Our Four-Legged Friend

While doing yard work on Saturday, Danny and Alyssa found a little four-legged friend in our backyard. She was so excited to show it to Ashley...

and Mommy.

Danny put it in a bucket so the girls could sit and enjoy it for awhile.
It didn't like being caught, but the girls enjoyed watching it try and jump out. At one point it succeeded in catching it's front legs around the rim of the bucket and then after hanging out for a few seconds, it finally pulled itself up and jumped out. Alyssa was so sad that it was going to get away, so Danny caught it again. Here they are explaining the adventure.

Swimming

It has finally gotten hot enough to turn on our air conditioner and pull out our inflatable pool. I took these pictures on the first day that they swam in the pool and the water was still quite cold. I think that explains some of the facial expressions on the girls.
They both love that yellow floaty for some reason. They have been wearing it around the house and yard for the past few months and were both so excited to finally use it in the pool. As you can tell, Alyssa got the most use out of it since she is in it in almost all of the pictures.

I had to include this one because I was laughing for like 5 minutes straight after I saw it. I had no idea that Ashley was doing that when I took the picture. Kids do the funniest things sometimes.

On a sad note, I noticed as the week went on the the pool became more and more deformed. I didn't know the reason until I emptied it out yesterday and noticed that the bottom ring of air was totally deflated. It has a hole somewhere in it and I have no idea how to find out where.

Motor Boat

Daddy was playing with the girls one day and it was so cute I had to get it on video.

Public Works Fair

Last week, there was a public works fair not too far from our house. I wasn't really sure what to expect when we went, but another mom that I talked to at the library said everything was free, so we went to check it out. The first two things the girls noticed when we were walking up to it were the orange balloons that every other kid had and this:

They had to ride on the Choo-Choo Train, so here they are waiting in line (big sister is making sure little sister stays in line and doesn't run out in front of the train).
I attempted to take a few pictures of us on the train and this was the best of all of the shots - even though it is still not very good.

They loved the train ride. After it was over, they were finally able to move on and look at the other stuff. We went to hunt down the balloons, but discovered that they were all gone. The first thing we came to was a big "Red Light, Green Light" game with a real traffic light. Alyssa joined in right away. Ashley even took one turn, but didn't quite get it, so I had to go in and move her out of the way so they could continue the game. (It may look like Alyssa is in the front, but she never really stopped for the "red lights." Hopefully that changes before she starts driving.)

After "Red Light, Green Light" we went and explored all of the different trucks and tractors that they could climb in. I didn't take pictures in all of them, because that would have been a pretty boring group of pictures, but here are a few that I did get shots of.

This was a recycling truck that they let the kids control the big claw on the side of the truck. Both girls liked that.

We had already eaten lunch before going to this fair, but learned after we got there that they were providing free food too. When there wasn't a line for the food, we went to check it out. We enjoyed some potato chips, cookies, and water. It was a fun afternoon for all of us. The only group that I thought was missing, was the fire station with a fire truck and ambulance. I guess they were busy actually doing their job.

Storytime with Curious George

On Friday, our library had storytime with Curious George. It started with the normal storyteller reading a couple of Curious George books to the kids. Ashley has started to hate storytime and will not sit still for it. I kept her entertained by letting her color the craft that was meant for later.

After the stories, the kids got to color different coloring pages while waiting for Curious George to arrive.

As soon as he was in the room, Alyssa ran right up to him, shook his hand, and gave him a hug.

When Ashley finally noticed that he was in the room (she is very into coloring lately since I don't let her have the crayons at home anymore unless I sit and color with her. One too many coloring-on-our-light-carpet incidents), she got into the action. Here is the best shot I got of the two girls together.

After taking a couple of pictures, Alyssa went back to her craft, but Ashley was still very interested in the big monkey. I thought this picture was so cute.
Almost all of the other kids had left, but Ashley was content sitting with the monkey. Notice that she never got too close though. Big caracters still make her a little bit nervous. Even though Curious George isn't a TV show that they normally watch, they still enjoyed meeting him. It would be interesting to see how they would react to meeting Dora, especially Ashley.

Alyssa has been asking to go back to the Brunswick Zone Bowling Alley for awhile now. We went there last year as an outing with Danny's Department at work. So last night we finally went as part of Family Home Evening (it was our activity after our lesson). They loved it during the first game but not som much during the second.

Ashley was so cute trying to carry this heavy, slippery ball and lift it up to the metal ramp. She only dropped it once and fortunately it didn't land on her toes. That only happened because she was trying to run with it.

The first few times that Ashley pushed her ball down the ramp, she would giggle. I don't know what she thought was so funny, but she liked something about it.

Here are some other pictures that we liked.

We wished we would have known that the girls would only be good for one game. During the second game, it was so exhausting keeping them corralled in our designated lane and getting them to go and take their turn. We had fun, but they didn't love it enough to fork out the money we had to pay for it (and we even had a coupon). So we most likely won't try it again for a very long time.

One of My Favorite Days of the Year

I had a very nice Mother's Day. It is one of my favorite days of the year because I get to relax from my daily responsibilities and not feel guilty about it. It is also one of my favorite days of the year because it helps me remember what a blessing it is to be a mother. I love these little girls so much and I feel honored to be able to spend ever single day with them.

Danny helped Alyssa pick out some gifts to give me from her and Ashley. I enjoyed a yummy french toast breakfast and a grilled chicken dinner that I didn't need to worry about preparing. After dinner, we went for a drive together (it was too cold to go for a walk and the girls needed to get out of the house). During our drive, we saw this:
(well, not exactly this because we didn't have our camera and there are no mountains in Missouri and the balloon was actally much further away than this when we first saw it). We pointed it out to the girls and they begged us to go find the hot air balloon. So off we went on a balloon chase and they loved every minute of it. We eventually caught up to it and pulled into a High School parking lot to get out and watch it go over our heads.
After that, the girls wanted to go chase it again. We did and watched it go right past us once again, this time a lot lower to the ground so we got a good look at the occupants. We did chase it again after that, but gave up when we no longer had city streets to drive on. It was a fun way to end a nice Mother's Day.

The balloon images came from two different sources on google.

A Miserable Week

Why was it a miserable week? Here's your answer:

On Monday: she was mostly fussy and crying all day long. We were annoyed.

On Tuesday: We started noticing that she would just stop and lay on the ground and cry occasionally (very odd for Ashley to stop at all). This was the day that we decided that she probably wasn't feeling well.

On Wednesday: We realized that she hadn't been eating since Monday and we started giving her Tylenol, thinking that her 2 year molars were coming in. On this day, she also started complaining about "Owies" in her mouth about every 5 minutes.

On Thursday: she started refusing to take the Tylenol and drinks. We really started to worry, thinking maybe it was something more than her teeth. We researched online to see if there was anything out there with similar symptoms. We read about Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease(HFMD) and we decided to try and look in her mouth. No luck, she refused to let us shine a flashlight towards her.

On Friday: we went off to the doctor (We don't hesitate to go to the doctor ever since we got a Flex Spending Account). We figured the doctor would be a lot more successful in diagnosin the problem then we would be.

The Result: 2 year molars. 4 of them all at once.

We were glad that it was teething rather than HFMD, but we still don't get why even taking medicine and drinking was causing her pain. The doctor suggested chewable Motrin to ease the pain and it did wonders. Ashley is back to her normal self again and we are all a lot happier. It's funny how teething can effect two kids so differently. We didn't even know when Alyssa's came in. We just looked in her mouth one day and noticed a few more teeth.