Bubbles

Today we went to a presentation at the library today called the science of suds. It was all about bubbles! Have you ever seen a bubble filled with helium? I hadn't, it was very cool, it went straight to the ceiling! Evie was amazed, I wish I had gotten a picture of her face, it was shock and delight! Hannah enjoyed the show as well. She like the "bubble wall" and the huge bubbles.

 A really big bubble!

 A square bubble

 Here's the "bubble wall" Hannah liked

 Dry ice anyone?

 And some really cold bubbles!

 And here is a helium bubble, just before it took off.

Application complete!

I sent our adoption application in today!!!!! We finally have it completed (except Nathan still needs a physical, but they said it was ok to send it in without that). I'm excited, as that was probably the hardest part. At least for us. Nathan really isn't a big fan of the writing, now there's no writing left (at least not that I know of). Our next steps are to attend training on the 10th and watch some training videos as well.

Where am I?

We lost power on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. We lost internet Monday until earlier today. I think we're preparing for my sister to visit from Yemen. You know, so she can feel more at home with a lack of power and internet! :-) On Sunday when it went out at 9:45 pm we lit some candles. Nathan was working on his autobiography for our adoption application and I wasn't doing much, so I decided to roast some marshmallows over the candles and we made some 'smores :-) What else do you do with a lack of power? I was talking to one of our neighbors and apparently we've lost power more in the past year than the past 17 years combined that they've lived here.

The Village Fair

 Friday was New Milford's Village Fair Days. We went Friday nice and had dinner there. We walked around and the girls (and I) had fun collecting some free stuff. Kimberly-Clark is a big local employer here so I got free Kleenex! YAY! There were also some huge frogs that I didn't think to take a picture of that the girls enjoyed watching that were from our local nature center. We haven't been there yet, but after seeing their booth we definitely need to head over there at some point. There was also a bounce house that the girls had fun in.

 We had some friends take a family photo for us. We needed it for our adoption application

Here are the girls and Nathan enjoying a super yummy cannoli

Here are my free samples from Kimberly-Clark! :-)

I scream you scream.....

 We all scream for ice cream! We hosted an ice cream making party at our house last Thursday (a great event to do after a tooth was pulled in the morning!) and had some moms from my moms group and their kids over. We had a good time, my girls and three other girls helped to make the ice cream and everyone enjoyed eating it! My girls also played with the other kids which was great. After the ice cream party we went to the beach for a little bit and Hannah asked if one of the people there knew Jesus, I said I wasn't really sure and asked why she was asking. She said well we asked her daughter (one of the girls they were playing with) if she knew Jesus and she said yes, but that her dad didn't. When we had prayed as a family the night before the party I prayed that we would be able to share Jesus with our friends. They were doing just that! That makes me super excited! :-)

 Who's ready for ice cream?!?!

 

 Doesn't that look yummy????

 Here is everyone enjoying their ice cream.

A lost tooth and a new tooth

This past Thursday Hannah got her tooth pulled at the dentist. This was done because her adult tooth was already half way in behind her baby tooth and the baby tooth wasn't very loose. The dentist said it can cause issues for the adult tooth if you don't get the baby tooth out of there, so we follow his advice and got the tooth pulled. Hannah didn't mind that she lost the tooth this way, she was just excited that she lost a tooth. I haven't taken a picture of her smile, you can see it in the picture with the cannoli at the village fair days those. Hopefully I get one at some point and update this post!

I remember!

 Last Wednesday while at the lake Hannah turns to me and says "I remember how to swim. Watch mom" I had been watching her, I hadn't seen any swimming, after she said that she promptly goes and swims five freestyle strokes. She stood up and I said "yes, yes you did remember" WHERE did that come from?!?! Anyway, she likes swimming again, so that's great! We went to the beach to "play" because she still doesn't want to practice her swimming skills, so she won't say she's going to swim. Anyway, she decided to swim a little while we were there and she said to me "I really like swimming, this is fun! I want to do it more" :-) Here are some more pictures of the girls swimming

 Isn't that a beautiful front float?

 Here they are front floating at the same time

 Wednesday it was a little cold and windy, they had also gotten up at 6:30 am so they were a little tired. They're warming up.....and falling asleep (not quite, but almost!).

Handstand!

The girls have been watching the big kids do handstands at the beach, so today, since she no longer has any fear of anything regarding the water now and thinks she can do anything, Evie decided to try one. And she succeeded. I missed the really good picture,  she actually did one with her body much more straight than this, so this is all you get... But you can see she at least has the idea.

rockets

 Yesterday Hannah said to me "Mom, you can get me a model rocket for my birthday and you can get Evie a kite for hers" Well, since she mentioned rockets and was interested I remembered one of the few things I have from years ago and got it out. A water rocket! I had the girls help pump it up and launched it a few times with them and then Nathan did it with them while I took pictures......

 Pressurizing the rocket

 Evie helping pressurize it

 And Hannah helped too.

You can see the stream of water (sort of) in this picture, but I missed the rocket launch....out of the three times Nathan pressurized it with the girls he only got it to launch once because he kept having various issues

Hannah is Stupendous

On Sunday Nathan put on his name tag "The Stupendous Mr. Nathan" for Sunday school. I said "why did you do that? Do you even know what it means? Will any five or six year old know what it means? Or be able to read it?" He gave me some lame answer about it meaning something great and said it didn't really matter. We then go to pick up Hannah because there's a little over half an hour in between first service and second and she says "Daddy, why does your name tag say stupendous" yeah, so much for five year olds not being able to read that. So what exactly does stupendous mean? "causing astonishment or wonder" The amount Hannah can read causes me great astonishment AND wonder. How did she learn it? She's even picking up rules like a silent e, when she saw the name Jesse in the Bible she said why does it say "gees" that is how you'd pronounce it with a silent e.....who taught her that? I think I mentioned it to her once or twice, but that's it.

boys

On the way home from church this past week Evie said "there was a new kid and in my class and I don't like that" "why not?" I asked. "Because it was a boy, I don't like boys" said with much disgust. At three she is already too mature for the boys. :-)

A good day

After a crazy week with lots of kids it was nice to get back to a more normal schedule and relaxed day. Today was a good day, we went to the library, got free chocolate at CVS and hung out at the beach! What more could you want in a day? Evie started swimming again! Which was super exciting. Hannah's still not wanting to swim, but that's ok, she'll get it eventually. There were lots of friends from church, a friend from the moms group and new friends made. I got adult conversation, that was probably the most wonderful part of the day!

Vacation Bible School!

 Last week was VBS at our church. I had a class of 15 five year olds, there were three classes of five year olds, so Hannah wasn't in my group. My group had 12 boys and three girls. Fun times, let me tell you! We were out of the house by 7:45 every morning and didn't get home until 1:30 each afternoon, at which time we had lunch and had quiet time and that was about it for the day. A bit of a crazy week, it was also crazy hot the first three days. We've had nine days of 90 or over this year, CT was NOT supposed to be this hot! Fortunately you can look at the forecast and see the end of the heat, unlike Houston, unfortunately we don't have central AC. But we made it through the week and had a low key weekend (where Nathan and I taught kindergarten Sunday School, so I was done with kids by yesterday afternoon). Anyway, the girls had a great time at VBS and were really excited to go each day. I told Hannah we'd have to get up early on Monday to make sure we made it there on time, she was up at 5:45 am, I had to tell her that was a little too early and to go  back to sleep!

 These are the pre-school kids, there were about 150 of them! There were over 450 kids total in VBS for the week.

 On Friday night they had an end of VBS show where all the kids sang. Well....where they were all given the opportunity to sing, Hannah didn't sing, she stood there like that the whole time, Evie enjoyed singing for everyone though.

 Here are some of the things Hannah made at VBS, they made two things a day. 

Here are Evie's things, all in all a good time!

"playing by themselves"

We're attempting to get rid of dog odor and put new flooring in our den on our first floor. After pulling the carpet up we found the foundation wasn't quite even enough to lay laminate. There was a large dip that needed to be fixed.  Nathan and I worked at fixing a dip tonight by adding some concrete, I told the girls what we'd be doing and to play upstairs while we were working on it....this is what I came up to after about an hour of working down stairs:

 The table, floor and chairs were covered in paint (and some mixture of paint and peanut butter)

 And the floor had lots of foot prints!

 I didn't take pictures of the girls, but their clothes were ruined, ironically I asked if they wore their smocks when I came up the stairs and saw them running to the bathroom and Hannah said yes, I did find the smocks on the floor (you can see them in the pictures above), but they didn't seem to do much good. Neither did the newspaper they had laid down for painting :-) My floor needed a good cleaning anyway, not quite how I was expecting to spend my Thursday night, but that's okay. I remembered they're only three and five. I took pictures so when their kids ask them what kind of bad things they did when they were kids I have proof! :-) The first thing Evie said to me was "But Mommy, you still love us" .....why yes, yes I do, but do I have to give you that answer right now? Was what I was thinking, but not what I said. I think she then reassured Hannah it was okay because we still loved them...not exactly the point I'd like to have gotten across at that moment, but a good lesson none the less. Instead of going to the beach tomorrow as planned I think the girls will be helping me clean the house. Nathan and I got the paint up because it was such a mess I don't think they could have done it effectively. And Nathan cleaned the girls and talked to them while giving them their bath, here's part of the conversation with Evie:
"Evie, did you know you got stain on the curtains? Color that will never come out."
"But...but...but we like colorful curtains!"
Yep, she's only three :-) 

Beach bums

 We've been spending a lot of time at the lake the past couple weeks. We went four times last week and have gone four times this week as well. The girls are loving it. They love the water, they love the sand, they love the little waves from the motor boats. Today was a short day at the beach, we only went for half an hour, but you can do that when it's only five minutes away. The girls swam the whole time, they totally forgot how to swim since last year, but we're slowing working on recovering that skill. Today Evie was falling backwards into the water and doing a "back float" Hannah went to the shallow water, not to be out done by her sister, and put her hands down to "float" and was kicking as well. They both like going as deep as possible, especially Evie, she'll go to her chin on her tip toes. I finally brought my camera one day this week, so here are some pictures.....

 The girls like to go from rope to rope across the entire swim area. We've been getting there early most mornings (before 9:30, lifeguards aren't on duty until 11) so they have the beach and water to themselves, or mostly to themselves.

 Hannah likes to be in the water and play. She'll tie seaweed to bucks, boats or backhoes and pull them around and play with them.

 Practicing floating...

 Sisters having fun!

 And goofing off!

Evie likes to sit on the beach and cover herself with sand to warm up.

sleepovers!

The girls decided they wanted to sleep in the same bed. So one night Evie climbed into Hannah's bed and they both fell asleep. Well they've asked to do it again and so I let them, the next morning they were up at 5:20 am, I don't think we'll be doing a sleepover again for a while....

I'm really not sure how well they sleep :-) As Evie is a little bed hog!

Hair cuts

 Nathan and Evie got hair cuts the other day. I took a few inches off Evie's hair to try and even it out a bit...it's getting thick!

 I took this picture after I was finished. I did not realize she had scissors in her hands and it looks like she cut her own hair!

 Hannah had fun playing with the hair. She made a bird's nest the left is the bird in the next :-)

Robbed!!!!

Our blueberries are GONE! They were on the bush yesterday morning and were pink....I looked yesterday night and they were ALL gone. This is not good, we'll have to figure something out for next year so we can actually eat them!

Moving on from ants....

The girls have moved on from pet ants. Don't get me wrong, they loved their ants and had lots of them besides the ones I mentioned here, but they've moved on to something more exciting. Spiders! Specifically they had a daddy long legged spider. They tried to feed it an ant :-) The ant escaped. We really need to make on container for keeping theses kinds of animals in, the spider died....they can live awhile without food, I'm thinking it was an oxygen shortage.....

Loose Tooth

Hannah has her first loose tooth. We discovered it a couple days ago, as she was complaining her tooth hurt while eating lunch. I asked which one it was and when she pointed to her front one I took a look and there behind it was her adult tooth! Now we're finding a dentist because we needed to anyway and will have it checked out, along with a clean....not quite sure how it works with the adult tooth growing in behind the baby tooth....

Reading, reading and more reading!

It's summer which means summer reading programs!!!! Our library just started theirs July 2nd, (what's up with that? schools been out at least two weeks!) so we went in and signed up. I explained how it worked to Hannah and that she could get surprises for reading books, she's psyched to say the least. Hannah is so excited in fact that she has started reading to Evie, and not just one or two books, but lots and lots of books and books like Berenstain Bears and Curious George. It's great! :-) And I think they're both enjoying it. We went in to report the reading we'd done so far on Friday, and found that we can't report books they've read until Monday. People are weird up here ;-)

Happy 4th of July!

 Around here they don't do their fireworks on the 4th....at least a lot of places don't do them on the fourth. New Milford has their fireworks on the 7th (Saturday), Danbury had theirs last night. We took the girls to Nathan's work where they had some bounce houses, face painting and live music. Along with a good view of that Danbury fireworks! Hannah did not enjoy the fireworks this year and started freaking out when they started, Evie loved them and there were lots of ooohs and aaaahs from here.

 There was a beautiful sundog!

Hannah sliding down the big bouncy slide

 Here comes Evie!

 Face paintings!

 Waiting for the fireworks to start and enjoying some apples....Hannah! Look at the camera!

 That's better! Please note the pants and long sleeves in July! Amazing!!! :-)

 And of course fireworks!!!!