Daily Life

Dress up all day long.

Beach baby!!

It took many tries, but she finally climbed to the top of the swingset! Look at that smug face.

Popsicle eating is serious business.

It's pretty tough to push the popsicle up when you're only 12 months.

Adorable schoolgirl.

We grew these potatoes in our garden! One day, several months ago, we had a potato that had gone to seed so we just kind of randomly planted it. The plant grew and grew, then started dying. Matt said he was going to see if we'd gotten anything so we dug it up and we got these HUGE potatoes! The scissors are my Gingher craft scissors, so the biggest potato was probably the size of a small mango. And boy were they delicious......

Birthday Celebrations, a post of photos

Before I forget, I wanted to post pictures from our birthdays in April! Charlotte's was first and her favorite present was a Belle dress from Granny, just HER size. Usually Charlotte has to fit in to her sister's dress ups which are always too big for this little pixie.

It's a hit! Especially with her Belle shoes....

We kept it low key for Charlotte's birthday. We had another birthday party to go to that night and some errands to run, but we did end up at the mall for a Carousel ride...

Initially Nathalie wanted to ride the dragon. Emily and Charlotte chose the tea cup and started spinning. Then Nan saw how exciting that was and hopped off the dragon in a flash!

Oof, it makes me nauseous just looking at this picture. I've never been able to handle the Tea Cup.

Then we went to a friend's house, had some pizza and watched Up. The girls loved it.

Charlotte got in a good butt scratch.

Over the next few days we wore lots of crowns.

On Nathalie's birthday we had another birthday part in the morning, and then after that headed to SCAD's sidewalk chalk festival. This was a HIT and we will DEFINITELY be going back again. They had cool things (like this multiperson rocking chair), TONS of things for the kids to do, beautiful chalk drawings being created on the sidewalk and it was great.

At the kids tent, we had fun drawing.

I love this adorable picture of Nathalie. And by the way, she got lost again. I was waiting for her outside the bathroom and Emily, Charlotte and Lydia were with me. I didn't see Nan come out and she didn't see me waiting, so she headed right out of the building. After 10 minutes had gone by, I sent Emily in to find her. Emily said she wasn't in there, so I went in and couldn't find her either. That's when my heart started racing. Hundreds of people, and I was there with my kids, without Matt! After our experience with losing Nathalie at the Savannah Children's Book Festival, I was panicked. I immediately said a prayer, "Heavenly Father, I'm all alone with the kids. There are so many people here. I need to find Nathalie right now."

I picked up Lydia, put Charlotte in the stroller and Emily and I ran out of the building.  As soon as I ran out of the building, I saw a golf cart driving around with Nathalie on it. She'd gone out of the building, hadn't seen me and immediately found a festival volunteer. She told her name and her phone number (we've been working on that!). I was so grateful. My prayer had been answered right away.

Later on, we were in the kid's tent. I'd told Emily she could do the activities by herself (without waiting for Nan or Charlotte to finish) but she had to stay under the tent. After a few minutes of helping the girls, I looked up to see where Emily was and I couldn't find her. I started feeling really panicky and thought, "What do I do? Do I leave the tent to find her?" I didn't know what to do, but I felt strongly that I should stay under the tent. So I did. Sure enough, not 2 minutes later, Emily runs up to me. She was doing another activity under the tent and because of the multitude of people, I hadn't been able to see her.

God is real, friends. Someone was watching out for us.

There were other arts and crafts too, like making masks or having a kids sidewalk chalk section.

After the stressful sidewalk festival, we went home and got ready for Nathalie and Charlotte's party. It was small party, but I splurged and bought a piñata. And then I filled it with leftover Easter candy. :)

The kids were having a hard time breaking it open.

Finally, Matt took the bat and a friend threw the piñata up in the air. Matt swung as hard as he could and the piñata exploded. Candy everywhere. Most of it was melty.

 The next day was Nan's birthday and she got a Merida dress! She hasn't taken it off since....

Happy Birthday to my girls!

Strawberry Festival

Recently we went to a strawberry festival that a farm on the outskirts of Savannah was having. The kids rode in this silly train!!!

Look at Nathalie! She is hysterical.

Initially Emily was grouchy when I took the picture. Sometimes I think she's 6 going on 16.....

I love this face!!! Charlotte is thrilled and Emily is giving me the obligatory smile.

They had a huge slide and you slid down it on old feed sacks. It was a hit with the girls!!

 

The slide was a big hit with Lydia too. She would lean over Matt's head to see who was coming down the slide and then get a big smile when it was one of us!!

The farm had homemade strawberry ice cream which was delicious and much needed on this hot day.

And Lydia got her first taste of ice cream! After a few initial hesitations, she fell in love.

The best part about the whole festival was that we received a lot of blessings! We knew the festival was $5 a person, but 4 and under were free. It was before Nan's birthday, so we only had to pay for 3 people. What we didn't realize is that every ride cost tickets, and each ticket was $1. So for an inflatable, it cost 2 tickets per child, or $2!!!! We were inside the festival before we realized this and I felt my heart sink because we're on a tight budget. But then, the blessings started rolling in.....

People gave us some of their tickets as they were walking out. So we had enough for the inflatables.

The guy manning the big slide ($2 per kid, PER SLIDE) let us go on it two extra times, for free!

The train was only $1 per child.

And the best part was the ice cream! I was standing in line for ice cream and I only had enough tickets left to get ONE ice cream to share with all the girls. Right as the couple before me got their ice creams, they turned around and handed me the rest of their tickets! It gave me enough to get FOUR ice creams-- one for each of the girls and then one for Matt and Lydia to share.

I was so grateful that we were blessed this way. I was dreading telling the girls we had to go home because we couldn't spend the money to buy all the tickets we'd need.

The only bummer of the whole day was that all the strawberries had been picked by the time we got there.

Suck suck suck suck suck

I've been seeing a lot of new cars around Savannah, which I am assuming is a result of tax returns and car sales. We also got a new set of wheels....but a little smaller....

We bought a Kirby vacuum!

We knew that we needed to buy a vacuum this year with our tax return. Our old vacuum (a Dirt Devil given to us by my grandmother) no longer had suction under its head, so I was vacuuming with the attachment. The whole house. With the attachment. And then I was STILL picking up things by hand after I finished. I kept thinking, "If I'm picking things up by hand, then I don't even want to know what is left..."

The debate was this: I really wanted a Kirby, but they're so expensive I knew we couldn't afford one. Until Matt decided to check out refurbished Kirbys on eBay. And voila! He found one for $450! That was right in the middle of the range we had allocated for a new vacuum. He snapped it up and we got it a week later.

It is amazing. We have had it for two months and it picks up so much! I love that it's a bag and not a canister, I love that it comes with all sorts of attachments, I love that it is heavy and works on the wood floors. I basically love vacuuming now.

So do it. Do it now. Worth every penny!

No Boys Allowed!!!

The girls are becoming very adamant that we are "girl only" family. When we tell them that Daddy is a boy, they kind of shrug it off. Hey, in their world, even all the rabbits (but one!) are girls! Even so, these girls love to be active and wrestle, chase, tumble-- things that a lot of little girls don't do. Check out this dinosaur that Emily made from Legos. "Has anyone seen my sister Flo?"

Emily's school put the kids' art on display and Emily was very proud of her pond selection. I think it's a pond anyway!

I love the curls on this little girl. Now that it's hot and humid again, we see curls every day and they're only getting springier!

Emily loves to have her hair done too. Here we did a twist-French-braid, with the shape of a heart in the back. Can you see the heart?

We live such a girly life!