All Alone

My Mom took the girls last night for an overnight and Paul and I were thrilled to have some grown up time. We went out to dinner and rented a movie. It's a sad state of being when staying out late for a 9 pm movie is just too late!! Or maybe that's just the state of parenting. Paul's off at work and I *should* be cleaning, organizing my scrapbook area, cleaning, sorting kids clothes, cleaning, laundry, or did I mention cleaning??? But the quietness of the house and the mammoth undertaking is just no fun. I like this cartoon I saw on Virtually Organized and had to share.

Mom and I are taking the girls to Irving Weber Days today at one of our local parks so I should go enjoy the peace off the computer while I have it.

Crazy Girls

The girls love their backyard swingset and I have to share some crazy pictures from last week. They love to hang upside down on their swings and always ham it up for the camera.
Hanging out in the hammock. When we first put it up they had a great time tipping each other out...until Gussie landed on her nose and Winky smacked the back of her head. After much drama and tears we made a rule about hammock safety and the "correct" way to use a hammock. Notice how well centered they are now?!?

I had to include this picture of Penny because I love it. She's always in your face and loves to have her picture taken, too.

Memorial Day

The girls and I had a great day today outside despite summer kicking spring's butt out the door. We spent the day hanging out at the Res, Winky had a very public ice cream meltdown at the little ice cream shop there, and then we spent the afternoon at home in the backyard. We brought out the sprinkler and the girls had a blast in the wet, recently mowed lawn. They were quite the sight to behold and I wish I had taken some pictures of their grass covered bodies.

Paul had to work, due to Memorial Day being a very popular garden center holiday. So if everyone could pass the word to boycott buying plants on all future holidays, that would help out family time considerably. :-)

Twelve Years!

Wow, it's been twelve years today that Paul and I have been married. Some days it seems like a lifetime and I can barely remember life without him.

Paul is a great Dad, whether the girls appreciate it or not. Gussie has always been a Daddy's girl, we could tell that since she was very little. Winky on the other hand, they have a love/"DON'T LOOK AT ME" kind of relationship. But to be honest, she has that crabby thing going with a lot of people. To them, he is the expert on baking cookies and cakes, gardening, building train tracks and Dora treehouses, and someone they can always depend on. He's a good husband, who tries his best and I'll admit I can be a bit neurotic and difficult at times to live with.

I'm grateful for what we've had these last 12 years and I look forward to many more. Love ya!

Daddy Time

I took last Friday off to give Paul a little break, lift, pick-me-up, family bonding time, whatever you want to call it...oh yeah...and to sleep in for a few extra hours. He has been running on empty for quite a few weeks now with a crazy, busy spring season at work.

We took Winky to a park for a picnic and then Paul walked up to Gussie's school and they got to walk home together, something she loves to do. It was a beautiful day and the girls got to spend most of the afternoon outside with Paul and I spent some time organizing my scrapbook area. It's a complete disaster area, but I can see parts of the table again, so there is an end in sight!

Crazy Busy

Wow, what a busy week it's been! Sunday was Mother's Day and although Paul had to work all day, my Mom and I went out to brunch with the girls and a few friends. These aren't the best pictures, but it shows off the girls dresses that their Grandma made and they proudly wore. The top one is taken at the restaurant we were at with the Iowa River in the background right outside our window. Brunch was very yummy and it was nice to indulge in all the wonderful delicacies on Mommy's day.The rest of the day was cool and windy but we were able to walk down to our favorite ice cream shop with our neighbors and their kids at the end of the night for free sundaes for Moms. Lots of treats in one day!

Monday brought more fun and excitement. After school was out we headed up to the Girl Scout store to pick up badges, picked up the girls flower girl dresses for my cousin's wedding that the girls get to be in this fall, and then...grand finale...hit Chuck E. Cheese's for hours of fun and excitement. We all had a great time, I think I have as much fun there as they do. Of course I don't get to do the climber and slide, but my Mom and I took turns who watched the girls so we could give some games our full attention. Grandma is a skee-ball champ!

Tuesday was our last Girl Scout troop meeting of the year. This is our first year of Brownies, second year as a troop, and it's been a combination of stress, fun, exhaustion, and definitely an awesome learning experience as I've gotten to see this group of girls interact and hopefully learn things from each other and my co-leader and I.

Tonight was gymnastics for Gussie and Winky was on the verge of a meltdown the whole time. She spent most of the time sitting under my seat eating crackers or yelling at me. My best consolation was rocking her while singing Christmas carols, but that only bought me about 15 minutes of peace. She went to bed soon after we got home. Thank goodness!!! Not so fun being out in public with a crabby kid.

The week should be winding down soon and I'm hoping for a peaceful weekend. I was shocked to realize all my shows are airing season finales this week and next. Where has the time gone???

No Stress Saturday

Paul's missing out again while he's at work and Grandma and I took the girls out for another outing together. We all went to Cyro Baptista and Beat the Donkey which is a percussion group made up of people from all over the world but I think they originated in Brazil. They encouraged audience interaction and we made rain forest noises and sang and clapped along to the beat. It's really pretty amazing what people can make music out of.

We've been hanging out at home the rest of the afternoon and I had a few cute pictures to share. The girls love their dolls that Grandma gave them and here they're dressed as a butterfly fairy and in a pink ballgown. My girls are just about the girly-ist girly girls around. I don't quite know how that happened. I'm convinced it's some recessive gene that was passed on by my mother. They didn't get it from me and Paul seems somewhat shocked and horrified by all the pink, dolls and Barbies that over run the house. Someday someone will pick out something other than pink, I'm sure of it...until then, at least it makes sorting laundry for the girls easier. :) Winky can have a closet full of clothes but if all of her pink shirts are dirty, she'll come crying to me "Mommmmmy, I don't have nothing to weeeaaaar!!!!" Like the world will fall apart if something other than pink is worn. Poor child.
Penny loves to fetch the ball and she's always a ham for the camera. Here's a picture of her tongue and a picture of her beloved ball.Tomorrow is Mother's Day and I wish all the Mom's out there a happy, hopefully peaceful day!

Go Diego Go

The girls and I went with Grandma to Go Diego Go Live tonight and had a blast. There was singing, dancing, and a super studly rescue pack. I've never seen rescue pack be so cool!! They had a cute free photo op because they didn't allow any cameras in. We played by the rules and left the cameras at home, but I was surprised to see how many snuck them in. I guess I'm a chronic rule-follower. We went to the "Carnivale," helped rescue baby jaguar's roar from the bobo brothers, sang with Diego, Alicia, and Dora, and a fun time was had by all! The girls have been looking forward to this for a couple of weeks and it was great to see them enjoy it so much.

The show ended at 8:30 pm and normally the girls would be trying to weasel their way into staying up past their bedtimes but instead they both fell sound asleep on the ride home. I guess all that singing and dancing wears a girl out!

Picnicing

Spring weather is finally here in Iowa and we had a great time on our picnic yesterday. The girls loved being outside and we're going to attempt a goal of exploring our local parks. I think we can get out the maps and guidebook and try to figure out the best playgrounds available! We need the weather to give us a break before we can go to some of the bigger parks. The Iowa River is still out of it's banks and we need a dry spell to help things along.

Of course we had to end the night with a trip to our favorite ice cream hang-out. Hubby likes to take nightly walks down there during the summer. Yum, yum.

Saturday was the girls gymnastics showcase day and we have a couple of pics from that to share. I have to add that Gussie's event took an hour, it went event by event, started on time, and we expected Winky's to be similar. I dropped her off 10 minutes early, went to get a seat and go to the bathroom, came back....and she was almost done. I was ticked! The presentation wasn't even supposed to have started yet and I got to see 10 seconds of her routine. I pretended to be a mature grown up and didn't throw a fit (it was hard) but I really wanted to beg, plead, stomp my feet....to make them let her go again since I missed it, but I figured we've got next year. No potty breaks next time!

This is a major achievement for Gussie. She loves gymnastics...but hates the beam. She fell once in practice but even before that she's been afraid to move across the beam. We were very proud of her that she did her whole routine up there. She did awesome on every event that day. And...I got to see them. ;)

First Post

Well, I'm new to the world of blogging so we'll see how this works. Today is a gorgeous day, the kids are going crazy waiting for me to finish so we can all go back outside. Popsicles just don't get you much down time. We've got a dinner picnic planned with Grandma since Paul is closing tonight. Daddy's always missing out!