Playin at the Lake

I wish I had photos since it's rare Paul gets to come on an outing with us, but we had a great day out as a family (as I said, a rarity!!) at a local lake playing in the water. Gussie's swimming skills have improved so much with this last round of swimming lessons and she surprises me with her abilities each time we go in the water. Winky was finally willing to try the little arm floaties and could join us in the deeper water with a little dog paddle. We'll be BBQ'ing tonight and then a fabulous day will be had by all! If there wasn't rain in the forecast we would be letting the girls sleep outside in the tent tonight but I have no desire to get rained on, so we'll save that for another weekend. ;-) You can't expend all the fun in one day, can you??

Birthday at the Beach

We spent my Mom's birthday at the beach and had a great time. Winky has a fear of either paddle boats or life jackets, not sure which, so she stayed on the shore, but Gussie got to go on a paddle boat ride with some close family friends. We all played in the water and the girls had a lot of fun in the sun. It's not San Diego, but it's about as close as Iowa can come to it.

Winky took a brief nap on the ride there and when she woke up she was in rare form. She can be a little strange sometimes.... It's oddly charming as long as there's no screaming involved.

Gussie was all smiles and ready for a great day.

Winky swimming with her ring. Both girls are taking swimming lessons right now and Gussie is close to being able to swim on her own but Winky still needs something to keep her afloat. She thinks she's a swimmer like the big girls.

Playing in the sand and making sand castles.

And last but not least, blowing out the candles on the cake.

Winky helped Grandma blow out the candles.

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!

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. ;)