Sister Sunday

Does it get any better than afternoons like this?  I love watching them be friends. 

Sisters are so totally the best.

Happy Sunday!

Bee Bee Bumble Bee

I used to play this game with my grandparents, an I Spy kind of thing.  One person would say the rhyme "Bee Bee Bumble Bee, I see something you don't see, and the color is..."  And then everyone would have to try to guess what it was in the room that the person was thinking of.  Do you want to play?  Ok. Bee Bee Bumble Bee, I see something you don't see, and the color is CUTE!!

Did you guess a darling little toddler girl in a ridiculously cute bumble bee swimming suit and her equally darling pink flower little sister??

Then you guessed right!  I found this cute suit on Amazon for cheap a while back, and we are finally getting some good enough weather to put it to use.  I filled up the little pool today and watched my little bee and my little flower splash around for a while.  Let's get a closer look, shall we?

Seriously.

She calls it her bee costume, I just call it happiness.  It has wings. It has a stinger. It has antenna.  And it all comes complete with a cute, sassy little lady.  So perfect.

And of course, every bee needs a flower to cuddle with.  And we happen to have the dang sweetest one there is!

Ok yes I realize that bow does nothing to keep the sun off her mostly bald little head.  But it does cover the ears, and it is super cute.

Oh how I love Love LOVE these sweet little swimmers!

Mary Mary Quite Contrary

Lookie lookie!!

Ignoring the fact that neither of us know what we are doing at all, we went ahead and planted a garden this spring.  And would you believe it's actually doing something!

A few weeks ago we pulled some radishes, this last week we cut a bunch of lettuce and kale, we've had a couple peppers, some yummy peas, we have several cucumbers almost ready, some tomatoes starting to turn red, and some carrots almost ready for munching!  There's something so satisfying about eating food you grew yourself. And it's been really fun watching Brinlee get excited about "our cute little plants"... even though she keeps telling me to be careful going outside because there's probably a giant at the top of our beanstalks.  Who knows, maybe she's right!

Happiness is...

...letting the toddler do the video recording.

Hope you don't get motion sick.

This Week Is Brought To You By...

... The Letter B and The Number 2!

A few months ago Brinlee started getting really interested in letters.  She spent 3 whole days following me around asking me about every word she could think of.  It went something like this: 

"Puppy. What does puppy say mommy?"  

"P-P-Puppy. Puppy starts with P."  

"P-P-Puppy. P-P-P. Ok mommy. Bird. What does bird say mommy?"

.....

All. Day. Long.  Which made me start to think she could possibly benefit from some more productive quiet time activities.  So we've started talking more about the letters and numbers.  The idea was for me to be super mom (naturally) and do a different letter and number each week.  We did A and 1 at the end of June.  We are currently on C and 3... but hey, effort is effort, right?  And she is loving it. She's such a smarty pants, and such a quick learner.  We use McKenna's morning nap times when we can and try to do a fun themed activity a couple times a week.  Her favorite week so far has been letter B, of course.  B-B-B is for Brinlee! 

B was also for Bubbles, Books, Broccoli and Bananas, Bowling, Bouncing, Bean Bags, Baking, Bubble Baths, and Balloons.

Overall, not a B-B-Bad week!

Little Crawler

Guess who is officially crawling!

You guessed it!

I know, hard to believe she's already this big!  But boy is she ever.  McKenna did the army crawl and tummy scoot for just a few days before she decided to go ahead and get some real work done, and now she zooms around here like crazy!  Here, have another look.  

I know, no need to tell me.  

Our girls are, the cutest!

I just wish they would grow a little slower sometimes.

4th of July

Our 4th of July holiday was fairly low key, but actually pretty fun!  Columbus did their really big fireworks the night of the 3rd, so we took our neighbor and went downtown for that.  It was a pretty impressive show, and the girls did way better than we thought they would. Our first big city firework experience. Success.

The actual day of the 4th was surprisingly sunny, so we grabbed a box of donuts from the the grocery store first thing in the morning and went to Highbanks Metro Park for a little hike and a picnic breakfast.  It was beautiful, and the weather was perfect!

For dinner Brinlee requested more breakfast.  So we had waffles, and then went over to the neighbor's house for hotdogs.  Those totally go together, right? 

We talked about packing up again and going to see the county fireworks, but we had been up pretty late the night before, and the girls were more than content sitting outside on our little patch of grass finally enjoying some non-rainy outside time.  So we spent our evening that way instead.

Sure do love these all-American babies!

What a blessing it is to be raising our family in a country that allows us all the freedoms and opportunities we have.  We are grateful for it every day!

Happy (belated) 4th of July!

A Whopping 6 Years

Yesterday we celebrated 6 fabulous years together!

That's 2,190 days, 

and I'm just as happy to kiss him at the end of the day as I was on day 1. 

Happy Anniversary to us!

Say Goodbye to July

Well.  I took a brief hiatus from blogging and journaling to see if I could finally get some checkmarks on my "projects around the house" To-Do list...

Now one month later, I have several projects kind of started, nothing finished, and a whole bunch of blogging and journaling to catch up on.

Sigh.

I have started some fun stuff though, hopefully soon I can post some finished products and wow you all with my home-makey-ness.  But for now, let's get with some updates!  I have several.  So that's fun.  For starters, here are a few snippets of just the random happenings during July.

It rained (and I mean RAINED!!!) the entire month! We were stuck inside a lot.  We had to get a little creative for entertainment.  Luckily Brinlee has no problem in that department.

Babies change so much so fast! McKenna figured out crawling (more to come on that later) and in the last 2 weeks or so has decided that now crawling isn't enough.  She's pulling herself up to things and trying really hard to figure out the stairs.  Boo. Luckily she only got up 2 stairs before my little spy ran in and tattled on her.  She really is getting big, and wild!  Unless she's asleep she is not at all content sitting still, she's always on the move.  She loves to pull out and play with new toys, loves to get a hold of her sisters hair, loves paper, babbles and "talks" all the time, and she has perfected this really pleasant (read: ear drum shattering) screech that she proudly shows off often.  She loves to dance, loves to cuddle, and I'm pretty sure we're going to claim Mama as her first word.  She is a total mommy's girl and sure seems to know what she means when she makes that sound  :)

We found a sunny day and a rec center pool that will let you swim for 50 cents.  That's our kind of price range right there.  

Brinlee has gotten into bugs a little.  And by a little I mean a very little. She likes bees (from a distance), likes ladybugs, and loves ants.  We spent all spring trying to get to her to not panic every time she saw an ant, so now she crawls around the kitchen floor collecting "ant friends" and giving them names.  I found her in her room the other day with 3 ants trapped inside one of her plastic toy bins.  She was proudly showing them all her stuff and informed me that they love her, they wanted to see her cool room, and their names were Cute, Cutie, and Cutes.  

A couple days ago I pulled a bunch of lettuce in from our garden and with it came a "ladybug friend".  I had a stroke of genius and asked if she thought ladybug would like a home. She was in heaven. Brinlee kept it with her the rest of the day.  She was fascinated, and in love.

We live a block away from an elementary school, which has been nice this summer.  We can run up the street real quick first thing in the morning and get some running around done before it gets hot, and before McKenna is ready for nap.  

Tim's last day of his summer surgery program was on Friday.  Now we get him with nothing scheduled and nowhere to be for one glorious week!  We are all just a little excited about it.

We really are raising some very proper, dainty little girls. Hats off to us, we have obviously got this down.

I'm not very good about home videos, but I did remember to pull the camera out a time or two over the last few weeks.