Time out....volunteer?

Lately Analese is frequently sentenced to time outs. Usually jumping on the couch is the infraction, and she forgets so quickly! Yesterday afternoon when we sent Analese to time out (which is by the wall under the window in our den), Mariele marched right ahead of her and sat down square in the middle of the time out spot. She looked up at me as if to say, "OK - I'm in time out, now what?" I don't know if it was sister solidarity, or if Mariele just does not yet understand the concept. I do know that it was quite cute, though.

Mariele is also getting quite verbal lately. She loves to say water - "Ahwa." I will try to help her pronounce it correctly, and she repeats after me "AH WAH." She repeats most words that you ask her to say, putting her own "accent" on the word. I have to laugh every time I change her diaper and she reaches back to grab her butt and says, "BUUU!" I love to see the language development. It is certainly a fun part of parenting.

Home & Garden Tour

Well, just garden, actually. I decided to take the camera out and get pics of some of my favorite areas in our yard. This yard has come a loooong way since we bought the house two years ago. Several trees have been taken out. We finally had the gigantic tree root and stump removed that was left from the hurricane that hit two years ago shortly after we moved into the house. Now the kids have a nice grassy area to play in. There is also space to put the play structure, for which we now have HOA approval! We will probably have it installed sometime in late August/September. We are going to be busy with some travels between now and then. Besides, it is 105 freakin degrees out there every afternoon.

Our house has been freshly painted! The deck is in terrible shape, and we are getting it redone very soon. The cats have lived on the screen porch for the past two years. They have an electromagnetic kitty door to enter and exit the porch. This system of having the cat food on the porch worked well for a couple of years, but when we had the house painted we took the screens down. Lee painted the screen frames and put brand new, fresh screen in all of the frames, including the two doors. It was very nice and truly did spruce up the porch. Then (dum dum dum dum.......) the RACCOON strikes. UGHHHH! The stupid coon clawed a hole into the screen to enter the porch and eat every morsel of cat food. So we re-screened that section and put it back. I moved the food away from the screen, but apparently that was not enough, because the raccoon clawed its way onto the porch in the exact same spot the very next night. Since then, the raccoon visits every night, even though I am putting the food into the garage at night. So we are having to take drastic measures. No, we are not busting a cap in its "arse." I'm way too kind hearted toward all animals, even the pesky ones, to do that. But we are going to cut a hole into the side of the house and move the kitty door so that they can access their food in the garage. The kitty door is raccoon proof. We do know that for a fact, because the first kitty door we installed out here was NOT. We had to shop around to find one that truly is raccoon proof.

Here is the cats' "summer chateau." That is cat nip growing in the pot. They don't really use the dome in the summer, though. In the winter they like the dome when I plug in their heated cat bed inside of it. Of course, it will be in the garage this winter.



Here is our big garden box by the fence. That is Dudio, the "hospice" kitty cat napping in the shade underneath the box. Gardening has proven to be a challenge because the squirrels generally snack on the veggies before we even get to pick them. We have not figured out how to squirrel-proof the gardens yet. I know there are ways.




I like this pleasant little garden area of our yard with the little miniature park bench.



I especially like these echinacea flowers, and they do really well in our yard.



These yellow cannas do great also. I should have photographed these a couple of weeks ago, but the bloom is still pretty. These things grow SO fast!




These zinnias that I planted by the pool fence have done well.



And of course the most beautiful thing in my yard is:



Here is the smaller garden box by the pool fence.



And our crepe myrtles are in bloom behind the pool fence. The squirrel AND birds love the bird feeder. I do not have any hummingbird visits yet. I plan to plant some flowers that may attract them.

The week

has been a little crazy. Analese recovered from her strep throat, but my 91 year old grandmother ended up back in the hospital for her L5 compression fracture. I've been very worried about her and have not really had the heart to blog. I do have a few photos to share, though. Analese did cheer camp at The Little gym this week. I know that sounds like a strange camp for a homeschooler, but believe it or not, she was not the only homeschooler there. We are the cool homeschoolers, after all! Analese is the little blonde head right in the center of this iPhone photo. You can barely see her little face peeking out there, but she is dead center in the photo. Right next to her (on her right) is the other little homeschooler girl.



The second (last) day of the cheer camp I remembered to bring my camera. They had the coaches from the competitive cheer sqaud there, and each little girl got to be on top of the pyramid. Of course, now that I had my real camera, I took beautiful shots through the glass with the nice glare. I can tell that Analese was having fun, though. She would not do the cheerleader pose with her arms up, but she did wave at me. It was pretty cute!




I just don't know what it is about The Little gym that makes it such a photography challenge. I swear it is just difficult to get good pictures in there. I blame the lighting and the colors, not the photographer, of course.

These next couple of photos were taken last week a couple of days after Analese started her antibiotic. She wanted to go for a Jeep ride. Mariele is all into being her passenger lately. There is a small park across the street from our house that has a sidewalk all the way around it. That is where I allow Analese to ride her Jeep, since there is no car traffic there.




I got these next two photos last week before we left to go to church. My sweet babies!

Happy Fathers Day

to the best Dad I know, my wonderful husband and father to my two girls!

With Baby Analese.



With Baby Mariele.



With both of his doting daughters, recently.

Peace & Exhaustion

They are both tired from the whole strep throat ordeal. This photo was taken about 8:00 this morning! Mariele woke up as I was leaving the room with the laundry basket about 7:30. I blew her a kiss and told her I would be right back. She blew me a kiss and apparently laid her little head back down and went to sleep. Analese has slept in the "sidecar" for the past couple of nights since she has been sick. No fever this morning! Now if I can just get 9 more days of antibiotic into her. The bribe is Cherry Ludens cough drops (aka candy)!

Exhaustion...

I am so tired. I've been up since dark thirty a.m. Analese was scheduled for her first sleepover at her little best buddy "Tee-ta's" house last night. We took her over there around 6:00 and the kids all went swimming. After half an hour or so of swimming, Analese got out of the pool and told me she was VERY cold. She was shivering violently. I wrapped her in a towel and held her for a few minutes. As her hair dried I could tell that her skin was burning up. Yng Yng got out the thermometer and it read 102. So that was the end of the sleepover. We brought her home and she had fever all night long. I got her to the ped as early as I could this morning, and the diagnosis was strep throat and a UTI. The UTI did not surprise me. She has been complaining of her pee pee hurting, and we gave her lots of cranberry juice yesterday. The strep throat totally surprised me, though. She has not even complained of a sore throat! And usually if her throat is even a little sore, she lets us know because she likes cough drops. She did tell the PA that her throat was "a little bit sore." So Analese is sick and contagious and mommy is exhausted.

Now, here are some pics from a few days ago at dinnertime, since I very rarely blog without sharing pics. Mariele was having fun with her corn on the cob.




Now, both of my kids are sleeping. I know what I should be doing instead of blogging, so I am signing out now.

Show Week

Yesterday was Analese's dance and gymnastics show. This ended her last semester of dance for awhile. We will be doing gymnastics exclusively in the summer and fall. I had her pose in her dance outfit at home before we left.



Mariele sat in the stroller during the show. I'm so glad she was good, because I was able to get some photos and video.



Analese did awesome on the beam! Unfortunately the photography was challenging since the beam was right by those big windows, and my flash was only flashing intermittently since I forgot to change the flash batteries. Her landing was superb!




Here she is on (and off) the bars.




Then she did her dance routines in the dance room. I took videos of those, which I will try to share later. The awards ceremony was at the end. She was quite proud of herself, as always!

Project & Bath Time Sillies...

Analese just loves doing her "projects" lately. This afternoon while Mariele was napping, Analese asked to do a project. She wanted to make a surprise for Mariele to give to her when she woke from her nap. She asked me for paper. I asked her if she wanted white or colored paper. She said she wanted yellow paper, because yellow is Mariele's favorite color in the whole wide world. I'm not sure how she knows this, but it is not the first time that she has interpreted for her baby sister. Anyway, she sat in her desk with the paper, scissors, glue and a pencil and worked busily for several minutes while I attempted to slay the laundry beast. This was the finished product. It says Analese hearts (a heart drawing) Mariele. She asked me at one point in this project to remind her how to spell Mariele. I asked her what shape it was supposed to be. Her reply? A T, mommy! Like, duh!



Tonight they got a little silly during bath time. Here is Mariele being super good-natured about big sister smearing bubbles all over her head and face.



And Analese loves getting a shampoo mohawk! I couldn't get her to look at the camera because she was too busy checking herself out in the mirror.



Thanks for the get well wishes. I feel so much better today than I did yesterday. I just detest airplane bugs!

Freckles & a Busted Lip...

The past few days Mariele has had a runny nose. I have been wondering whether it was a result of the teething or a bug that she caught on the airplane. Today I confirmed that it was, in fact, a bug. I have it now too, since she so generously shares her little germs with me. I woke up this morning feeling like I either had a severe case of allergies or a bug. I'm pretty sure it is a bug, because I took about a 3 and a half hour afternoon nap (THANK YOU LEE). After popping two tylenol, I went into a very strange dreamy sleep. I think I totally needed it, though. Right after I woke up and was thinking about going downstairs, I heard Mariele screaming bloody murder. Evidently she fell on her face and busted her lip on the floor. Poor baby.



On a happier note, I think Analese's freckles are just the cutest things ever. I got a close-up shot of her sweet summer freckles.



I love my kiddos!



Edited to add: Analese likes the picture of her with "sparkles" on her face. That is what she calls freckles: sparkles! That makes me smile so much:)

Our Kentucky Fried Adventure

We got to drop a pin on another state on the map when we went out for a visit in Kentucky the past few days. It was the first trip to Kentucky for our family, and I have to say that Kentucky is a very pretty state. I noticed how beautiful the landscape was as we were flying into the Bluegrass airport. We were in horse country and the landscape was composed of lots of pretty horse pasture land. Everything was very green and lush and there are lots of rolling hills. We spent a few days with our friends that we had not seen in almost a year. They took us to a beautiful park with a great playground for the kids. They got to enjoy some time in the sandbox. As a side note, Mariele was kind of a holy terror the entire trip due to the fact that she is cutting three teeth all at once. So the expression on her face was about as pleasant as we could get.




They all got to go out on the lake in the pedal boats. Analese was excited for the boat ride.





Mariele was giving five from the bridge.



We got to toss the frisbee around.



Like I said before, Mariele was just not the happiest camper.



Trish and Ally. Aren't they pretty?



Analese and Allyson played dress up later that afternoon. Analese revered Allyson very much. She really likes girls who are a few years older that she is.



The next day we visited the Louisville zoo. Of course my kids will not actually look at the camera.



We got up close and personal with the giraffes.





Analese even got to feed them!



Here is a handsome lion wondering why he can't get the giraffes on one side and the zebras on the other.




Mariele's favorite part was the petting zoo. She really perked up for the petting zoo. She really loves animals!




This zoo had a water park for the kids! There was even a baby section. Here's the little swimsuit model.



We had a great day at the zoo, but we were more than ready to head on over to the Cheesecake Factory after it was all said and done. Again, my kids refuse to look at the camera during a group shot.