Evie is 2 years, 4 months and 1 week old; Eric is 4 years old!

Photos taken this week: 24

Fav quote of the week, “Evie, we don’t wash the walls with pillows, please go get your sponge.”

I’ve been trying to teach Eric to read for some time now, but I haven’t been pushing to hard because I’m concerned about his speech issues creating problems for him and I don’t want to discourage him. Yesterday he arranged some of the magnetic letters on the refrigerator and asked me what they said. I told him to sound them out (I reminded him how to do that) and we sounded out the E, the Y, and the O, and then said them all together as a ‘word.’ He arranged some other letters and we sounded those out as well. Then I realized he was putting all the red letters together and all the blue letters together and all the green letters together (I thought this was pretty clever). Then he ran off to play. Today I heard him tell Evie, “You have to sound it out Evie, like this ‘k, k, k!’” I am so excited to hear him say this! All along I have been thinking he isn’t listening to what I’ve been saying regarding letters coming together to form words, and that it’s almost time for him to learn to read, but he HAS been paying attention, and I am so glad the groundwork I have been laying this whole time is finally starting to amount to something!

Scott and I are talking about his trail run and Eric interrupts to say, “Daddy, you are making me feel angry.” And Scott says, “I am?” and Eric says, “Yes, you talk to much, you go blah blah blah blah!” Scott and I were both laughing so hard neither of us could respond!!!


Eric and I were practicing weaving/stitching/sewing (my dermatologist said he used to sew with his grandmother all the time when he was little, now he drives a porche to work everyday, lol). I got this styrofoam bowl and punched holes in it, then we wove the yarn thru each hole, then we decorated the bowl and turned it into a funny hat! Eric wasn't super enthused, maybe he can choose a different doctorate program besides dermatology, lol!


Two heads are better than one at dino puzzles!


How cute and random is this? lol! brother's hat (on backwards) while carrying a tree and hugging the cat on my bed. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried, lol!


The water table is in the house because it is so hot outside. The low side is full of warm bubbles, the high side is full of ice cubes and green food coloring. In about an hour, the kitchen floor will be cleaner than it ever has been, lol!


This is a brachiosaurus created from mega-blocks, is this boy clever or what?

Evie is 2 years, 3 months and 5 weeks old; Eric is 4 years old!

Photos taken this week: 22


Water table time is FUN!


Olives are just the right size for baby fingers!


6 hours of on-and-off searching for Evie's sippy cup... I need to get some sort of homing beacon on that thing! (thankfully I have an exact replica replacement just in case of emergencies like this!) finally found the sippy cup sitting on a toy plate inside the toy kitchen's refrigerator -- makes perfect sense, I don't know why I didn't look there in the first place, lol!


Eric is in love with the digital camera we got him for his birthday, this is one of the pix he has taken.


Eric says, "I'm Super Eric!" then he runs down the hall toward Evie yelling, "Super Eric to the rescue!" And when he gets to Evie he says, "What seems to be the trouble?"  I'm laughing so hard i'm crying! I went and got him his batman cap and the mask I made him for Halloween that he refused to wear, he couldn't wait to put them on!


I bought this as a back-up Halloween costume last year, but it makes a great costume for the dress-up bin!


One more spinosaurus (which was a custom request and not in the coloring book, so I had to find one line and print it out and glue it into the book) and then there was no more coloring for a while...  :(


Sliding together is twice the fun!


Wheeeeeeeeeeee!

Evie is 2 years, 3 months and 4 weeks old; Eric is 4 years old!

Photos taken this week: 42

Fav quote of the week, “Don’t put pretzels up into your dinosaurs (mechanical) feet again please.”


Ride 'em, cowboy! I'm not sure if this was a horse or a train, lol!


Bathtime! Who can fill all their cups up the fastest?


I decided it was beautiful outside and time for a family photo, hopefully one we could use on our Christmas card this year. I took a few practice shots to get the angle and framing right.


Then I had to get the kids snacks because they refused to sit still, however, this also made the dog come over and want to get in the pic.


As soon as the snacks were gone, everyone tried to get up and leave, this shot reminded me of an album cover, so I gave it an appropriate band name and cropped it to jewel case size, lol!


At some point, the flash shut off and all the pix were over-exposed in the bright sunlight. I turned this one sepia and played with the contrast and levels to try to help it out a bit, but nothing helped.


This was the only decent picture I could get before no one could stand to have their picture taken any more, lol!


Evie isn't even looking, so I photo-shopped some bubbles in to make it look like she is looking at bubbles, lol!


Happy Father's Day! The art says, "You're the best Dad, hands down!" Eric made this at school. We got Dada some whiskey stones (blocks you freeze and use as ice in your drinks so the drinks aren't watered down by melting ice). Evie thinks they make great mini building blocks, lol!


My new fav pic of Evie.


When Eric was about 2.5 he went thru a very long phase where he wanted to color all the time. Now he is so over coloring that I barely get any artwork from school. Today, for some reason, he felt the bug and colored 6 dinosaur pictures all in one sitting! I hung them up, they are awesome! Great work little buddy!


This was so cute! Eric was giggling and Mook was having a blast, they played all over the house from the kitchen into our bedroom, lol!

Evie is 2 years, 3 months and 3 weeks old; Eric is 4 years old!

Photos taken this week: 57

Eric is singing, "Old MacDonald had a farm, and Bingo was his name-oooo" then he hums for a while, lol!


Just when you think all your material possessions have been destroyed by your monsters angels, they rip down the curtains and stick them to large neon orange/yellow/blue velcro toys, breaking the rods and ripping out drywall in the process. I remember, I cried when they broke the picture frame I got on our honeymoon in France, and I remember Scott yelled when they ripped the arm off the antique record player and broke its housing; but I don’t get upset anymore, I just clean up and get on with my day. At some point you realize you love them more than the material possessions, and if they were broken, that would be the real reason to be upset.


With over 172 dinos in the house, its nice to see Evie playing with her pink pony, lol. I know, I know, 172 doesn’t seem like I counted ALL of them (and it honestly feels more like 1720, lol!), but I only counted the action figures, not the pillow cases, underwear, switch light covers, shirts, pants, murals, paintings, drawings, posters, masks, cookie cutters, stickers, movies, books, cards, cavemen, dino trees, or etc (because if i did, i'd be counting for a week straight). And I'm sure I missed a few dinos who are currently under the bed, behind the sofa, in the car, wedged in the recliner, or hiding in other various places, lol!


This cracked me up!


So popular at the park!


Tire swings are fun! But not if they go around in a circle really fast, I think the boy gets car sick as fast as his Momma.


Evie walks the bouncy bridge!


Eric and Dada read comic books together for the first time!!! Dada is in heaven!


She never sleeps on me, I am so excited, lol! I can sniff her hair and pet her back and hug her and love on her and she doesn't even know!!! ♥♥♥


I made Eric those Dino Dan 'dinoculars' and he thought they were great. So then I made some 'muddy' dino footprints and some 'grassy' dino footprints and I started them in Evie's room and made them go all the way to Eric's room inside his closet. I put his big red T-Rex in the closet and closed the door. Both kids has a blast discovering the dino tracks and going on an adventure to discover dinosaurs! Eric really used his imagination and got into it, at one point he was being chased by dinosaurs and then a few minutes later he was chasing them, he had his Dino Dan Field Guide and was pretending to take notes on his discoveries. It was a lot of fun!

Evie is 2 years, 3 months and 2 weeks old; Eric is 4 years old!

Photos taken this week: 29

Eric woke up having a bad dream, this was the first time he was able to really articulate was his bad dream was about: “Mommy wouldn’t give me cake,” he said sadly.  Ah, the trials and tribulations of a 4 year old, lol.

Scott and I both woke up having bad dreams about groceries, how random and weird is that? He dreamt that the grocery clerk broke his beer bottles and sold him melted ice cream with the wrong flavor inside. My dream was that I took 5 bags of groceries to a co-op sharing event and came home with only half a bag full of strange things we would never eat like unripe almonds still in their fleshy husks and small fuzzy carrots. Then I was mad that I only brought canvas bags because there were open items I would have been allowed to have a portion of like vanilla extract but had no way to carry it home!


SO CUTE!!! Too bad its all held up with 1000 clips and none of the back hairs reach into the pigtails, lol!


Off to the park!


We have arrived at the park!


They went down the slide together - so cute!


There they go!


Whatever Eric does...


Evie says she can do better, lol!


Swinging with a friend is fun, lol!


Evie frowns at this 'baby' slide, so...


She goes down the big kid slide all by herself! Just look at that smile!!!


The park wore them out! I love this shirt, lol! I see at least 5 dinos sleeping with Eric, do you?

Evie is 2 years, 3 months and 1 week old; Eric is 4 years old!

Photos taken this week: 246


We also got Eric a bike for his birthday. Scott found the perfect dinosaur bike online, ordered it, and when it arrived, he put it together. What a great dad!!!


Eric LOVES it!!!


I think Evie has discovered how comfy our bed is, lol!


Little Miss Naughty got into my scrapbooking items and dumped out 4 containers of rather expensive embossing powder. I have called the manufacturer to figure out how to get it out of the carpet, I can't use water or heat because that is how you set embossing powder (and once its set, its becomes hardened). I had to contact several different manufacturers because apparently no one has ever spilled this stuff on carpet before (yeah, right). The best response I could get was to vacuum it. Well, I vacuumed it with my $650 Dyson DC28 Animal Air Muscle vacuum cleaner. I let the Dyson's Root Cyclone Air Muscle Technology sit on the spot and just vacuum it for hours. This vacuum cleaner is rated second only to the billion dollar Kirby. The carpet is still red and blue and gold and opalescent, and I don't think it will ever not be.


Eric pretending to sleep in Evie's bed with her blanks! :o


For his birthday, Eric got these little things that look like pills/capsules. Inside each pill was a sponge dinosaur. You put the pill in water and the capsule disintegrates, leaving a dinosaur behind. The problem is, the capsule doesn't ever really disintegrate all the way and it was leaving a sticky plastic residue on all the dinosaurs -- this was unacceptable to Eric. So, I ended up having to pull the capsule apart, carefully extract the distorted looking dino, put it into water to expand it, then get it out of the water, dry it off, and give it to Eric.