Fun Friday

Last day of swim lessons!  The girls both got to have a 'Fun Friday', which meant that they got to participate in all the fun water attractions in the water park they take their lessons at, even being able to do the things they normally couldn't at the park.  It's awesome to have a trained lifeguard catching you!

 

 

They were both very excited to go down the slides!  I think Mac did it like 5 times. 

The deep end has this funny plunge slide, that just kind of deposits you right in the water. 

That's Leiden in the pool.  I couldn't even take a picture fast enough. 

Someone's happy! 

Leiden was very excited to try this out. 

Mac is a little fish, swimming better with her face underwater than out.  

She, too, is thrilled with the day! 

She has such confidence! 

 

Last night I was putting Leiden down for bed, and she said, "I am so excited for Fun Friday at swim lessons tomorrow!  It's going to be the best day of my life!"  Then she paused, and said, "Unless I have a better day sometime after."  While attractions at a water park are super exciting, I certainly hope she has MANY days that are better!

Mimi came up after her nap and wanted to be a ballerina.  She had tried to put on the outfit without help, but she put it on literally upside down.  One of the shoulder straps are between her legs, and the crotch of the leotard is on her shoulder.  She kept looking for somewhere to put her arms through! 

Today was life jacket safety day at swim lessons.  Mac's and Leiden's classes combined.

Mimi has done very well, here.  She knows not to leave the concession area and she just plays mostly happily.  She likes to try and climb the rope walls and play in the rocks. 

Diving board today with life jackets! 

 

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream For Ice Cream!

One of our Summer Activities is to have ice cream for dinner.  I had wanted to do it on the night school ended, but it didn't work out.  So tonight was the night!  Leiden has been asking when we were going to do it since school got out.  I made whole grain waffles to offset the craziness.

The girls were very excited. 

Mimi, in her haste, got lots of marshmallow fluff in her hair. 

 

Brad, not a huge fan of ice cream, was somewhat less than impressed with this evening's offering. 

When we were done with our bowls of ice cream, I was kind of kidding, and I said, "Anyone want a carrot?"  The answer was a unanimous "Yes!"  So we had carrots for dessert.  This is certainly not going to become a habit at our house, but fun to do as a one off.

Flood!

Mimi came down this afternoon and said, "Soapy", with her shirt all wet.  I didn't think anything of it, but sent her on her way to pick a book for her nap.  Leiden was going to join her and put her down in a few minutes, but was busy doing something else upstairs. (Isn't that funny? Leiden reads her a story, tucks her into bed, and sings her a song!)   I hadn't heard from either of them for a while, so I headed upstairs and Leiden was putting her down.  I heard the water running in our bathroom so I dashed in, only to find that Mimi had somehow put the stopper down in the sink, and had both the hot and cold running full tilt.  Water was cascading out of the sink and down the cabinets.  I quickly pulled the plug and turned off the water.  Sigh.  I started cleaning up the wet floor, when I realized that the water had run into our walk in closet.  I headed in there, by now having used several towels already.  As I'm cleaning up the water, I can hear it dripping under the floor.  Not two seconds later, Mac comes up to the bathroom and says, "Mommy, there's water dripping on me downstairs!"

Yeah.  I went down and it was dripping from several spots in the ceiling, including from one of the can lights.  Brad was having his Elders' Quorum Presidency meeting in the basement, but I called him up to help.  The guys ended up all traipsing up and helping us staunch the flow.  They said they had heard water dripping in the basement, too, and figured it had traveled down some duct work from the top level.  Mimi really did it this time!  Hopefully we won't have any mold or mildew problems.  Brad has rigged a 'tube' for a fan to blow air up there between the ceiling and floor to dry it out.

Kitty didn't know what to think with water raining from the sky.

Things settled down a bit after that.  We had a lovely outdoor dinner on the deck, tonight, and were spared many mosquitoes.  We like to play the 'don't smile' game, where you get really funny little smiles as the girls are trying not to.  Reverse psychology really does work!  Leiden can't keep a straight face for even a second after you tell her not to smile.  She is SO CUTE!

Mac is actually pretty good at the game.  She keeps a frowny face for quite a while. 

She always caves, though, and she turns her head to smile.  Maybe I won't see it if she turns her head away. 

Mimi doesn't understand the game, but she has awesome eyelashes.  Good enough reason for a picture for me! 

Leiden has tan lines from swimming lessons.  Like really noticeable ones!

This afternoon we headed down to Eagan to see some old friends.  They just had a giant fish aquarium installed in their workplace, and it was being featured on the reality TV show, 'Tanked'.  The girls were excited to see the fish and got to see little friends, too! 

There were TV people all around--these were just a couple guys to take a picture with.  Mac refused to be in the picture, strangely enough! 

Tonight, for the third night in a row, we had a babysitter, and got to go see some friends for a BBQ.  They are British, and her parents were here from overseas.  This summer was the Diamond Jubilee, (and of course the Olympics in London, as well) so they had some funny Queen and Duke of Edinburgh masks with eye holes.  Our friend Ed was using the Queen to fan the charcoal.  It was nice to spend time with these relatively new friends!

I think Brad and I have met our date allotment for a month or two!

Anniversary Part 2

I forgot to mention that Leiden started piano lessons last week.  She did well during the week, sitting down to practice her pages without me having to prod her.  I really don't want it to become just another thing for me to nag her about.  We 'won' these lessons from our Young Women's silent auction fundraiser, so they're just kind of a one off--or four off.  But depending on how she does and if she likes it, we'll get her a permanent teacher.

We made it out to the Guthrie again this evening to see the show, which I actually didn't realize was a musical until we got there.  We tried to take a picture of us together, as this was for our anniversary, but the sun was RIGHT in our eyes and we couldn't get it aimed the right way.  We were there in plenty of time tonight, and were able to go out on the endless bridge on the back of the building.

Pretty awesome that our anniversary extended over two days this year!  Thanks, Brad, for putting together a wonderful celebration for us!

Happy Anniversary!

Today is our anniversary!  We were married 12 years ago today.  I have been working hard on my gift to Brad.  I found the idea on Pinterest, and decided to make it so.  It's a year's worth of dates, one a month.  Each month has an envelope with a little note and some kind of description of the date for the month.  Brad will open each one at the beginning of the month and we'll plan on a time to do it.  June's is visiting the Arboretum.  I'm excited about the dates--but I can't talk about them here because they're secret until the beginning of the month!

I woke up this morning to this note, explaining the day.  Our friend came over and watched the girls while I went out shopping for the evening.  Then dinner and a musical at the Guthrie.

I headed out shopping and got a pretty shirt and some jewelry and a purse.  We went into Minneapolis and went to Hell's Kitchen for dinner, which unfortunately, was only so-so.  I think I just got the wrong thing.  And hey, now I know I don't like bison! 

After dinner we had to rush to make it to the Guthrie for our 7:30 showing of Roman Holiday.  We were really running behind, like not getting seated until intermission running behind.  Brad dropped me off at the doors and sped away to go park the car.  While he was parking I examined the tickets to see if there was any information about latecomers and noticed that the tickets said Friday, June 22.  I thought to myself, 'I thought today was Thursday--Wait!  Today is both Thursday and the 21st!'  As Brad came sprinting up to the doors, I broke the news that the tickets were for tomorrow night.  He was a little embarrassed, but it makes for a great story.  Luckily we were able to get babysitters again for tomorrow night so we could still go! 

Happy Anniversary, Brad!  I love you!

Good Day

Good news that has been a long time coming.  We took another trip to the doctor this morning to check up on Leiden's tummy.  Another (hopefully the last!) x-ray to check it out.

The results were normal!  Her little system is finally cleared out.  Now we begin the long--and I mean 8-9 weeks long--process of weaning her off the high doses of medicine she's been taking.  So glad the end is in sight, and I am going to MAKE SURE this never happens to her again.

Tonight we were on a little errand, and Leiden kept asking to get her hair cut.  I finally agreed, so here's the before.  I didn't have my good camera, just my phone. 

She wanted it cut really short, like chin length and up short, but the hair lady talked her into a smidge longer so it could still be tucked behind her ears and put into little pigtails in the back.  What a cute little girl! 

I was in the craft room working on some last minute touches for Brad's anniversary gift, and he called me to come outside.  There was a giant rainbow spanning the sky right over our house.  It was a super clear rainbow, where you're able to see each color and at one end it was even a double.  My lens isn't wide enough to get much of the rainbow in it, but it was really cool.  From our angle, it literally looked like it was arcing right over our house.  It was dusk, so the girls were already asleep, but we'll show them the pictures tomorrow. 

Pool Time

Darn hot, today!  90+ with high humidity.  Definitely a day for the pool.  It takes forever to pump up using my hand pump, so I'm going to look for an electric one.  It will get used a lot more often if we have one.  Mimi was having a blast.  Click on this picture to make it bigger and check out her face.

I guess she thought 8 inches or so of water would cushion her 35+ lb. body landing on her bottom. 

And I guess she thought 8 inches was deep enough for a dive. 

Not quite, but it was an effective way of getting over the high wall. 

Leiden preferred to jump. 

Mac was all sedate and carefully climbed in. 

Later she came to lay down by me on the deck while the other girls still splashed around. 

Glad we've got this pool!

Swim!

Finally!  The girls started swim lessons, today, which is awesome.  It gives them something productive to do, and aside from the fact that they are freezing cold outside, they like it!

Mac is thrilled to be in the water, and has a bit of a difficult time listening to the number one rule, which is 'always have one hand on the side while you're waiting'.  She likes to dive under the water and zoom around.  Yeah.

Leiden's class is much further away from parent seating, so I wasn't able to get any good shots of her in action.  Hopefully she'll learn a little more confidence in the water--and get used to water being in her eyes!  Every time I looked at her, she was pausing what she was doing to wipe her eyes. 

Mimi stayed home with a babysitter--I wasn't sure how this pool was laid out and didn't want to fight her wanting to get in.  Luckily it's well planned out and she'll be able to come and watch the other days.  I wanted to put her in a lesson, but the lessons with parents were not at the same time as the older girls' lessons.  Maybe next session.

Leiden had been playing with push pins this morning, and she and I both thought she had picked them all up.  She didn't.  Brad was the unlucky recipient of this one!