoyed swimming for the first time. She loved to kick her legs in the water.

Cameron is very good at painting and he spent all his time cutting in edges. He reminded me that he has had lots of training at work and is a professional painter. (So you can hire him to paint your house too.) I would only roll after he ran the paint brush around the edges.

Stacey is much nicer than me and let the girls paint too!

And the winner is...

We went to Julian and went to the water fall called Green Valley Falls. Stacey won because she said it first! But good guess for Nicole and mom knew where it was too! It was fun to play in the water and see the waterfalls. It reminded me of the times we went camping at Cuyamaca. The place had burned and looked quite a bit dryer than when we were kids but it was fun too. I wish fires didn't cause such lasting damage to the landscape. At the same time though the black oaks all grew back through their blackened branches and are now thriving. If there were not dead standing pine trees you would not even know there was a fire. So some trees are amazing at dealing with the fires.

Camping with the girls was fun! But the wild turkeys were not quite as fun. They woke us up early with their gobbles. I recommend that everyone with young kids goes camping! It is very entertaining for them and so you get a lot of time to relax while watching them run around the campground.

guessing

You guys are not guessing. I guess that I did not give enough clues. Or no one reads my blog anymore! So here is another clue.

* I went to this place for my 12th birthday. We sang really loud as each camper passed our campsite hoping that we would have the area to ourselves. That was fine with our moms until it got dark and they realized that we were all alone. On that same day we had two major earthquakes but since I like earthquakes I thought they were a birthday present to me.