A Picture's Worth 1000 Words

Sarah and I took James, Ryan, Allie, and Maddie to the park today. The sprinklers were on and James and Allie had a blast running through them together. They giggled and screamed and had a great time.

Then there are these "fun" pictures. These were actually taken before the sprinkler pictures, so as you can tell, these two don't hold a grudge...at least not against each other.


This is all over a juice box...

(check out that face!)

Not sure what this is about...

The cousin rivalry continues.

Just a Spoonful of Sand?

What is it about sand that makes kids want to eat it? And eat it by the handful (or shovelful in Allie's case)? It can't possibly feel good in their mouth or taste good. I wonder what kind of mineral they gain from eating sand that they're obviously lacking in their diets. Must be something only kids need because I have no desire to go digging through Allie's sandbox for a nice spoonful of sand. Hmmm, one of the great mysteries of parenthood. (Maybe they do it just to keep us guessing....)

Allie's 15 Month Stats

It's taken me a while to get this on here since her 15 month appointment was the first of July. She was 21 1/2 pounds and 31 1/2 inches. She's in the 80+ percentile for height but only around 24 for weight. She is growing well and she had her first vaccinations. She wasn't too happy about that but she didn't seem to have any reactions. Because of her history of seizures, I was a bit worried about her having a fever from the shots but she didn't get one.

She does still have a heart murmur. She's had it pretty much since birth. Her dr doesn't think that it's anything to worry about at all, but she just wants to make sure. Since she hasn't outgrown it she wants us to go ahead and do the echocardiogram. We just have to schedule it and get it done. I'm not looking forward to making her lay still for 40 minutes. Oh well, we'll do what we have to.

The Little Chair

Alyssa loves child-sized chairs. Her birthday present from her grandma and grandpa was an Elmo chair and she loves it! She's constantly carrying it around the living room to position it where ever she decides she wants to sit.

Today, Jason went to the church nursery to pick up Maddie. Maddie had a tiny rocking chair in her hand that she was playing with. It was about 4 inches tall and 2 inches wide. Alyssa grabbed the chair from Maddie, set it on the ground, and tried to sit in it. When the first attempt to sit in it failed, she tried it once more. Man, I wish I had pictures to go with this post because I can totally picture the whole thing in my mind. Silly kid. The fact that she took it from Maddie in the first place is a whole 'nother issue that we're working on.

She Had a Little Curl

This poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow reminds me so much of Allie.

There was a little girl

Who had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

And when she was good

She was very very good.

But when she was bad

She was horrid.

Ah, but she's precious and we love her spirited little personality.

Too Much Fun!

The last fews weeks have been crazy! But, they sure have been fun! We ended June with my nephew's 3rd birthday. He had a blast. We moved here the day of his first birthday and I can't believe how much he's grown in these 2 years. I just adore him!

Then, good friends from Mesa, Az came to visit for 10 days. They have a little girl that is 3 months younger than Allie. She is just a doll baby! So unlike our Allie. Kallei is so danty and girly. Allie prefers playing with motorcycles and cars and runs around like a wild animal! But we adore her. We went to Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo and had a great time riding the rides and watching the dolphin and whale shows. We took Paul and Tricia waterskiing and tubing on the lake and the girls spent some time scrapbooking while my brother tried to kill Paul by taking him white water rafting. We had a great visit and it was so nice to catch up with friends we hadn't seen in a while.

Two of my cousins and their families came up for the 4th of July weekend and we took the boats and houseboat out to the lake. The 2 hour wait to launch our boat was actually worth it! The lake is so low right now that they were only launching one boat at a time where normally there are 12 launch lanes! Crazy!

My sister and her family came up the 4th and stayed until this morning. We did our annual family vacation. We usually spend all day at the lake tubing, playing games, riding the wave runner, skiing, and just relaxing. I look forward to it all year. But, this year was different. We went to the lake Monday and Tuesday but by Wednesday, the smoke in the air was so bad that we couldn't take the kids outside. 3 weeks ago we had a dry thunder storm and lighting started 800 fires in Northern CA. Most are out but there are still approx. 40 fires burning. The sky has been filled with smoke for most of those 3 weeks. We've had a couple fairly clear days but this past week a fire burning close to the lake made the smoke unbearable. On Thursday, the visibility was down to only a couple hundred yards. The air quality was classified as "Very Unhealthy" and "Hazardous" so we spent most of the week in air conditioning. It was also the hottest week all year. We hit around 110 degrees! Ack! So, instead of a beautiful week on the lake we hung out at my parent's and played games. It was still fun and the most important thing was that we enjoyed time with each other.





Allie sleeping on the houseboat

Allie eating watermelon at Jame's Birthday party