Fun times!

I think Lily is the only three year old on the planet who picks out her outfits the night before. She coordinates tops and bottoms and hair ties. Funny/frustrating thing is that even though she pre-plans her outfits, she still spends hours the next day trying to figure out what to wear. 

 She even asks me to do her hair pretty and then take pictures of it so she can see the picture:



My little princess recently took a ballet course and loved every moment. I think we may have a little dancer in the house

For all her sweetness, this little girl is a pain at bedtime. She is still sleeping on a mattress in our room. Getting her to sleep in her own room has been a painful process that we gave up on. However, she recently saw a little girl wearing high heels and has been begging for a pair of her own. So off to Walmart we went and she got a pair of high heels and a dress. She got to wear them for 10 minutes then we packed them up. After she stays in her bed for 10 nights she gets them. Win! It has worked like a charm. She goes to sleep on her own every night with no problems. Some nights she sneaks back into our bed in the early morning, but for the most part she has done great!



Josie is still a sweet little ball of joy. She is crawling now so we have had to go through and put gates up in the house:

 She is starting to become a good eater. Partly because she gets to eat things that none of the other kids ever dreamed of eating as babies. Think: ice cream, candy, pizza, etc. I guess things get lax by the 3rd baby. Plus the kids feed her their food when I'm not looking. One day Lily gave Josie her sucker in the car. Josie's whole mouth was green and she devoured the sucker. I do try to feed her healthy foods as much as possible:




She is 8 months and still has no teeth! We love her gummy smile but I know it won't last much longer.


Jack and Lily have so much fun together. I love watching them come up with games. One day they found a centipede in the garden. They spent all afternoon creating a little habitat for him and watching him. They even named him Flash. Jack wrote him a note but I can't remember what it was supposed to say...

Another favorite pastime is squirt guns. This day the kids decided to fill up the blue bucket with water and sit facing each other. They could then fill up their squirt guns in the bucket and then squirt each other

Most days they use their bigger squirt guns. It's not usually a fair fight and Lily almost always ends up crying. Those big brothers sure can be mean!

But then there are times when Jack will lay with Lily and read her books.

Jack also takes great care of his sisters at the park:


Josie got a fun toy recently. Nani and Papi bought her this little jumper

 And I finally been able to use my new toy. I took the girls for their first run in the Chariot.

Here is Lily exhausted after a fun day. She curled up and fell asleep under her chair:

Here are the kids watching a movie with friends on our nice new floors!

Fun run and splash park

The kids fun run series has started again for this summer. We loved doing it last year and everyone was excited to do it again this year. 

Here is Lily at the start of the race: 

And they're off!

Jack found a buddy from school to run with

But Lily ended up smoking both boys and running ahead and finishing the race before everyone!

Jack and Tali after the race

Free ice cream!

Being silly

Both girls are exhausted after the race!

After the run we stopped by another festival where they were giving away free lunch and they had a mascot walking around:

Luke and I stayed to browse some of the booths, but the kids were so tired they both fell asleep right on the sidewalk... at 10:30 in the morning!

Finally the weather is a little better and we have made our first trip to our favorite splash park.

We are looking forward to summer!

Goodbye carpet (our memorial day project)

We signed another year lease at this house. I am happy to stay here and would even consider eventually buying this place. I am so sick of moving! 

However the one thing that has always bothered me about this house was the white carpet. I am disgusted by it every day. After a year of living here there were so many stains on the carpet from kids peeing, coffee spilling, blood and mud tracked through. I was embarrassed to even invite friends over because the carpet was so awful. So one condition of our renewal was that the owners would pay to have wood laminate installed. We agreed to do the work if they would pay for materials. They agreed. 

Who knew what a massive project we had just undertaken? We decided to do it over the 3 day memorial day weekend. We though "oh, it will be easy! We'll finish in three days, no problem" 

Ha ha ha ha ha.... 

It turned into a nightmare. 

First, there was all the prep work. Ripping out the carpets, removing tacks and staples:

Then cleaning the floors:

That took the entire first day. Then the second day we finally started laying the wood. But even after a full day we didn't get far:

We decided to work well into the night:

Monday morning we set to work again to try to finish:

Luke was able to install all the flooring right at 5pm. Then he jumped in the shower and we ran off to our home group which started at 5:30pm. Then we came back home and I stayed up to install all the baseboards... what a task

But we finished 90%. We still have to deal with all the transition pieces, but for now our house is livable and much more presentable:

I love the new floors!

 ....but what a mess was leftover. When we prepped the house we moved everything into the garage. Well, Luke rented a table saw to cut the laminate flooring and we didn't think to cover our stuff. Three days later, EVERYTHING was covered in dust. I had to go through piece by piece and clean the dust. It was awful.

Lily on her bike

Lily is learning to ride her big girl bike. She knows how to balance because she started on a strider bike. But she doesn't know how to pedal. So we gave her a month with training wheels to get down the pedaling. Then we'll take off the training wheels and set her free. 

Kite Festival and soccer

The city hosts a kite festival every year. This year we were worried that it would rain since it seems to rain nonstop now. But thankfully there was a break in the weather and we had a perfectly sunny and windy day for a kite festival:

Here is Lily on her bike:

 And Josie in my new Chariot that I got for mothers day:

 The kite festival was awesome! Jack had a blast flying his kite

 After the festival we had to head over to Jack and Lily's last soccer game of the season:





Jack had a great team this year and we became friends with many of the families. It is fun to watch the team play together, but Jack seemed to struggle to keep up with the other kids. He needs to work on his running so it is a good thing he is taking track this summer. We will try soccer again in the fall and see if he has improved. But we still had a great season and we made some good friends.

Most of Jack's games and practices were cancelled because of the rain. We tried to make up most of them but even the make ups got rained out. One of the make up practices was scheduled for a Wednesday afternoon but it had been raining all day. We showed up for practice at 5pm and it was still raining and there was a river flowing through the field. The kids still wanted to play soccer in the rain so we all got out with our umbrellas. Then the sky cleared for an hour and the kids were able to get their practice in under a rainbow.