Happy Birthday, Lyla!

Well, our sweet Ly turned six today.  Where has the time gone?  I told her today that is doesn’t seem like six years ago when we brought her home from the hospital, and here we are celebrating her sixth birthday.  She was so excited this whole week leading up to today.  She really couldn’t wait for her birthday.  Yesterday in school, they celebrated her birthday, and she was so excited when she got home from school that she literally jumped in Nina’s arms. 

She was up bright and early this morning, and as is tradition in the Simpson house, we celebrated with donuts for breakfast, and she got to open a couple presents from Mark and I.  She was most excited to get this fast, new, blue scooter that she had been wanting. 

To celebrate her birthday, we let her invite some friends to a kite flying birthday picnic.  Mother Nature definitely didn’t do us any favors when she delivered like 8” of snow at the beginning of the week.  I was pretty worried about our party plans as the invitations had already been sent out for the party to be held at a local park.  I looked this week for alternative locations that wouldn’t be snow covered, but nothing seemed to work out on late notice.

Amazingly, the snow DID melt from the field where the party was to be held at, but it was still very muddy.  I warned parents ahead of time to wear old pants and shoes and bring a change of clothes for the way home, and did they ever need it!

They flew kites, blew bubbles, chased, ate lunch, had cake, and ran and flew kites some more.  I think, young and old, after the winter we’ve had, we were all just happy to be out in the warm sun. 

 

                      

 

 

I had them all stand together so I could take a picture of how dirty they were, but the picture doesn’t even do it justice.  By the end of the party, they were filthy, but they all had a lot of fun!

What a great day to be six!! 

  

We love our crazy, goofy, funny, sweet Lyla!  Happy 6th birthday!!!!

…and We Thought We Were Out of Diapers

This is why I love my family.  This is our series of text exchanges from yesterday evening. 

The back story is that Cayenne was supposed to get spayed today.  It’s just our luck that she went into heat last week, which we’ve consequently realized come with some fabulous side effects (please note the sarcasm dripping from that statement).  Anyway, glad I can always count on the family for some good laughs.

   

   

   

Best Sled Day!!!

Today was definitely the best sled day of the year!  After the big snow yesterday, the sun came out today, and it was 56 degrees when we headed out to go sledding.  It was the perfect time to sled.  We picked a big hill in the neighborhood, brought our sleds and had a blast!  I had fun watching and taking pictures, and the girls had fun going up and down the hill over and over again.  I think I know two little girls who will sleep well tonight!

 

Here is Lyla showing how to get down the big hill “penguin style” – what a nut!

Our snow style selfie!  What an awesome day to sled!

Snow…Again!

It’s baaaack!  Snow again.  This time is was get-out-of-school worthy snow for sure.  From our best guess, it looks like we got between 16-18” from when it started last night, so there was quite a bit to play in this morning.  Here are some shots of the kids and the dog in the snow.  Not much explanation needed – lots of white, lots of snow, and they played until they were soaked.

   

During a break from the outside, they helped make some cookies for Valentine’s Day. 

Then Nina finally pulled off a back walkover that she’s been working towards for a couple weeks.  She was very excited!

After a few hours when the rain stopped and turned back into snow, they went back out before dinner.  Mark helped them make a little sledding hill in the back yard, and that was the last bit of snow fun they needed for the day.  School is out again tomorrow, so I’m sure we’ll have a fun Snowentines Day at home!

New Look

Good things happen when your mom, who is NOT a trained stylist, stops cutting your hair in favor of someone who IS.

Catching Up

Unfortunately, all the pictures in this post (with the exception of the one below) are with my camera phone.  I like it for the convenience, but it takes pretty horrible pictures, so that’s the trade off.

Lyla is continuing to enjoy Kindergarten.  Even though she looks so grown up in this picture, she’s still a big goof ball at heart.  It’s hard to believe that she’ll be six in just about a month! 

Nina has started a tumbling class, and she is loving it!  In her own words, she says, “It’s totally my thing,” so we’re happy to see her doing well and having so much fun.  She loves to dance and over the Christmas break I took her to see a jazzed up version of the Nutcracker on our date night.  She was so impressed by some of the acrobatic dancing the girls were doing, so these classes she’s taking are teaching her some tumbling/acrobatic moves that she can incorporate into dance, so she has really enjoyed taking part in that the past month.

Cayenne turned seven months old this past week.  Although this has been a pretty lousy winter for having a puppy, we’re all hanging in there, and she’s growing up a lot.  She’s perfected exercise while running next to a bike, so every day (rain, shine, snow, sleet, whatever) she gets her exercise.  There’s a 5.23 mile loop that we take nearly every day that she jogs in about 35 minutes, so we keep that at the top of the priority list each day.  She loves it, and it’s the exercise outlet she needs to be relaxed for the rest of the day.

 

We normally do our monthly date nights with each parent taking one girl out, but occasionally we combine and do a “family date night” and we got to enjoy one of those last weekend on a fairly nice Saturday night.  It’s normally been so cold that being outside isn’t very enjoyable, but we had a fairly nice day so we decided to take advantage of it and get out together for burgers, cookies, and hanging out at Reston Town Center.

Even though it’s been a frigid winter, Lyla has been asking regularly go to indoor swimming.  The gym that I teach at has an indoor pool that I can take the kids to, so last week, with snow on the ground, we went swimming.  Well, I should say, they went swimming.  Maybe I’m getting old, but the indoor pool still feels a bit cold to me, so I stayed dry and let these two swim some energy out.

We also enjoy having Uncle Bo over whenever his schedule allows for it, and Cayenne loves Bo.  Every time he comes over, she gives him the full licking treatment.  Either she’s in love or she likes his soap because she can’t get enough of the puppy kisses.  The girls wanted to verse Uncle Bo in Mario Cart, but he did have a bit of a disadvantage with Cayenne not wanting to leave him alone. 

 

That’s all from the Simpsons for now.