Photos Added

Well, as expected here in the Midwest, we kind of went from wet and soggy (aka, Spring) to surprisingly humid and hot. We finished -graduated- from preschool, had a dance recital and a sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa Hill. The girls probably couldn't be happier in life.

The end of school was actually kind of anticlimactic. It just kind of ended without any fanfare of note. The teachers were very pleased to have been able to work with both girls throughout the year, and they complimented them immensely on their kindness, ability to get along with others and their eagerness toward learning. I did really appreciate the school, and I do wish that it continued on through at least fifth grade. I would absolutely work to pay for that tuition. I strongly believe in the co-operative spirit and see nothing but positives in that environment. Hope I haven't set myself up for disaster next year!!

Dave and I took a little weekend trip with the girls to San Francisco in early June for our 20th high school reunion. It's amazing that we met there in 1988! The girls got to stay with Grandma Terry and Grandpa Larry while we partied it up with people we literally haven't seen since 1990. My parents took the girls to see Peter Pan the Musical as an adventure. Little did they know what they were getting into! Taylor and Cassidy brought along their Peter Pan and Tinkerbell costumes and they had me fix their hair and add fairy dust for magical emphasis. My poor parents took the girls on the public bus, a cable car and finally to the show. Taylor's Tinkerbell costume had wings. Can't you just see them skipping along sprinkling their fairy dust with my parents chasing after them? I really would have liked to see that. The show was apparently very good for the girls (not so much for the grown ups), and I think it's an experiece that they'll remember forever.

After we returned from our trip, it was time to focus on the upcoming dance recital. The girls had two numbers, totaling about 2 minutes on stage. They had worked very hard for at least 6 months on these two dances, and had a lot more to practice! Their tap number was to the song "Crocodile Rock," and their ballet was to "Sugar Pie Honey Bunch." Just tremendously cute, as you can imagine. I have a soundless video of them that I'll try to upload. (The cable is missing, and I have a lot of transferring to do.....) For tap, they had a bright green leotard with flapper-style strings as a skirt, green elbow-length, fingerless gloves, a feather for their hair and fishnet tights. The ballet was a beautiful light purple leotard with an attached longer tutu and matching bracelets and a scrunchie. Cassidy wasn't too pleased with the purple outfit because purple is one of Taylor's chosen colors, not hers, but she eventually decided that she would be able to wear it anyway.

On Friday, we had a dress rehearsal, the first time they were allowed to wear their outfits. I did their hair up in curls and applied a ton of make-up, as requested by their teacher. I tried false eyelashes but they wouldn't stick. The rehearsal went really well, and the girls -12 in all - did a great job. But Friday night, Cassidy said that her eyes were hurting, and I assumed that, as she was bathing, some of the mascara had run into her eye (never a nice thing). Turns out that she had some sort of horrible reaction to the toner powder I used, and the poor girl wound up with puffy eyes at half mast, red marks all over her face and many horrible blisters from her neck to her eyebrows! No make-up for her on the actual recital day! Poor thing! Taylor claimed to be scared of the make-up, so she didn't have any either! But other than a freaky looking child up close, the recital went really, really well, and both girls did a fantastic job. I was a very proud parent! Cassidy's horrible, open-sore-blister-rash finally went away about 10 days later with the help of benadryl, cortisone cream and ointment.

Our summer activities are now in full swing. The girls have chosen to do gymnastics on Mondays, they ice skate on Tuesdays and have swimming lessons on Wednesdays. We have an annual pass to the zoo, the aquarium and the "dinosaur" museum in Chicago. We also got a pass to the public pool here in town, which is open whenever there isn't lightening around or tornadoes.... I have a gigantic garden this year, and that is taking a lot of time too. We also "white-trashed" it up and put our hard molded plastic pool at the bottom of our play structure's slide so they could pretend to be on some kind of crazy, unsafe roller coaster ride. It's terrifying, and thankfully Cassidy doesn't like it, so only Taylor is likely to break a limb in the process. Next house = pool for sure.

Well, the only thing that's holding us back these days is the obnoxious Midwest weather again. Yesterday we actually had the tornado warning horns blaring, and so much lightening and thunder that the deaf cat hid under a chair. It seems like every time it rains, it's measured in inches, and we are now experts at finding mushrooms in the lawn. My poor garden needs to be replanted to save all the little seedlings. I guess I can console myself by saying that at least it's not snowing.

Added Photos! Hope you enjoyed!

Okay, a couple of funny things -

First, Taylor created a song while we were on vacation in DC with my parents and brother and his family. Grandpa had the privilege of being her walking buddy that day, and he must have heard this song a zillion times...IN A ROW. Lucky guy! Here goes -

Leaves are green and yellow too,

But they're almost never blue,

Only when you dye them with shampoo!

Ahh, a top 40 in the making. At one point both girls were chanting it over and over. I think even Trevor's kids got into it. Can you imagine the musical joy?

Okay, and then there's this. Cassidy and Taylor were at school yesterday (only one week left of preschool!) and my good friend Amy was the Mommy helper. They were playing some kind of game with dice and ladybugs, Taylor's favorite creature. You had to roll the dice and choose the corresponding ladybugs for some game. Amy was very impressed with both girls' ability to identify numbers, and told me that they were consistent in their correct IDs. She rolled a 5 and said to them that 5 is an odd number. Taylor looked at her and said, "I know Ms. Amy. It is an odd number." Amy asked why or what she meant and Taylor said, "Well, it's an upside down 2, of course, and that's really odd!" Cassidy agreed wholeheartedly.

We are having a wonderful, wet spring. I hope to be able to post more often on this blog. If you're not on Facebook, you really miss a lot. But I intended to use this space as a journal of sorts, and Facebook doesn't let me type this much, so I'll try. Hope all is well with everyone!

First Day of School 2009!

Cassidy and her friend Madeline in the sandbox

Cassidy working hard to clean up

Taylor painting a still life of flowers

Checking out the water color project

Sensory table with rice

Check out Cassidy's fresh outfit...and her baby.

Story time

Cassidy painting a school bus I think

Taylor painting herself on a rainy day

Cassidy playing with playdough while in costume

Taylor working a difficult puzzle

Cassidy playing teacher

Waiting for school to start

Waving goodbye on the way to school

Making funny faces before leaving for school

Taylor being a cutie

July and August 2009

Time keeps flying by! Hope this blog entry finds everyone well and happy. We've had a busy summer, but for all that business, I forget all my stellar moments. Maybe I should update more frequently?

At the end of July, we had our lovely trip West to Hawaii and California. Amazingly, it was more humid in Hawaii than in Illinois, but not by much! The girls had a fantastic time swimming in Grandma and Grandpa's pool, and discovered on the last day there how awesome playing at the beach can be. They dug castles, roads and wrote their names with coral bits. We throughly enjoyed hunting geckos but were very wary of eels and turtles in the ocean. I am happy to report that snorkeling was something of a success in that both girls were able to put their faces in the water and admire all the rainbow fish out there....while floating on a boogie board. Swimming skills improved immensely over the whole vacation, and they just love it. We saw a beautiful luau and drank "lava flow" drinks, mmmmm. We also drove into Kona and took a submarine ride, which was pretty darn cool. We saw two shipwrecks along with lots of fish and starfish. Someday Dave and I will be able to lounge in a chair and simply soak up the rays, but at this point in our lives, we had a lot of little kid adventures around our home base. Always fun, but not very refreshing. Thank goodness for naps, huh?

Sacramento was great. It was such a pleasant surprise to smell the air and see the foothills (which would be considered great mountains in Illinois). I don't know what it is about that smell or those sights, but both of us felt a very strong urge to come "home" someday. We really enjoyed splashing in the pool and discovering a new spray park. The girls got to rock out to two different evening bands at two different spots, and they just loved dancing to the music. My favorite moment was when we drove up to Placerville and had a fantastic horseback riding lesson. The girls had to go into the corral and "rope" their miniature horses, and then dress them, down to picking their hooves. After all that, actually riding the horses was kind of anti-climactic. They, of course, couldn't disagree with me more. Otherwise, we tortured Grandma and Grandpa's cats no end, and definitely decided that the "white" cat does not like children. Poor girls- that cat likes nobody. (Side note, she died recently, so I promise to have only good memories of her from now on.)

We had an adventurous trip home, and I am proud to say that neither Cassidy nor Taylor cried one bit through it all. We were delayed out of Sacramento and had a transfer in Denver that we were afraid we would miss. Well, of course that end was delayed too, so we did just fine with the transfer. The fun part of getting home was that we didn't leave Sacramento until about 6 PM. With the delay in Denver, we got home around 3 AM, I kid you not! Taylor managed to sleep in the car on the way from the airport, but Cassidy actually had to play a bit first. Yikes. I think I might have cried at that point. Oh, and that day was August 4, our anniversary. We went out a few days later. I bought a cheap card at the airport and had it propped up for Dave in the "morning" after we had slept for a bit.

I am sure lots more has happened to Cassidy and Taylor, but I'll post this now so that I can move on. I really do want to add more posts more frequently. Somehow time gets away from me. Sorry!

Weird

Okay, you know it's summer in the midwest when.....

In July one day can be 98 with 95% humidity and the next day it's barely 70 and overcast

Your vegetable garden grows by inches in a day

It rains over 7 inches in two weeks

Bugs emerge from EVERYWHERE, seriously, EVERYWHERE!!!

Everyone's hair becomes frizzy

People randomly offer strangers "pop"

Okay, well, what really happened today is as follows: We went to Naperville, the neighboring town, to stroll along their parklike river/downtown area. It was nice and warm, and I thought there was a lunch hour concert happening. We couldn't find the concert (missed it by about a mile), but did enjoy walking along the river path and dipping our feet into the fountains. Well, as the girls were enjoying one such splash, I was avoiding bugs. It's not even cicada season but the bugs just are everywhere. One landed on my head, kid you not! So I'm doing the little squeamish dance while the girls are walking around the edge of this circular fountain. Do you think you know where this is going? Yep, I was not the most attentive parent as I avoided the bugs, but NOPE, nobody fell in.....

Well, nobody but the DAMN beetle that managed to DROP INTO MY BRA. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. I thought I had a twisted wire or some thing stuck down there. Fiddle, fiddle, rearrange, fiddle, watch the girls splash total strangers, fiddle. Still ten minutes later, it was bugging me - no pun intended. I reached in and JESUS THERE WAS A BEETLE IN MY BRA! EEEEEWWWW! I missed it, but just felt it on the first attempt, but you bet your you-know-what that I got it the second time. I was sooooo relieved that it didn't take a chunk of my flesh with it when it dropped to the ground. Are you as disgusted as I was?

Given my past experiences with bugs crawling on me and doing such harm as invading my intestines or giving me tick fever, I really have a thing against bugs crawling on me. Funny, as I type this, there's a spider crawling up the wall.

Where can I live that has no bugs? Does such a place exist? Can I still have a garden? Maybe I should invest in some bee keeper clothes.

Well, the kids are fine, thanks for wondering. I thought that this episode in MY life merited some attention. NO, there are no pictures attached of the evil beetle. Sorry. I hope he got stepped on.

Been a little Busy!

Wow, I haven't posted since the girls' birthday; I am becoming such a slacker. For what it's worth, it is a lot easier to use Facebook, and I do put up new stuff there from time to time. I'll try to be more diligent here.

So a summary of the last few months is needed. The girls finished their preschool in late May. I think it was a great year for them. Each made a lot of friends, separately and together. Swimming lessons have been going great, and our dance recital is this weekend. They agreed recently to give up one baby thing, and chose to stop using sippy cups entirely. Yes, as a result, I have had to clean the carpet a bit more frequently, but they've moved on fine. They are becoming more "mature" in their pretend games, and definitely have favorites, such as playing pirate or monster. Monster, a game involving making weird sounds and chasing people, sometimes scares them, though, so we don't play that one as often!

Some funny moments recently: The girls moved their car seats to the third row in the van. The bonus is that now they can't kick the front seats, which is really, really nice. The drawback is that I can't hand them stuff or help them when they need it without pulling over. They seem to think it's really cool to be all the way back there. I miss my munchkins! The other day, Cassidy whispered a secret to Taylor while in the car and neither of them would share it with me. I felt sooo excluded! Eh, it's happened kind of frequently recently, and I guess I am over not being part of their gang. Or at least trying to be over it. Yesterday, while looking at her favorite bug book, Taylor screamed at me that her tongue was like a chameleon because it changes colors when she eats candy. I thought that was pretty impressive. Cassidy's favorite book is Shel Silverstein's "Where the Sidewalk Ends" these days. She loves all the poems and could read it daily if I let her. Similarly, we found a "Where the Wild Things Are" book on CD, and both girls just LOVE listening to it in the car. This was our second book on CD, the first being a recent purchase of "Peter and the Wolf," which is an absolute hit. They love being able to pick out the instruments and telling us what they sound like for all classical music now. Taylor's favorite is an oboe and I think Cassidy loves the "strings."

Cassidy has decided that she wants to be a "beautiful lady singer" when she grows up. She has 3 toy microphones. She also wants to be a cheerleader, but doesn't really understand that she can be both, so she chooses the former, as it will make her more famous. She constantly asks to play with her make-up, and can put on quite a pink clown face all by herself. She loves looking gorgeous, and will go through several ensemble changes in a day if I let her. She has also entered a phase (let's hope) of quitting when she doesn't get her way. Yes, it's just lovely. She pouts and cries and will even stomp her feet. She's loud enough that other kids tend to give things up to her, which drives me nuts! Oh well, again, hopefully it's just a phase. Last thing about Cassidy - she just loves her dad right now. It's tremendously sweet. Generally he is the first thing she asks about when she wakes up. She wants to be with him constantly, and is pretty sad - momentarily - when she can't. Daddy's girl for sure.

Taylor has chosen to become an animal doctor when she grows up. She is eagerly awaiting firefly season so she can trap them and keep them until they die. She loves playing with her zillion stuffed animals; generally she has me tie a slip knot around their necks and she takes them on "walks" through the house. She does have a calm about her though, that is very compelling. She will sit and watch a bug endlessly - until she traps it and keeps it prisioner for life. She's into music and the books on CD, and has become a pretty good dancer. I am still amazed that she is able to pick up and keep a beat to music. Her art is also coming along. She likes to paint beach scenes, which are comprised of sandy brown beaches, water, a palm tree and some birds flying in the sky. She still loves to paint rainbows too. Over and over and over! Thankfully, Taylor is not going through the pouting-if-she-doesn't-get-her-way phase, and she's pretty cooperative overall. She can be grumpy, but generally she'll just opt to sit down by herself and pick at her blankey. She likes to pick the fuzz out of her blanket and make little fuzz balls. She has a collection in a box of all the fuzzies she's made. I don't think she'll ever fill it up, and if she ever does, I wonder what will come next....

All in all, we've had a great spring. It would be nice to have some consistently warm weather and a little less rain, but hey, at least it's not snowing right now. Sorry that this post is all over the place. It's hard to summarize almost 3 months of activity while Taylor is singing 2 feet away from me and Cassidy is calling me to come sit and watch Tom and Jerry with her!

Wish us luck for our recital tomorrow! I will definitely post pictures from that!

For the girls' 4th birthday party, we decided to do a Scooby Doo Mystery party. The girls each invited 5 friends, and it worked out perfectly with 5 from the neighborhood and 5 from school. We got a Scooby pinata, and a ton of goofy decorations from the Party Store, some Scooby Doo themed and some all flower power themed. Of course the girls changed their minds several times after we had begun to plan this party, and wanted, instead, a Horton theme or a princess one, but I rejected those ideas for them.

For the life of me, I couldn't find any Scooby posters for purchase. It turns out that it's a licensed product, so it can only be sold by stores that pay for the licensing (like the party store). I went to Kinkos and asked if they would make color copies of a book for me, and they couldn't do it for fear of being sued. I went to a comic book store, but they didn't have any posters. Finally, I went to Staples, made some transparent copies myself and then used a AA flashlight and blew them up and drew the characters myself. They turned out pretty good too! What a challenge though! And it was pretty funny to see me sitting in the dark with this teeny tiny flashlight trying to draw on butcher paper. I think I thoroughly annoyed Dave during March Madness with that!

So the day of the party, the girls got to dress up in their special new dresses. They were so sweet. They HAD to have the purses that matched, and of course the accompanying headbands. They were really excited and could hardly contain themselves until 11 AM. They got to help do finishing decorations, and wove streamers in the bannisters, which actually looked quite cute. Dave and I were frantically doing last-minute details, like making sherbet punch (gross but good), getting ice for the beverages, vaccuuming and other stupid stuff. By the time the party was officially going, I was happy because I got to finally relax!

Once all the guests were present, we began the party with lunch - Scooby's favorite- pizza! While the kids were finishing up, I asked them where the presents were, and showed them a "letter" written by a villian, saying that the toys had been stolen and that if they wanted them back, they had to play games to earn clues. The kids were totally hooked! Game 1 was Pin the Pizza on Scooby. They loved it, and mostly did great. The first clue was, "The presents might be up, they might be down, but don't worry, they're not out of town." Game 2 was Wrap the Mummy. Dave and my dad sat on little chairs while the kids wrapped them in toilet paper. The paper kept breaking and it was much harder than we thought it would be. But, of course, the mummies got wrapped enough and then they chased, and scared a few, kids through the house. Clue 2 was something like, "Spiders live there, but turn on the light and you won't care." Game 3 was Shaggy, Shaggy, Scooby, ala Duck, Duck, Goose. Even for this game, the kids were very into it. It's hysterical to watch little kids play this, because they forget to sit down in their spots, and just go round and round and round! Clue 3 was something about going down the stairs, which all the kids figured out immediately; the presents were in the basement. So we all trooped downstairs and had opening presents time. The girls got a lot of outdoor toys for spring, some princess stuff and some art goodies. Every present has already been played with, even the ones meant for outside. My parents got them bikes, and they're already very good on them, so much so that I might need a bike just to keep up with them!

Cake came afterward, and was actually very yummy. It was Scooby themed as well, and had a scene of Shaggy and Scooby frightened, as usual, and a Mystery Machine driving away. This was followed by the nutty pinata, which we got to do outside, because the weather was cooperating. Each kid got 3 wacks with a bat, and then we switched to the pull string part of it, and it opened immediately. The mad dash for candy was civilized, at least. Each kid brought me their bag filled with candy and toys, and I put that bag into their goody box. And that, folks, wrapped up the party, or it wrapped up another mystery, as the "gang" would say.

It was exhausting, but totally worth it. The only crying was when the mummies chased and scared a couple of kids. Of course, that was two days ago, and each day since, both girls have asked me if they could have another party "today." Ha! Not quite.

Oh, and I drew out a picture of the mystery machine, taped it onto cardboard and let the kids pose as if they were in the machine. Amazingly, they all really liked this too. Weird, but cute!

Off to NY this weekend for a tourist trip with the girls. I can't wait!