Screaming

At any time during the day in my house you may hear screaming. This is a high pitch scream, that I honestly didn't think a small child could make. The high pitch has even made my dog wince. And because of the frequency of the the scream my first reaction is not quick. In fact, today I stood in the middle of the room with my hands over my ears until I felt safe that the scream would not cause any permanent hearing damage before I asked what happened. I have had friends with me when a scream occurs... their face reddens and normally a reaction of this caliber, "Oh, MY! Is she OK? Is something broken? I thought you were headed to the hospital." "Nope" I say and saunter over to my child.

The vehicle of the scream would be Lily or Evie... thank goodness no Rose. (I should note that she is not innocent from the scream. Many times she is the cause for the scream.)

What causes the scream? I have decided to take note of some occurrence to shed a better light on this phenomenon.

*Lily SCREAMS because Rose fell on her neck.

*Evie SCREAMS because she doesn't want Lily to read her a book.

*Evie SCREAMS because she wants chocolate milk.

*Lily SCREAMS because Rose took the blanket.

*Lily SCREAMS because she fell at the pool.

*Lily SCREAMS because she cut her finger at the park.

...the list really goes on and on, as does the SCREAM. The average time for a scream is 35 seconds. The average time to wipe the tears and go onto something new is 5 seconds.

Swim Team 2010

1st picture is Lily doing the breast stroke.

2nd picture is Rose doing the butterfly for the IM.

3rd picture is Lily...hmmm.... trying out a "new" stroke?

4th is the girls starting a race together. This only happened a few times! Big smiles.

5th picture is the intensity of Rose that always cracks me up. She is always the first ready, and will stay this way until everyone else is ready. Notice the other swimmer, Corinna, as well as everyone else... they must not share the same intensity as Rose. I think one time she stayed like this for three minutes. Just making sure she was ready!

Alrighty... I'm back. Hopefully, with renewed vigor and eagerness to type I'll be able to chronicle our lives again for the blog world. I'm going to start with swim team...considering it takes up our month of June, I figured there would be no better place to start.

This year as always was incredible for our girls, even Evie learned the art of self preservation during the swim meets. For example, she found out how to drink Gatorade from a bottle, how to eat a bag of Cheetos, how to eat her first hot dog, how to shove sand down her pants, and generally be tossed from parent to parent as we cheered on the girls during the the four hour swim meets. I will say to my credit that during swim practices I was able to work with her on jumping into the water and using balance to float in her swimmy vest. I have some great video footage of her swimming that I will add to a later post. She's just as incredible as her big sisters.

Lily at age five was incredible too! She could swim all four strokes in a race. Though the stroke judges were very kind in not DQing our little one. Her favorite was the butterfly, though it really didn't look much like the butterfly by the time she finished. She also is fearless... swimming against the 8 year olds and really not minding that she finished last. In fact, when she finished a race she normally was concerned with what she could eat next!

As for Rose at age 8 she was on top of her 8 and under age bracket. And to toot her horn she normally finished first or second! Her legs were so strong and her desire so great that a few times she willed herself to win. Her accomplishments this year were swimming the 100meter IM with the 10 year olds and winning the Butterfly in the Championships.

So, as I've dribbled on about how proud I am the girls and how great they are... I know, I know. But, honestly I love our swim team. Our coach is patient and kind to all of the swimmers. Her heart really reaches so many children, mine included. We've been blessed to have her teach our children such a great skill. And I know I'm not raising Olympic swimmers, but for the month of June our family gets a little competitive and a lot of swimming!

Snow Day

Well, here we are in all of our Southern snow glory. As you can see by the pictures we honestly got some snow. Rose took the yard stick out and measured 3 inches in most parts of the yard. We even had a little snow drift of 9 inches. I know, I know pretty impressive.


The girls started the snow dance on Friday night...and even were playing on the back deck that night making snow balls and just enjoying the cold stuff. So, early Saturday morning we were greeted with a beautiful blanket of snow. By 9:30 we were out the door, fully geared up, and with homemade pancakes in our bellies. This was Evie's first and only adventure outside. I didn't have my camera so true to third child form there were no pictures of her bundled up and face planting in the snow. Because of the last action her snow "playtime" was very short.
But, Rose and Lily are the total troopers... out at 9:30, in for hot coco, out at 11:30 for serious sledding with Daddy, in for lunch, out at 3:00 for some poor sledding with Mommy, and finally back in at 6:00. They wanted to go back out around 9:00pm, but Jack put the cabash on that.







Check out Jack helping out the mail carrier. Our road was a sheet of ice and with the stopping and starting on the hill we were so worried that the mail man motto would be put to shame. So, out comes Jack to save the day!





This picture show how icy the roads were on Saturday. This was part of the 3:00- 5:00 sledding adventure.










Of course my children have to take sledding to a more extreme, dangerous level by standing on the sled. Believe it or not those little ones have an excellent center of balance!











And here are the snow bunnies themselves. As you can see they have no problem hamming it up for the camera. Lily and her friend Ada Grace loved, loved, loved eating the snow! Hysterical. What a fun weekend for the girls. They truly had such joy being children... and so didn't he parents.

Christmas Performances

Rose with her class at her Christmas performance...

Lily our little "angel" with Evie at her performance.

Better Late Than Never

So.... Jack and I celebrated our numero 36 in December. I am so lucky and blessed to have my husband to grow old with... and knowing that we do this together makes it just a little bit easier.


In this first picture I'm sporting the beautiful birthday crown that Rose made Jack and I. She was so sweet and wanted to decorate and play party games... we played pin the tale on the donkey!


In the next picture the girls are decorating our cake... Evie tried this year, but honestly she was elbow deep in icing and it was just better if she licked a spoon!

Rose and Lily provided entertainment after dinner by dancing to ballet music... they were so graceful. And as you can see by Rose's face very focused.

And here is the birthday boy and girl getting sung to. Jack looks none to thrilled by the whole shabang, but I think it was just a bad shot.

From the Trenches of Mothering

First Wave of the Attack
Target: Lily
Location: Lily's Bedroom
Time: 0900 hours
Yesterday morning Lily comes running into my room. "Mommy there is a lizard in my drawer!!!!" Obviously, I don't believe her. "Lily go get dressed we are going to be late. There could not be a lizard in your drawer." Lily now starting to cry, "Mommy there really is a lizard in my shirt drawer." I stop dressing and examine if she is telling the truth. "Well is it alive?" "Yes, Mommy!!!" So, the next few minutes are filled with me getting the appropriate lizard catching gear (two cups) and trying to catch this lizard. Which is successfully and safely done ...the lizard was quickly released outside.

Second Wave of the Attack
Target: Diaper Genie
Location: Evie's Bedroom
Time: 1000
Today while vacuuming Evie's room she decided to wage war on the diaper genie. First she figured out how to open it. (This is no small feat. As many of you know who are familiar with the older model of the Diaper Genie.) Then she began filling it up. With what you ask.... clean diapers of course. Lots of clean diapers. Then once she was done with the diapers she moved on to other things she could reach on the diaper table. By the time she was done the genie was over flowing and I was done vacuuming... which allowed me to move on to cleaning up the diaper genie.


More waves of the Attack on Mom to come.

Blog Catch-Up

October has flown by and now I'm in the middle of November... so, before time totally escapes here's what we've been up to...

My brother came to visit...and Uncle Vern is always a hit with the girls. Rose and Lily's favorite past time with him was playing hair salon and putting bows and ribbons in his hair. I can't tell you what a great sport he was. We also got to go to the pumpkin patch. (Vern's first time ever.) And as you can see in this picture Evie has warmed up to him with no problem. Our littlest one is having the classic case of separation anxiety and whenever she goes to someone it really warms my heart. I would say though the highlight of Vern's visit was going to see Metallica in concert. What a BLAST and what a coooool rocking band they were. I can't tell you what a unbelievable concert it was, but it was. Vern did some classic air guitar and I learned the classic hard rock concert fist pump!!! Sweet.

Our next big event was Lily getting her training wheels taken off. As you can see in the picture she has mastered two wheels with ease. One day she just looked at me and said she was done with the training wheels and was ready to be a big girl. So we took them off and within a few minutes she was off. This step in childhood is one of my absolute favorites. The pride, joy, exhilaration that is on your child's face is priceless. (And yes, it feels like yesterday that I was watching Rose do the same thing.) I will say though, that Lily has already had some daredevil bike riding disasters, but she always gets back on!

Of course one of the best parts of the fall is the leaves. And this year they were in full color. We've had some phenomenal weather paired with kite flying, leaf jumping, swinging , and just all day playing outside. I know that NC has nothing on WV for fall fun, but this time of year is just the best!

Next, we had Mom and Carmen down for Halloween. (The weather was awful....) But, we still were able to carve pumpkins and enjoy time with them. Mom was the supreme candy giver on Halloween night...surprising us with a little Rag Doll costume when we returned from trick or treating. This year Rose and Lily decided that they should dress as Hannah Montana. Not the most creative costumes, but they loved it. This year has been about Hannah. Because it was so warm during trick or treating the girls both threw off their wigs and decided they were just rock stars. "Mommy this wig is way tooo hot. I don't know how Miley does it?" As was told to me while a wig was being thrown at me in route to another house.

And sweet, sweet Evie got to wear the Clown costume that I had made a few years before for Lily. Of course she had no idea what was going on... and you can see that hat was barely worn for the picture.

So, that's about it for now. On to November!