Gone Fishin' - Posted by Mark

Nina and I decided to go out fishing on Sunday before the Skins game. Lyla was down for a nap and I was sensing conditions might be right for Nina to catch some fish. Our local community pond of 7 acres is wonderfully maintained and full of quality bass, bluegill and crappie. So after a slow beginning I was able to pick up on a pattern that yielded about a dozen bass in a little more than an hour. That seems to be the attention span of one 4 yr. old that I was with. I would cast my rattletrap as far as possible and start reeling. Once hooked I would immediately give Nina the pole and she would fight the fish all the way to the bank, pose for a photo, then toss it back into the water to catch another day. She is really getting the hang of it and seems to enjoy it. Watching her reminds me of fishing with Dad way back in the day. Our next adventure will be camping so stay tuned.

No Editing Required

The view of the moon from my back deck last night - no editing required.

This is the moon - just as it is...

One of my favorite movies is Bridget Jones's Diary. I laugh every time even though I've probably seen it 20 times. Mark and I's first dance song at our wedding was the song at the end of the movie - Van Morrison's Someone Like You. One of the sweet and sentimental moments of the movie is when the very aloof Mark Darcy tells his polar opposite, Bridget, that he likes her very much. She goes on to sarcastically say, "Sure, apart from the drinking, the smoking, the vulgur mother, etc..." and he says, "No. I like you very much. Just as you are."

I think it's really hard to to always look at the people in your life "just as they are" without occasionally wanting to putting them on the edit screen. Family members, spouses, children, friends, etc...there are times I think we all wish we could just edit them a bit to make it easier on ourselves to love them. After all, God is the only one capable of loving us just as we are all the time. He doesn't turn a blind eye to our bad behavior, but He loves us the same despite of it. Since He was the one that hung that beautiful display in the sky last night, maybe it was a little reminder to us that it's ok to disable our edit application too.

Giddey Up

Nina and Lyla had a blast this morning playing horse and rider. Of course, Lyla was the horse. No big surprise there. Anyway, our little ingenious rider came up with a way to tie one lace around her sister, and tie the other two laces into her reins for each hand. They were having so much fun. Nina was shouting, "Giddy up" and Lyla was shouting, "Nay" and they ran all over the house.

I can't believe fall is starting tomorrow. Last night was cool, and Mark and the girls had gone to the park to collect fire wood, so we enjoyed a nice little fire on the deck. Speaking of enjoying things, this girl does love her ice cream!

This Made Me Laugh

This morning Nina really made me laugh. I was half paying attention to what she was doing, but I was mostly trying to come up with meals for the week and thinking that it shouldn't be that hard to just come up with five meals. Anyway, I noticed that she has scissors, paper, some tape, and crayons, but I didn't know what she was doing until she asked me how to spell, "Love Jesus, Eat Vegetables," and I started to laugh. This sounds like a pretty good philosophy on life... I'm glad she loves Jesus, but I'd be happy too if she would take her own advice and eat vegetables!

Friday Fun

Today is a gorgeous day here, plus it's Friday, so we needed to get out for a little fun. We went to lunch at Chick Fil-A then headed over to a playground to burn off some energy. Since I brought my camera with me, they were trying to play a little game of hiding from me as much as possible, and I'd try to snap their picture whenever I saw them peek out. It was fun for all of us and definitely produced a lot of squealing and screaming!

First Day of Preschool

This afternoon, we took Nina to her first day of preschool. Mark had the day off of work, so we joined the many others mothers and fathers that came to see their little ones off to their first day of preschool. Nina is attending the afternoon session, so school started at 12:45. She was very excited to go and didn't seem the least bit nervous. She is in the Dino classroom, and she already knew two other little girls in her class and told us today that she made friends with another little girl also.

We had to say goodbye to her outside her class, and she sat right down and signed into the attendance book. We got a quick second look over her shoulder, and she blew us a kiss, then she was off to do her thing.

Lyla, on the other hand, didn't fare so well. As soon as we dropped Nina off in her classroom and turned to leave, Lyla started sobbing. She was crying and telling us that she missed Nina. She cried about it most of the way home, but since she takes a nap during Nina's school time, she really didn't end up missing that much time with her at all.

After picking Nina up at 3:30, I was full of questions and wanted to hear all about her first day. Suprisingly for Nina, she didn't have a whole lot to say about it at first. She said that they had fun, she told me what they had for snack (probably the biggest part of a preschooler's day), and that she made a new friend. Other than that, there wasn't a whole lot of information shared. Much later in the day while we were finishing up dinner, she started talking more about it, so we just may end up getting information about her day in istallments as she's ready to chat about it.

She did get sent home with the Show and Tell bag, so we had to pick a favorite toy this evening for her to take in with her that she'll share three clues with to the class to see if they can guess what the toy is. Right now, she's planning on taking her Zoe puppet, but she's still a little worried that her Froggie might be sad to not go to school too, so we'll have to see what the final decision is come morning. All in all, I think she had a fun day, and she said she's looking forward to going back tomorrow.

It's a Big Week

This is a big week for Nina. She had her preschool orientation on Thursday and got to see her classroom and meet her teacher. She had three friends over yesterday to play which was a blast for her. She had her first soccer practice today, and school starts on Monday. Here are a few pictures from her practice. They start playing games in three weeks, but she was excited to go to practice today and very excited to get her uniform!

Goofy Girl

The other day, Lyla really got into wearing this headband around. She looked like something out of the Let's Get Physical music video. At night, Mark went into check on her before we went to bed and came out laughing and telling me that I had to go in and see Lyla...

...here she was, sleeping soundly, with her headband on. When she went to bed, she didn't even have it, so she must have found it, put it on, and fallen asleep. Too funny.

Weekend Visitors

Our Labor Day weekend was a good weekend for visitors. The Williams family were in town over the weekend, so the whole family spent the day at our house on Sunday, and the Williams family stayed the night and left today. With a baby due in just over three months, this will probably be their last visit to Northern Virginia for awhile, so we enjoyed having them here. Nina and Lyla were very happy to see their cousins again and picked up right where they left off from last weekend.
All four girls are scooter riders, so they spent a lot of the afternoon riding up and down our sidewalks.

Nina and Emme rode in princess dresses with their scooters connected by a string of balloons tied together.

We all enjoyed sitting out and enjoying the beautiful day, chatting, and eating lots of good food.

After a good afternoon, we said goodbye to Bo who had a lot of friends in town visiting for the big VT/Boise St. game tonight...

...and Mark and Garland got to some serious work on their golf clubs.

We were sad to see Shen, G, and the girls head out this morning. We should have had them stay longer because after they left, our Labor Day went downhill for a bit. We had the idea of going to Harpers Ferry, so we got lunches packed, everyone in the car, and we headed off to spend the rest of the afternoon there. Well, once we got there, we couldn't get to the historic town without taking the shuttle bus, but they wouldn't allow our picnic bag on the shuttle bus, so we tried to find another spot to picnic and hike around. We ended up climbing down a super steep and rocky path to get to the river where there was no place to sit or walk alongside the river, so we climbed rocks (not easy with all our stuff and two little kids) in the river to try to get to a large, flat rock to sit on and eat. When trying to do that, I fell in the water and got soaked up to my waist, then once we finally got to the rock, we broke out our lunch and were immediately ambushed by tons of bees. Not good. So, it was all the way back to the car - across the rocks and up the steep, rocky slope - just to drive home and eat our lunch in the car. Since Mark had promised the girls ice cream in Harpers Ferry, once we got home, he dropped the wet and soggy wife off at home and took the girls out for ice cream at the local Maggie Moos. That seemed to at least lessen the pain of our failed trip to Harpers Ferry.

Sister Update

It's so hard for me to believe that the summer is almost over. I love the summer no matter if it's 90+ degrees every day or just mildly hot. I just love the long, sunny days, the chance to be outside, and mostly I love the thought that winter is a long way away. We've had a good summer, so I'll be sad to see it go. Mark and I felt like we saw the girls growing up a ton this summer. He'd come back from a four day trip and comment that they seemed like they changed more even in the few days he was gone. They've maintained a good relationship (for the most part), but now that Lyla can actually tell on Nina for the things she does, it's probably a much more healthy relationship. :) They both have enjoyed going to the pool, playing outside with their new friends on the street, staying up later than normal, and riding scooters around the neighborhood.

Here they are after making a "castle" in our dining room. The only thing they got help with was draping the white sheet over the chairs. Everything else they came up with. They played in there a long time actually in some imaginary world that Nina created for them.

Nina has had quite the active summer. You saw the vidoes a couple months ago just after she decided to put her face in the water at the pool, now she is a swimming fishie. She can swim almost half a length of the pool before getting tired. She swims, takes breaths, and keeps swimming until she reaches me, then she wants to turn around and swim back. She wants to do that over and over. She's made huge progress this summer at the pool. She's also zipping all over the neighborhood on her scooter. She used to ride a three-wheeled scooter, and we got her a two-wheeled one for her birthday, but it took her seeing it in the garage for about a month before she gave over to riding it. It required a lot more balance, but now she's racing around the sidewalks like a pro. She still likes having her "school time" during the day while Lyla naps, and is quite the good little student. She will start preschool this year (going three days a week) and will actually play on a little soccer team in the fall. She had been asking us about playing on a team, and this time I actually didn't miss registration. I thought I had plenty of time to look into it, clicked on the site, and saw that day was the last day of open registration - so much for thinking I was ahead of the game! She still asks questions about EVERYTHING. It can really get exhausting, and just ask my mom about trying to watch a movie with her (which she experienced in the car on the way to NC). The questions never stop. However, she's growing up so fast and is a great daughter and a good big sister. While not a baby and not completely a big girl yet, Lyla is in the land of little girl. As a baby and early toddler, she used to be so shy around others, but now she's warming up to people a bit faster. Around those she sees a lot (our friends on the street, my family, etc), she feels pretty good about playing without Mark and I in view. But if others are in the mix who she doesn't know every well, she's still much more likely to want to stay real close to where either Mark or I are at. She's also more reserved when other kids are over our house to play. However, once everyone leaves or once she's back in her comfort zone, she's running, screaming, shouting, and being a nut. She loves to be silly, and she loves to copy everything Nina does. She mimics what Nina says, her manerisms, her dance moves, etc. She also still loves to snuggle occasionally. Sometimes she'll just want you to hold her while she puts her head on your shoulder. She loves to ride Nina's old 3-wheeled scooter with the other kids on the street, and she likes climbing, swinging, and hanging at the playground. Contrary to her sister, she's pretty tough when she has a crash, scrapes her knees/ elbows, or gets any other sort of boo boo. It might be an adjustment for her this fall to see Nina get to participate in things she's not old enough to do yet (soccer & preschool), but she'll be right there before we know it!