Summer Days

Daddy's Little Helpers

Derek decided to surprise me while I was out of town and tile the laundry room. As construction jobs go things weren't completed as quickly as thought......I came home to a bit of a mess. It was still a great surprise! The kids loved being able to help Dad out and get their hands dirty. We are still not sure if all the "help" made things go more quickly......or slow it down??? Now everytime I go into my laundry room I think of all of them!!

First Day of Swim Class

Rayah and Tiaunna took their first swim lessons this past June and loved every minute of it. I took this picture their first day and as you can tell they were so excited!! Every day for a month (the classes ran 2 weeks), Rayah would wake up and ask me ..."Do I have swim class today?"

Even Roman was excited, although he didn't know why. Poor guy, he had to sit on the side of the pool everyday and wasn't allowed to get in. It was 30 minutes of torture every class!! Roman didn't like it either. ;)

P.C. Break

This past May we spent a week in Park City at our time share. We had a lot of fun having sleepovers with our friends and cousins, face painting, swimming and playing in the mountains!!

Rayah had so much fun swimming. When we weren't at the pool she would hang out in all her gear just waiting to go to the pool.

Look who I found hiding in the closet!

You Got a Bugger in Your Nose

This morning while making breakfast, Tiauna says to me with a very concerned look on her face, "Rayah has a shoe in her nose." Figuring that this was just another of the many silly things that are not true that they tell me all day, I dismissively told Rayah to take the shoe out of her nose. Tiauna was persistent and her worried face and Rayah's calm insistence started to worry me. I imagined a tiny little doll shoe lodged in her nose and started questioning them more seriously as to the truth.

That's when Derek says, "It's not a shoe. It's a tissue up her nose, she told me the same thing last night while I was making dinner." Realizing that these two words do sound very close, and in the mumbled English that a 4 year old speaks I sillilly overreacted!! I started laughing to a still concerned Tiaunna that I thought she had told me Rayah stuck a doll shoe up her nose!! She calmly says, "I did!! She has a doll shoe in her nose!!"

Derek had Rayah come over to him so that he could look up her nose and sure enough there was a tiny pink doll shoe!!!! Not only did she really have it up there, but she had slept with it there all night!!! Her only response, a put out ....."I could still breath!!" As if to tell us that she thought we were making a big deal about nothing!! She ended up shooting it out like a snot rocket and going right back to playing.

Zoo Day

"Spring is here!" is what Rayah likes to tell me each morning, quickly followed up with a request to go outside and play. I am so happy the weather is starting to warm up and I can get the kids out of the house! I have found the outdoors to be the biggest peace making device, sleeping aide, and 3-in-1 reward, privilege and punishment! Once the argueing starts inside, I simply open the door and let them outside and their worries disipate into the open air. Then they argue outside and all I have to say is, "Well , if we can't resolve this we will just have to go inside", applied with the proper dissapointed tone the resolution quickly follows. They run and play hard all day long, then they come in at night to eat dinner, watch a little TV, and then they sleep like babies all night long!!!


Keeping all this in mind I decided to take the kids, and their cousin Tiaunna, to the Zoo for the day! We had a great day and they were really well behaved, and the best part yet....they were so worn out at night they fell asleep at 8:00!!!

Stroller Derby

As times change, so do tactics. The latest weapon the baby stroller, Roman's latest form of attack. First he backs up to the farthest wall, lowers his head as an agry bull would do, he raises his eyes. Commence the grunting, louder and louder, then comes the well known war cry as he takes off!! Aiming to run over anyone who dares cross his path. It is hillarious to watch and the intimidating faces he makes are even better!!