Miss Katelyn

These have become my newest favorite pictures of Katelyn. For those that are reading this and don't know about her, Katelyn is a pretty happy child. But she has a lot of fears. We think alot of it is herself psyching herself out about it and because she's young she doesn't understand how to stop doing that. She gets it from me, I know I do this at times and I did it as a child too. Well one of the things she was a bit worked up over was swimming. I think some of it stems from when she had an allergic reaction to the combo of sunblock getting in her eyes and then chlorine from the pool water. She was just a baby but it was horrible. Her eyes swelled up and they were red and they hurt her. Freaked us out big time. So she's been a bit leary in the water. Esp when it comes to sunblock and getting her head in the water. Even jumping freaked her out.

So we were at my parent's house on July 5th. She was still a bit leary. But she saw all of us adults doing jumps and cannonballs and gosh knows what else that you should NOT do once you hit 25 (can you say "traction"? yeah we were all sore for days after, LOL!). Not even a week later, I took the girls back out just to swim. I get them all suited up and I turn around and Katelyn is doing this cannonball into the water like she's been doing it for years. I had to grab my camera. The look of sheer happiness on her face in that one shot is the best! Gone are all those fears of the water. She's arrived! She's happy! See her fly!

Children's Museum

Last Friday, aunt Kathy came to hang out with her favorite nieces. :) We went to the La Habra Children's Museum to have some fun.

We found some footprints and went dinosaur hunting.

We found a dinosaur.

The girls rode a dinosaur.

Katelyn became a firefighter.

Laura tamed a wild horse
and wrangled a blue cow.

Katelyn roared back at the lion on our nature walk
and became friends with a Canadian moose, he said his name was Bullwinkle but who knows.

The girls became butterflies and flew around the garden.

And then they became explorers and looked for bugs.

Thanks for hanging out with us Kathy! We had a great time!

Pile On Papa!

I've been lucky to have lived close to where my dad works since I got married. It just worked out that way. When it was just me, we started meeting for lunch once every few months. I'd go to his office and pick him up and then we'd go to one of a few local restaurants. Later when Katelyn was born it became once a month.

Then he switched office locations. That was cool, we temporarily moved in with them anyhow. But we found a place to rent.......like 5 minutes from his new office. I told him we planned it that way. LOL! Not really, but it's fun to joke about. Laura came along shortly after and Katelyn was enrolled in preschool. Dad started coming twice a month because sometimes he couldn't come on days when Katelyn was there.

And somehow it's evolved into every week. Fine with me. Free lunches! Typically it involves McD's now. But sometimes we go to Round Table Pizza or a local Hawaiian food place called The Loft. But mostly McD's and he'll bring it to our place.

The visit starts off with him and his "it's the boogey man!" and making the girls scream when they forget he's coming and get scared. And the visits almost always end in a game of pile on papa. He loves it and so do they. Laura esp loved it last year when she got papa all to herself when Katelyn was in school. It's going to be a sad day when she starts school....no more papa lunches. But I'll still have them. But I promise not to jump all over him. hahaha!

Happy 4th of July!

We hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July! Since we have rented the house we live in now, we host a bbq here each year. Normally we have more people over but this year only a few were able to make it. That's okay. We still had fun. If you're ever in southern Cali for the 4th of July, head on over! Esp if you love water fights. That's our other annual tradition. Get soaked to keep cool. After we eat, anyone in the backyard still sitting is fair game. Even the kids who visit the neighbors come over for the water fight fun. Adults, kids, we all join in. Here's some photos so you can share in our fun day too.
Laura posing in the outfit she's worn for the 4th for the last three years. She's so skinny still that she's managed that.
Katelyn in the outfit she picked out. I tried to pick out something a bit more patriotic but she said she didn't want to look like a dork. So she picked out the red, white and blue glitter star shirt.

Clark sitting down for the water fight. That's just one of our water guns. We have at least one that's even bigger than that. The bigger the better when it comes to water fights is our motto.

My father-in-law Rick played his ukele for us. He has some fun songs. I'll have to figure out how to get video on here to share one of the songs I got on video.

Soon it was time for fireworks. While Clark got things set up on our end, we watched the next door neighbors do theirs.

Laura started standing on her head in excitement every time she saw the fireworks. I have no clue why but it was funny.

While Laura stood on her head, Katelyn did the "firework dance" which included some type of hula in it.

Now this is pure genious on my part! When Clark started doing our fireworks Laura was just way to curious and kept wiggling out of my arms to get closer. So I took the car seat out of the van, stuck it on top of a chair and strapped that girl in. She still got to watch them and I didn't have to worry about her bolting into the fireworks.

Clark had a little help with lighting them. Our friends' son Jacob stayed to hang out. He got to be the helper this year. He had a blast. I took him home after.

This is where Katelyn watched ours from....the neighbor's truck. She thought our grass was too close so she jumped in their truck.

Fireworks and bottled root beer (IBC)....what better thing is there than this? :)

Jacob and the giant sparkler

So that was our 4th. We hope you all had good ones as well.