School Started....

Nathan is in his last semester at HBU!!! He started class last week, he's taking two classes this semester and then he'll be done. Yay! To help ensure a successful completion of his classes he's cut his work hours down to 30 hours a week. He's take one week day completely off. Last week he took Wednesday off and finished all his reading from his Tuesday class on Wednesday. His Thursday class he pre-read both required book over the summer, so he's in good shape. He has a research paper in each class, both of which are due before Thanksgiving. Only 14 more weeks of class and one week of finals to go! :-)

When we get to fly

This morning at breakfast Hannah and Evie were chatting away being silly and not focusing on eating (as has been the case a lot lately). While they were talking Hannah told Evie the following after she was pretending to fly (I think) "Soon you'll fly and never ever sin again. And that is not a joke!" The joys of Heaven!

Waiting for the puddle

Thursday morning was cloudy, this was the first cloudy day we had seen in a LONG time, we had a record 24 days in the triple digits, Thursday was cool, but we've had triple digits again since then. But back to Thursday, it was cloudy and a bit cooler, so I took the girls outside to ride bikes, they were thrilled! It's been too hot to do this and Hannah keeps asking when it's going to cool down. While they were riding it started to drizzle. They immediately came back to the house and put the bikes in the garage. Then, they went down to the end of the driveway and declared "we're waiting for the puddle!"

They had such confidence it was going to rain, I wasn't so sure..... But they were right and it did rain enough for a puddle, in fact it poured for about an hour, which was much needed!

They played in the puddle for awhile and enjoyed the rain!

then came and sat under the umbrella in the garage and just watched the rain for a long time.

Gabi came in the middle of the rain and enjoyed playing with the girls as well :-)

One of those days.....

Today was one of those days you hope doesn't come again for a long time. Evie has been sleep deprived and will not sleep for anything because she is so over tired. It's not fun. Today the girls were up before 7 am.....Evie was playing with her food at breakfast so she got excused, having only eaten a couple bites. Not happy about being taken away from the table she skillfully knocked both her cereal bowl and glass of milk off the table and they spilled every where (including all over her and me). After getting punished for throwing the fit so calmed down and cleaned up the mess with minimal help, it took her about 40-50 minutes and she stuck with it. I was impressed by that. After that, I had her get hair bands for me to put her hair up, I asked her how many she wanted in and she said "all of them" so I put her hair in braids to maximize hair band usage :-) After throwing fits at the library and the pool she finally took a nap, but it was a short one and she woke up extremely whiny. She did manage to calm down enough to help make dinner though. After putting her to bed she got out of bed multiple times, the last of which I spanked her after having warned her before it was coming. While talking to her after the spanking I asked why she had gotten out of bed, her answer? "because I wanted to get spanked" I asked her if she was better now that she had been spanked and she said yes. That's my Evie.

Evie with her braids reading with Hannah on the couch today

Ice Cream Outing

Nathan was given a gift card to Marble Slab for a job well done at work. We decided we'd use it while Debbie was here and take her and the girls. The girls enjoyed picking out their ice cream and mix-in. Evie chose mint ice cream with gummy bears and Hannah picked strawberry ice cream with sprinkles. We ate at Marble slab, the tables were small, but about half way through her ice cream Evie got up, moved to one side of her chair and made room for me. It was very sweet!

Evie with her ice cream

Hannah with her cone

Enjoying the treat!

Outside after the ice cream.

Fried Goodness

Tuesday night, at Debbie's request we had a "will it fry?" party. We had a bunch of friends over who were more than generous in the food they brought and had some fun. We fried okra, zucchini, pickles, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, onion rings, plantain, corn tortillas, homemade cheese sticks, shrimp, chicken, homemade corn dogs, oreos, twinkies and fried ice cream. It was crazy! I really do not recommend fried oreos and twinkies, fried ice cream is good though :-) Nathan and I did most of the frying (I found a second fryer at Goodwill that day for under $5 that worked great!) although a couple other people tried doing it as well. It was lots of work and a bit crazy, I'm not sure if we'll do it again, but it was fun experimenting and trying all the different fried foods.

Here are the twinkies, they were better fried than straight (when was the last time you had a twinkie?!) but still not very good

Here's shrimp, chicken and corn dog

Fresh hot chips anyone?

Bubbling away!

Oreos?

Looking up recipes

Fresh ingredients!

Checking the fryer (that's the one from goodwill)

Fried pickles!

picking things up

I told Evie on Thursday we were going to pick up Aunt Debbie from the airport. Her response? "Mommy, I don't think I can pick up Aunt Debbie, she's too big"
We had a nice conversation on what it meant to pick people up :-)

A summer full of reading

Anyone who knows Hannah knows she LOVES books. If you ask her what she'd like you to do with her it's read, read and read so more! Well, this summer I kept track of her minutes read for two months, almost 3000 minutes. Why did I keep track you ask? Because I figure since I'm reading to her so much we might as well get something for it right? We did the Half Priced Books reading program, every participant who read 600 minutes got a $5 gift card and yes, it was ok to read to those who don't know how yet. For the top reader in each age group they got a $20 gift card. I got a call yesterday saying Hannah was the top reader for her age group. :-) We now have $30 to get books! I'm very excited, and the girls were excited when we looked around a little to submit our entries. It should be fun to go and get new books.

Swimming with Daddy

After going to the gym Saturday the girls came home and napped then we went to the pool and Nathan came along. He wasn't really looking forward to it because the last time he had come to the pool with us it was to watch swimming lessons, and there was much screaming during it. This time the girls were swimming to him, jumping in and having a grand time. There were cannonballs and barges (Nathan pulling the girls through the water on the noddles and making sounds like a submarine dive horn) it was lots of fun. Hannah and Evie are now jumping in and swimming to me and Evie swam most of the length of the pool today.

Hanging around having fun with Daddy

Squirting water

Jumping in!

Daddy's cannonball splash!

Don't get sidetracked by the cute girl in the front left, in the back center is Hannah doing a front float!

This is Hannah jumping in, but it's also to show you how far Evie swam today, the picture is taken from about the steps that Evie started at and she swam to the alcove on the other side.

Here are some videos if you want the live action version!

Hannah swimming, we were working with her on getting her arms out of the water

Evie swimming, again working on getting her arms out of the water

Hannah doing a front float

Evie jumping to me

A weekend of fun

This past weekend the girls gym had an open house, so I took the girls and gave Nathan some quiet reading time.

The platform Evie is sitting on the girls have jumped off of most weeks at gymnastics. The first couple weeks Hannah jumped in several times and even hanged off the bar. Suddenly this stopped, now she won't even jump....I'm not sure what changed or why. But we're working on getting her to jump again. They will both jump if I am standing in the pit, but that's it at this point...

The girls loved watching the bigger kids do flips and handstands. Here Hannah is doing a somersault

There was also face painting.....

There was also a clown making balloon animals (or swards, which is what both my girls got)

And what do you do with balloon swards? Attach your Dad of course!

buckling up

Hannah has learned how buckle herself into the car seat. This is most wonderful, as now I can send her out to the car to get in it and she's ready to go when I get out. Well this morning she decided she'd buckle Evie up first and then do herself. She got all but one clip done, she tried again later and got it. Now I don't have to buckle either in :-) I think that means it's time for more kids, because I can put both of them in the back right? Ok, maybe not, but it's definitely a helpful step.

Babysitting & Swimming

Our lives haven't been that exciting this past week. I've been babysitting a lot, Thursday and Saturday last week, yesterday and today this week. It's been good, it helps keep the girls entertained :-) Along with the babysitting we've been doing lots of swimming, I've been trying to get them in the water at least every other day. They are loving it and getting so much more comfortable every time we go. Both girls will jump to me and then swim to the steps by themselves. We're enjoying a bit of the lazy days of summer :-)