working in the yard

I was working in the yard last night removing a small weed ....... (it's in the middle of the picture)

Nathan ended up coming out to help me take care of it. :-) While we were working on it the girls found something to work on.

They fixed the trike

After they were finished fixing it Hannah pushed Evie around the yard for a little bit and then tipped her over and said the trike was broken again

summer fun

Last night we had a nice quiet evening, the girls enjoyed the pool, we all ate some watermelon and just enjoyed the nice weather. After Hannah had finished her watermelon and was done with the pool I sent her in to get ready for bed, she came back out a few minutes later in her pajamas and decided to get on the swing and actually swing, all by herself. She started herself and kept herself swinging for over ten minutes!!! It was very exciting, I took a video, you can see in it she pumped for a little and then would just swing and then pump a little more. She says "goodbye" at the beginning because she doesn't like anyone acknowledging that she's actually doing new or good. In other randomness on Hannah, she's managed to get her shoes on the correct feet more than the incorrect feet the past two days!!! This is huge, as she's had a 90+% rate of having her shoes on the wrong feet :-)

A visit with Lyn

This past Saturday we drove up to Manor, TX, a little town not too far outside of Austin, for the afternoon. We went to see Hannah's birth-mom, Lyn and as a bonus we got to meet her dad, step-mom and half sister. Hannah had a blast, I think it was definitely the best visit we've had with Lyn. Hannah had been asking to see her for awhile, but I wasn't sure how the visit would go, as she can be very excited about things and then just stand there when you're finally doing them. We brought along some toys, and Hannah started off playing barbies with Lyn. Apparently Lyn wasn't into barbies when she was a little girl and also feels they must have their clothes on, something most four year olds I know feel the opposite about! Hannah and Evie both enjoyed several rounds of hide and seek, and even Zac came out to play with the bristle blocks for a few minutes.

Do you see that grin on Hannah's face?

Playing with the pop-ons and barbies

Hearing a story from Zac, doesn't Hannah look thrilled? Well, Zac wasn't reading loud enough for her to hear because he's not used to reading out loud.

This is Lyn's stepmom, Karen, a little better than Zac, as she can actually hear the story now, but still unsure about the whole thing....

Hearing a story from Lyn, much better, that's who I wanted to read in the first place!

Zac, Lyn and Hannah

Evie found lots of places to explore and get into trouble :-)

A family picture, Kato (Lyn's dad), Nathan, Zac, Lyn, Hannah, Karen, Jackie and Evie
We also got to meet Kara, Lyn's sister who was kind enough to take the picture for us.

Singing with Daddy - I'm a little tea pot

Here are the girls and Daddy singing I'm a little Tea Pot. The first one you can hear the tea pot whistle in the background, the second one you can see the girls doing the motions better. Choose one or watch both :-)

Take 1

Take 2

Family Outing

After the pool party I decided it would be a good time for a family outing. I was experimenting with not having the girls nap, as it took me an hour an a half to get Evie to go to sleep and she only slept an hour an a half. Not so nice. Anyway, the experiment failed miserably. Evie got extremely cranky and Hannah ended up totally exhausted by 5 pm Saturday. But we did manage to have some fun going to the park, watching the turtles, Hannah riding her bike and going for a walk.

Swimming

Last weekend (the 14th) we went to a pool party. It was fairly windy and not super warm, but both the girls got in.

And so did Mommy and Daddy. Evie wasn't in for long, as she got cold quick

But Hannah really enjoyed the water and stayed in with Daddy for awhile

The theme of the party was sharks, the girls got to make hats and color pictures of sharks and got all kinds of shark goodies! A good time was had by all!

biking and other random pictures

The weather this month has been extremely nice, normally by May it is hot and humid. We have hardly had any rain in the past four months, so May has been much more dry than normal, and a bit cooler, I think, maybe just drier :-) Anyway, we've been able to spend a lot of time outside. On Wednesday we were at the park for over four hours, it was a great time, we didn't go with any friends but made lots of new friends, Thursday we went in the pool, Friday was a little warmer, but we did a park for a couple hours and then came home and did the pool.

Biking in the park

Gotta love the glasses!

This picture is from May 3rd. It was a low in the 50s (I think) the previous night and only in the 60s when the girls went out for lunch after school, they were all cold and came back in for jackets. It was pretty funny!

Watermelon! It was super yummy and we enjoyed it for several days.

pumping

Evie has figured out how to pump on a swing now....when she wants to she can keep herself going pretty well. She does need a start, but that's not a big deal, however it is only when she wants to. After her discovering how to do this, Hannah turns and asks "why is Evie older than me?" Hannah has asked this questions several times in the past week as Evie is exploring new skills which she herself is unable to do. I assure her Evie is not older than her and try to encourage her to try new things more. It's been interesting to say the least!

schools out!

At least for Nathan. He finished last week. The girls have their last day on Tuesday. It would have been this week, but Evie was sick on Monday, so we canceled for Tuesday. Evie had a fever and I held her for at least five hours, four of them straight, on Monday. She wouldn't let me put her down for anything. It was kind of crazy. Since Nathan finished we had a party, ok, not really. We had the Barnes over last Saturday and had pizza and cake balls, so it was kind of like a party :-) Nathan and James make a trip to Wal-Mart every time James is here, so they did that and came back with a pool(we didn't clean out our pool from last year well, so we ended up throwing it away)! The girls, Nathan and Andrew got in. This was Andrews first time in a pool. He was excited about it.

And had a good time

Hannah and Evie were very excited to have a pool as well!

Some times it can take lots of concentration to play in a pool :-)

Easter candy.....

The day after Evie climbed over the fence I had gone outside to read through the mail and asked if she wanted to come (it was a beautiful day) but she didn't want to, less than a minute later I heard a chair going across the floor and came back in to find her doing this.....

and then......

But Mommy, I just want to look, I just want to look!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's what she told me.

The Zoo

Last Saturday we spent the day at the zoo. And when I say day, I mean day, we got there at 9:15 am for a birthday party that started at 9:30 am, we stayed with the party until about 11 am and then went around looking at animals until 4:45. It was a long day, but the girls did really well and had a lot of fun. We didn't even get to see all the animals! I had asked the girls what animals they wanted to see before we went and Hannah wanted to see lions, we were able to do that. Evie however wanted to see hippos and kangaroos, neither of which our zoo has! Fortunately there were enough other animals that she wasn't disappointed.

We started out in the children's section of the zoo. Evie and Hannah both took a turn brushing the goat

Hannah enjoyed all the statues, here she is riding a pig.

Here are the prairie dogs...

You could pretend to be one too!

Riding a turtle.

Watching the giraffes

Riding a giraffes

Watching the elephants....

Staying with one

The zoo has a new African exhibit with things like masks, here's Evie trying to be tall enough to look through it

And Hannah

Taking a nap in the grass hut

The girls really enjoyed playing the drums!

Rhinos

And up close and person with the Rhinos :-)

This is where we stopped for our lunch break, there were tables right next to it.

Both the girls got to pet this lizard, I think Evie did it just to get the hand sanitizer :-)

This was kind of random, but they were cool to play in.

The only hippo we saw

Apparently the zoo has a bunch of wild rabbits at it, we saw them in a few exhibits

We saw two rabbits hanging out with this guys

The last thing for the day was some of the inside exhibits, they have a cool tunnel the kids can climb through with fish swimming all around!

There goes Hannah!