Summer is coming!

The girls have a few more days left of school and then it's summer. They'll take a few weeks off and start 1/2 day summer school followed by swimming lessons in the afternoon. They are very excited for summer school and swim lessons with their school friends. We have been swimming at Grandma's house a lot lately. Thomas still hasn't been swimming, but I'm sure he'll like it. We'll go once it's a bit warmer.








We were getting ready to walk to Grandma's house today and Callie puts on some sweatpants under her dress. She told me, "I have to wear these mom, because it's sweaty outside." So I was walking along with two rugrats- Emmy with her Dora polo and over sized soccer shorts with hello kitty backpack as an accessory and Callie w/ her butterfly dress and blue sweatpants. What characters. Here's a picture of the girls on today's walk. Callie is waving to some guy on a Harley that was riding by- she was stoked that he waved back "He's my friend, mom. Did you see him wave? He waved at me. That guy is my friend." Great.

The other night we were driving home and Emmy impressed me about how much she knows about fractions. They play with metal pie things to do fractions but I didn't know how much she was getting. She knows that 1/3 is less than 1/2, 3/4 is more than 1/4, 1/8 is smaller than 1/6, etc. Impressive. I didn't get that until like Junior high or something! She's going to be a math wiz!

Here are some random pictures of the kids.

Here are the kids with Maycee and Natalee. I thought I was being artistic taking this shot. I wanted to do one of all of their heads together, but they laid down like this and it was way too many kids for me to fight.... Emmy is a great babysitter most of the time when we're all together. She loves being around younger kids because she loves to organize them :)
Thomas and Natalee. Thomas doesn't look that much bigger than her. He's a little over 3 months older than her. She's growing fast! He'll have a buddy his age! With Erin's baby coming soon (Thomas with Rob and hoping for a boy), he'll have another little playmate.

This is Callie's first trophy. The girls are very serious about their trophies/medals. They have a special shelf for them in their playroom. They are of course all made out of real, solid gold and are all very fragile. Callie was puking right before we went to her team party to get her trophy and say goodbye and thank you to her coaches. She woke from a nap, went and grabbed her trophy, said thank you, posed for this picture and was asleep about 40 seconds after this picture.

The girls get dressed up in their bridesmaid dresses from Erin's wedding and insist we put on classical music and turn it up! They have fun prancing around, performing various shows. Dancing and acrobatics :) They're to the point now where they both jump off opposite ends of the couch at the same time. They don't understand why I want them to at least take turns. Here's Emmy jumping off the couch in her pretty princess dress.
EWWW! The girls swimming with the koi in the pond. Ick. We just had the thing cleaned out the day prior to this picture, so the swamp was drained, rocks were scraped and the goo was all removed. The water did look inviting, but still, I was very grossed out. The girls had fun- but I was freaked out. I certainly did not want to go swimming to rescue Callie (who isn't as comfortable in her swimming as is Emmy). That and the rocks everywhere- not a good place to be from my perspective. But they thought it was great. This picture was taken about an hour before Callie threw up- I'm thinking she got some short-lived swamp illness. Shad says it's all just a coincidence- I don't think so. That water just can't be good, even though it does look crystal clear in this picture.I love this picture of Emmy. She has the most joyous, beautiful smile. She has the best energy about her- she really does enjoy other people and feeds a lot off of other people's moods. But even when we're all grumps, she's usually happy. Even when she's super mad, she's so easy to turn her attitude around. Usually with a hug and a smile, she'll make light of any situation even when she was just in a horrible mood. I would say that a majority of the time that she cries, she ends up laughing. In many ways she is so much like Shad. When he's not a crab, he's happy and giggling. Emmy is so aware of life- it's easy to make her happy and she just loves it. Anyhow I love this picture of her. Unless I get Emmy in a laugh, it's hard to capture her real smile. She's insisting lately that she doesn't like her smile and she wants mine instead. So in almost every picture she takes, she's imitating my smile.MY NUTS! Check out this group! Poor Tommy, Emmy has a grasp on his chubs! He has the best personality for it though. He doesn't mind much and when he does, he lets you know! I don't know if it's teething or what, but he attacks Emmy. Maybe I should say it's just him kissing her, but he really gets mad when she doesn't fit in his mouth. It's quite hilarious. If I knew how to add a video here, I would share it with you.
Callie's teacher told her she wasn't being nice one day last week in school. When I picked her up Callie told me that her teacher told her she was mean and Callie was upset about it. I asked her why and she said it was because she wouldn't share something with Logan. I asked her which Logan (there are two in her class) and she told me it was the "mean Logan who is nice now". Earlier in the year this kid squished her hand in the trashcan and she would always mention this when she spoke of either the nice Logan or this kid. So anyway, she told me that I needed to not talk to her teacher, that I needed to be mad at her teacher since her teacher said this to her. She wanted me to "have her back" (she didn't put it that way, though, thank God). She's very sensitive.

The girls have been great lately. Our horribly stressful schedule is over (and hopefully won't get that stressful again). We're ready for summer and camping and swimming!