So I've received a request or two to update my blog. The holidays did me under, now be expecting a lot of posts, hopefully soon, to update everything. There will be a lot of pictures and story logs, no one is expected to read or comment, they are there for family history purposes.
Now onto my girls:
Rachel is the sweetest girl. She loves to give hugs and kisses and snuggle anything that is even remotely soft. We find that she is a bit of a clown. She loves to make us laugh, she'll do it through looks, dancing around, and she loves to bonk her head on ours. One of my favorite things as of late is that if you ask her to say good night she'll blow a kiss. But not just any kiss, the kind that you see Opera ladies blowing at their final curtain call. I love it! Some of her new words have been : amen, ow, shoes, cheese, shoes on, she'll say Lauren but it comes out - No-nee. She's a lot of fun.
Don't mind the black eye in the following picture. She was shopping with
Trav and he went to go and pick up an item and she fell out of the cart and smacked her eye. We're lucky that's all that happened. It made for great Christmas pictures.
I meant to blog about the following story a month ago. I forgot and then got really sad last week when I couldn't remember what I was going to blog about. I remembered yesterday, so here I am at the computer.
About a month ago I was taking Lauren to gymnastics. We attend gymnastics with our neighbor, Ellie (5). We carpool and I had taken the girls the week before. I had been very disappointed in how my 4 year old was blatantly disobeying her teacher. Not a proud parent moment. Fast forward to the next week. I told Laura, Ellie's Mom, that I was going to take Lauren and attend gymnastics, if she misbehaved like the week before than I was taking her home.
On the drive there Lauren started talking and said, "Ellie's better than me at gymnastics." Truthfully, Ellie is really good at gymnastics, she is smaller than Lauren but really strong. Lauren is really tall and hasn't gotten full control of her lengthy limbs. My reply, "You're good at gymnastics."
Lauren: "But Ellie's better."
Me: "There will always be someone better than us at everything we do. You know how Ellie got so good? She listened to her teacher." Here I am trying to help her with the obedience issues, if you didn't catch on. "When the teacher asks her to do something, she does it just the way the teacher asks. Also, Ellie practices at home. " I continue, "Do you remember hearing Aunt Kimmy sing at Thanksgiving?" My sister Kim is a
classically trained vocalist. I think she's amazing. "Remember how good Aunt Kimmy is, she sings better than I do. Do you know why? Because she took lessons, listened to her teacher and practiced a lot."
Lauren was silent for a moment. I was pretty proud of myself for the obedience lesson. A few minutes go by and my mind goes on to other things. All of a sudden she says, "Mama, we have the same problem." A little confused I say, "What do you mean?" She said, "You know, you and Aunt Kimmy and singing and me and Ellie. Your problem is the same as mine."
I said, "you're right, Lauren, we do have the same problem."
Lauren then said, "I'm going to better than Ellie today."
Well, mission almost accomplished.
We immediately went to Walmart and bought a sled and then went and had fun at our local park. Lauren loved every second of it.
Last night in a hotel
