Clearly Ryan has been watching some You Tube lately. The girls find the most random stuff....PG of course, but random Barbie tutorials and play-dough how-to's. It must be rubbing off b/c the other day I caught her in the midst of production. This video is only one in a series of 4 or 5.
A few notes.
1. She uses the word 'persevere' - slightly incorrectly, but adorably placed nonetheless. It happens to be in her school creed so it is used daily.
2. Emerson's choking on cauliflower halfway through sounds worse than it was....love Ryan's quick dismissal of it.
3. We were in the midst of organizing the room so hence the random placement of items.
I will leave you as I'm sure you are anxious to learn how to draw flowers....
I guess it's been awhile......I finally got out the 'good' camera, recharged the battery and took it out in the yard last night. The ladies got a new swing set about a month ago after the one we inherited with our house was becoming a death trap. I've now discovered that we basically just purchased a new death trap. But the girls love it nonetheless....
Never missing a moment to make a fashion statement...
Emerson loves being outside. From the time she rises, to the minute she goes to bed, she stands by the door, points and yells 'out' - she'll bring me her shoes and she'll throw amazing tantrums when you try and bring her inside. Yet, she is still unsure of grass.
But one thing she does love is her tire swing. This is the first summer the girl gets to enjoy it - she and Ryan make crazy cute riding partners....
Speaking of Ryan, she has officially turned 16. Where did my baby go?
The legit baby in the house also loves, loves, loves the swing.
All my babies:)
So....we were really behind the ball with teaching Ryan how to ride a bike. We should have tackled it last summer, but we didn't and she showed zero interest in learning. This year, the hell if we were going to have her turn six and still not know how to ride without training wheels....Grant worked with her and with a little peer pressure help from our next door neighbor Amelia, Ryan mastered the bike a couple of weeks ago. On Sunday we decided to take off Reese's training wheels for the hell of it. She had been doing awesome on her glider bike and we figured she would take to riding a bike pretty easily. Little did we know it took about two minutes. Off she went and hasn't stopped since.
Apparently wearing as many colors as humanly possible is appropriate biker gear this season....
Multi-tasking: bike riding while belting out Katy Perry
Double trouble...
Perhaps I'll do better with the blog posting this summer. And perhaps I won't. Time will tell:)
The girls are obsessed with Frozen. Obsessed. We've watched it no less than 50 times in the last week or so. I've downloaded some songs onto my phone, we blast them, the girls dance, we repeat.....like 30 times in a row.
You can basically here the words to 'Let It Go' coming from their mouths, right?
Collaboration....
Another round but this time they wanted their hair back to start so they could dramatically pull out the rubber band for effect.
And this child just chums it during the concert....
Or she's saying 'my ears, my ears, stop the madness'....
This winter has been ridiculous....too many snow days, freezing temps, days on end inside. So when the opportunity to pull the trigger and plan a Florida getaway arose, we jumped! We decided to do two days in Orlando (seeing as my dad does a little work down there nowadays so we could coordinate and rendezvous with my folks) and then drive down to Naples and spend three days at our friends' family condo, and it wasn't exactly pulling teeth to talk my folks into going to Naples as well and staying nearby at a hotel.
Ryan was psyched, Grant went to meet her for lunch at school on a Wednesday and then sprung her free for the rest of the week! We packed up an ungodly amount of luggage and made our way out of town.
In theory, we flew during Emerson's afternoon nap time. Surely I could nurse her to sleep on take-off and she'd stay put in a precious slumber until we landed two hours later. Right?
Wrong. Girlfriend wanted to play and entertain everyone around her. So while she was good, it wasn't like the flights of past where I got to sit back, read decorating magazines, sip my coffee and chill. Basically I entertained and wrestled an alligator in my lap for the duration. But we made it!
The first night was a little rough as all 5 of us were in one hotel room and Reese was battling a hacking cough that kept her (and I) up most of the night. Not to mention Emerson's amazing ability to wake at 5am and be ready to go. She and I met Grandpa in the lobby Starbucks for early morning coffee.
Hotel rooms are always fun to kids....Reese was probably pissing off the hotel operator as she was playing with the 'land line' - (foreign concept in our house).
Thanks to Grandpa, we got free access to Sea World for the day. While he had a little work to do, Grandma hung with us and, while cold, the girls pretty much had the park to themselves for the first part of the day.
They were hooked up with a special one-on-one with the penguins....Ryan was totally into it, Reese kept telling me "mom, let's get going, it's FREEZING in here".
The next day the cold weather departed, the sun came out and we surprised the girls with our Disney plans.
Of course Ryan was concerned with having a notebook for autographs. When we pulled up to park, we got a little more excitement from the ladies...
Waiting for the tram... to take us to the ferry....to take us to Disney... Good lord.
Ferry
Emerson and Reese consulting the park map.
We had fun. Disney is crazy. Slightly maddening that you spend that kind of cash to only be able to do a couple of rides in a day. In all honesty, we only had half a day to spend seeing as we still had to drive 3.5 hours down to Naples later in the day. But even if we had had the entire day to spend, our girls would have tired out before the end of the day.....so our 9am - 2pm visit ended up being perfect. That said, I think we did a total of 3 rides and 1 princess meet and greet. For realz?? That's it. Oh well, we can mark this off the list for now. I'd love to come back when Emerson is at least 4 or 5 and we can cover a lot more ground.
Reese was hilarious because any child she saw walking around in costume got her super excited..."oh look mom, it's Aerial!!!! She's beautiful" --- sure, Reese, it's some 3 year old from Jersey but whatev.
And by the time 2pm rolled around, these girls were done. Put a fork in me. Done.
Off to Naples to our friends' condo. And when I say 'condo' I should really say 'some ridiculously beautiful, ginormous, lifestyles of the rich and famous, condo'. I felt like Suri Cruise must feel anytime she travels.
Emerson doing the sign gesture for 'more' - as in 'I will only travel first class from now on'
The weather was perfect! The girls were great! Grant was well behaved too:)
We quickly learned that Emerson is the biggest water baby of the three! The girl couldn't get enough of the beach or pool. Grandma and Grandpa were just up the street at the Ritz so we hopped over there one afternoon.
Our friends daughter Giselle and Ryan became quick besties. These two were so adorable together and couldn't have had more fun if they tried. Giselle has two brothers so she and her mom flew down to enjoy all the estrogen flying around.
Of course...
Giselle turned Ryan on to special 'smoothies' - virgin daiquiris. I found pics of these on my phone afterwards and I know I didn't take them....I think Ryan wants to recreate at home.
I mean, amazing. Such a fun trip. I was initially hesitant with 3 young kids and feeling that I would need a 'vacation' from the vacation afterwards but props to the girls for being so great and for Emerson being awesome (albeit an early riser)...I'd do it again in a heartbeat....any offers?
Oh yeah, one night my folks had Reese over for a slumber party at the Ritz. She told my parents "this is the best sleepover ever, thank you, thank you!" --- I should say, I think hotel sleepovers when I was a kid consisted of the Best Western and an indoor pool.
Crazy sunset views from the condo....my folks came over to enjoy one evening.
And, back to reality.....flying home. Sad face.
Thankfully, we all flew back together so having two extra sets of hands help contain the wild beast.
Oh, and precious side story....as we were about 38,000 feet in the air, Ryan was looking out the window and turned to Grant and said "when people die they go up above the clouds to heaven.....I don't see any people out there, where are they?"
I know I have a zillion more photos but perhaps we'll add those on a random follow-up post that I'm sure you're all dying to see after I've subjected you to about 40 pics thus far:)
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