the beach.....take 2

We went to the beach with some friends today, we lasted four hours! Maybe we will have long days at the beach again this year! The boys had fun playing under the lifeguard chair, and were super cute. The girls had fun playing with their friend and Green Machine decided playing in the water might be fun after all by the end. Evie was practicing her swimming skills again already which is great! She was doing really well and pretty much picked up where she left off last summer. Hannah wasn't as confident, but she'll get there. I tried a different method of leaving, I just did a lite rinse and threw everyone into the car and came home to wash them. That didn't work very well, so we'll still be trying new methods for leaving the beach. The good news is I didn't change the boys until they were on the beach, so there was no pee in my car! :-) Although, they've been doing so well with potty training the past week, I'm not sure that would happen again anyway.

So I only got one picture of the girls.....I got a lot of the boys.....I really have to work on this. As you can see Hannah enjoyed her floaty and Evie had a life jacket on. The beach was nice and empty!

long weekend fun

We had a very low key Memorial Day weekend. Saturday was rainy but Sunday wasn't too bad, a little cool and Monday was beautiful. We kept it all low key. On Monday we went to the local parade. The parade was good and the girls really enjoyed it. The boys enjoyed watching the balloons that had gotten away and some of the parade :-) Nathan held Little Boy Blue most of the time, who was also very distracted by the dogs and really didn't want to stand around and watch anything. I had Green Machine and he really enjoyed the marching bands. The girls were both given flags, and they had fun with those. Hannah LOVES people watching, so she enjoyed just standing and watching everybody and everything.

 Evie was super excited to go to the parade and got all dressed up for it.

 I think Evie would go well with this carriage! 

We knew more people in the parade this year, so it made it lots of fun looking for them! 

That afternoon the kids chowed down on watermelon! They all REALLY enjoyed it. Little Boy Blue was so funny about it, every time he took a piece he would laugh he was so excited!

We had hamburgers and corn for dinner with strawberries and homemade whipped cream for dessert. All in all a good day!

potty training

As I mentioned, shortly after getting the boys they showed an interest in the bathroom, so we got out our little potties and started sitting the boys on them. Debi, from birth to three recommended doing all diaper changes in the bathroom and sitting them on the potty every time we changed their diaper. Well we've been doing that and it seems like it's starting to click. Little Boy Blue will now pretty much pee every time you sit him on the potty. Which means if you take him about every two hours he stays dry all day! Friday he even went at the visit with his birthmom. He didn't do so well today, but Sundays are kind of crazy with church and all. Green Machine is really working on it, he tries to go and then if he gets anything out he gets so excited he stops immediately. :-) I have to say it's super cute having two two year olds because then they have a cheering section, they both cheer whenever either one pees, along with two older sisters who come running and cheering as well if they hear that someone peed it's all a very positive experience! Now, if we could start getting the poop in the potty we'd be well on our way!

the beach!

We made it to the beach yesterday. It was a beautiful day for the beach, the high was 87. It was great to be in the water to stay cool. The girls had so much fun, one of their friends from church was there with her grandmother and they met another girl that they played with as well. Little Boy Blue really enjoyed standing in the water and playing, digging up the sand and such. Green Machine on the other hand was fine at first until Hannah splashed him and he noticed the water was moving. Then he went screaming to the sand and every time he looked at where the water met the stand and saw it moving he was start crying again. It was rather amusing :-)

 Sitting chilling in the water

So excited to be at the beach!

Yes, they did get completely wet! The water was actually quite nice considering the lows last week were in the 30s.

And they enjoyed it! 

They also had fun running from near the top of the beach....

And crashing into the water.

The beach was a bit more of a project with four kids. I got the boys in their suits in the car at the beach, which resulted in pee in the car......so I still have to figure out how to change the boys and where to put the first one while the second one is getting changed. And getting everyone rinsed and changed to head back home took about half an hour. I think I'm going to have the girls just go home not rinsed great and have the car be sandy and put a towel on their seats, we'll see. I'm sure I'll perfect the beach routine this summer :-)

Mount Tom State Park

We went to our first state park Saturday to explore. We've had a few people recommend Mt. Tom to us as a place to go. It has a small beach (smaller than the one by our house) and some hiking trails. We found the hiking trails weren't that great for a stroller, as they weren't really wide enough to fit more than one person....but we walked as far as we could along the path, tried hiking with all the kids, and then stopped to have a picnic lunch in a grassy area by a stone wall.

 This is our new stroller, simple, basic, but it works for going over grass and gravel and whatever else as long as the trail is wide enough. 

Hannah was having fun, can you tell? 

The nice grassy spot where we had our picnic.

Hiking with Daddy

My crazy girl! It's a princess headband, with a dress and velvet pants if you're wondering what in the world she's wearing (I'm sure you were)

random pictures from Evie

Evie is very into taking artsy pictures with the camera.... I never know what I'll find when I load the pictures onto the computer...here's a few samples of what's one there, some are art, some are just random, some are from Hannah.

Why was there a worm on my table?!?!

The kitchen floor....it doesn't look too dirty when it's out of focus! :-) 

The couch.

Oh look, the new table we were given from a friend. It's surprisingly stable for a folding table and chairs. The kids (all four of them) love it and had a blast playing on it if you can't tell from all the food everywhere.

What happened to the barbie baby? Did she jump?

crazy girl!

Evie's pillow case

Easter egg gum on her bed....

Another pillow case...

Here puppies, aren't they cute? 

This is from a throw pillow

Legos

A box of blocks

The bathroom inside their doll house

Well that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the random picture tour courtesy of the girls.

new door

Today we had a new sliding glass door installed. Well sort of....the door is warped and the frame is cracked, so they have to get a new one, but the new broken one is in for the time being because they already had the old one out before they found the new one wasn't right. Anyway, the contractor showed up just after eight the the boys were still eating breakfast. The sliding door is in our dinning room, so the boys had entertainment with their breakfast this morning. The girls watched a little too.

 Our old door has been removed....

The girls watching the show with their "kids" 

The girls decided their kids needed a better view of the action :-)

Mother's Day

We had a pretty low key Mother's Day here. My excitement for the day was the boys made it through two services at church, with no crying on the pick up and minimal crying on the drop off. Which was great! I had fun being able to teach the Jr. highers with Nathan again! I also put together a double jogging stroller we got, we took it for a test drive around the neighborhood, but didn't get very far, because we stopped and talked with our neighbors two houses away who hadn't met the boys yet. I'm looking forward to using the jogging stroller in the state parks this summer. I found one of the perks of being a foster parent is you get a free state park pass!!! I started making an ice cream cake, but didn't end up finishing that until Monday. We have all been enjoying it the rest of the week. The girls and Nathan went around the yard and picked a beautiful bouquet from all the flowers in our yard. Here's a picture, sorry it's not the greatest, it was hard to get a good picture.....

General Update

I realized I haven't done just a general update on how things are going with the addition of two new people to the house. That's probably because things are going so well I forget that there has been a really big change that happened less than four months ago. Everyone (and I mean everyone) is amazed at how well the boys have adjusted to our house and our family to them. In the past week or two it's been really cool to watch how much more the girls are enjoying them as well. The girls will now take them and play with them, bring them into their room and play, or just sit on a bed (in their room or the guest room) and work with them on speech. It's been amazing, as the girls are great teachers and everyone has fun. I get frequent updates from Evie on what new words the boys are say and hear lots of cheering. Hannah likes to make up silly games and all four of them will laugh and laugh. It is so sweet, God is so good!!!! Both boys are doing extremely well. So well in fact that they just were tested by our birth to three team and found to be "age appropriate" for everything.  This means they are not behind anymore and no longer need services, I'll be meeting with our EIA on Tuesday to see if we want to end services completely, or just cut it WAY back, we'll see which makes more sense, but this is super exciting! They were maybe at a 16-18 month level when they came, they have made amazing strides! They are both using two word combinations more and more. I've been working with them on "may I ....." and Green Machine today asked at least twice without prompting "May I come up please" they'll both count with you up to at least six, can name some colors, and will sing parts of songs they know as your singing them or they hear them in the car. This may happen to include getting very excited over VBS songs from two years ago that we still have playing in the car because they girls love it, but you know, that's okay :-) Little Boy Blue figured out how to undo the top buckle on his car seat the other day, which is great for skill development, not so great for safety. Green Machine can unzip his pajamas if it doesn't have the little snapped flap over the top of the zipper. And both of them are working towards undressing themselves. It's hard to remember how far they've come and how fast when you're in the middle of it working with them, but they are doing great. I think they've gotten more comfortable with us as well, as Little Boy Blue's favorite word is now "NO" they've both started testing limits more instead of being complaint with everything, which shows they're comfortable and secure. It keeps me busy enforcing limits!
I have learned that going out with four kids ages 2-6 means you're a freak show, and is quite amusing to me the looks and comments I get. But they kids do pretty good going out. I read a blog that said once you have four kids instead of people saying "You have your hands full" which I still get, people go straight to "God bless you" which is so true it's funny, because you get that so much more. But we are having fun and enjoying the bigger family.

Swimming!!!!

It's summer! Well, okay, not quite, but it's May, so that means swimming right? Like we should have started a couple months ago and the girls have been asking ALL winter when they can go swimming again. I was at Kohls on Saturday with a nice little $10 off $10 or more coupon they sent in the mail and happen to have the girls with me. I couldn't find what I wanted to get so we headed to the toy department to see what they had and they happen to have a kiddy pool for $9, nice! So I got that and a candle for $1.50 and paid .52 for both things. Not bad. On Sunday the girls went in the pool. The high on Sunday was 64. The water isn't like Houston water which is NEVER cold because it's in water towers, this was nice cold well water. My girls are crazy.....I have no idea where they get it from :-) Anyway, they enjoyed the pool every day this week until I wouldn't let them go in it yesterday or today because it was raining. The pools were also loving the pool. Little Boy Blue figured out how to climb in and out, Green Machine preferred to stay on the outside and just play with the water from there.

Evie, poised to go in

Sorry, I had to crop this one to get the boys out of it, so you can't see the pool, but you can see how excited the girls are! 

They brought lots of sand toys and cups in to play with. I think we'll be going to the beach soon!

Stepping Stones!

On Thursday I took the kids to Stepping Stones, which is a Children's museum about an hour from here. My mother in-law gave us a membership there for Hannah's birthday. Thanks Mom! The kids all had a blast! We only stayed about three hours, but we'll be back again. All the kids enjoyed the water exhibit with the balls and water activities. The boys were very wet by the time we were done there, but we went and ate lunch outside in the sun after that and everyone was able to dry off. We got to explore the under three room, which we hadn't done the last time we were there because the girls are "too old" although they had a lot of fun with the things in there. The boys enjoyed the slide and the bus that had a horn you could honk, wipers you could make move and buttons to push. The whole area was based on children's songs and rhymes, it was pretty neat. The girls enjoyed some large magnetic dolls and fishing, along with other things. After lunch everyone liked playing in the court yard and building with all the big foam blocks. All in all it was a fun time and everyone was worn out by the end. All but Evie slept on the way home and she complained about being tired by wouldn't sleep (that's Evie for you). Here are some pictures....for some reason it's hard to take pictures while keeping track of four kids.

 Hannah building a castle to play in.

Evie decorating a tunnel...

What do to next?

How about so hopscotch?

Hannah just hanging out.

I tried to get a picture of the girls on the hen.....it didn't work so well.....

But Hannah was more than happy to pose in whatever the hen was pulling. Eggs?

fun in the dirt!

It's turning out to be a beautiful Spring here and we are enjoying it. The high today was 71 degrees and both girls were loving the shorts and t-shirts. Yesterday we spent a lot of time outside in the yard. The boys loved playing in the dirt. They had a blast and got dirt everywhere! Since I'm not allowed to post pictures of them I figured I could at least post pictures of the bath tub after they were bathed yesterday :-) That's fair right? That and the fact that I didn't take any pictures of them covered in dirt might be part of it. Please note, their hands and faces were wiped down before they took a bath.