Let it begin!

Summer is officially here.
Now that school is out...I have enjoyed just over a week of having both girls home everyday and I am already starting to count the days until "back to school". (well, not really, but you get what I mean).

We've been enjoying the weather before it becomes intolerable. Now is the time to enjoy the parks or any outdoor activity because in July, once it hits 9am, the slides and about everything on the playground becomes so hot that one just cannot slide down, sit on or climb, without having the hot plastic sear you.
No, once July hits, we all melt away by 10am.

...so we have found a local playground that is different and even has some large awnings overtop of it, so we can catch a bit of shade.
The girls call it the "Rope Park" because they have this Eiffel looking rope tower for the kids to climb.



Once again, I find it very interesting to watch the girls play.
Bryn is very active...she climbs, runs, sings and just does not stop. She will actively look for the highest, most dangerous piece of equipment to climb and proceed to give me a heart attack as I watch her praying she doesn't plummit to her death or what looks like a big enough fall to break a bone.





Ava on the otherhand, sorta wanders.
She observes... alot and cautiously climbs some things. It almost looks like playing on the climbers is a chore for her and she'd rather be in the air conditioned house reading her trashy magazines and eating bon-bons...oh wait, that's me.

Behold- Ava's playface. (which also happens to be the same one as her grumpy face and her happy face).




Either way, it makes them hot and tired and we all know a good kid is a tired kid!

She's all Edumacated!

Well...at least she's off to a great start!
Bryn graduated from pre-school yesterday. I dropped her off as a preschooler and picked her up as a soon-to-be kindergartener....and I swear the kid grew 2 inches in the one hour we were there.
The fun thing was that they held a real ceremony for the kids (or their parents). They had a processional and little caps and gowns too! Yeah, I know, it's just preschool, but it was a fun way to mark the occasion, especially since Bryn will be attending a new school in the fall.

Of course, due to my condition I was more than my usual hormonal mess. As soon as I saw Bryn in her little cap and gown, I was all teary. It's almost like we fast forwarded 12 years and I was watching her graduate from high school. Just more step away from us and one more to a bigger world for her.
Bittersweet.



The ceremony was lovely. The kids even sang "God Bless America"...which was a nice touch.
Bryn and her friends enjoyed every minute of it. (and we enjoyed watching her)



Words can not express how proud of my little Brynnie I am.


And Ava too. (although I can not be sure whether she was proud of Bryn or if she was just going in for the diploma).

Bryn's joke

Okay, if I were doing this blogging as a job, I would've been fired awhile ago. Yep, fired without any leave for sure.
I just realized its been weeks since I have added anything! I will post pictures soon, we've just been so darned busy lately.

But for today I will share Bryn's favorite joke with the internets.

"What do you call a snail on a boat?"
- A snailor!

(bwahaha! I thought it was pretty cute and she even managed to keep the punchline straight which is something I can never do).

Alligator Farm - Take 2

We decided to go and enjoy the Alligator farm one more time until the horrible humid and hot days come our way. It's very similar to the feeling I would get up north when I knew cold weather was upon us and I needed to get the girls outside as much as possible to enjoy the weather before we were cooped up inside from blizzards and snow and all things freezing.
Yeah, its kinda like that except we know the hot days are coming. The days of any hope of wearing your hair in anything but uptight in a ponytail are almost gone.
(yeah, thanks humidity)

Anyway, on this particularily beautiful day we went to visit our favorites at the Gator Farm...to me that's the bird sanctuary.
I am still in total awe of the beautiful warm weather birds. They are big, beautiful and so graceful. I could watch them all day.
So we made our way through the trees dotted with hundreds of big white birds.





...and I think this stork was eyeing up the girlies to eat them for lunch.


Of course we saw all the usual suspects- the cranes,


The herons,


...and some not so usual suspects.
I like to call these guys the platypus birds.


I also had a strange ncounter with a beast of a bird. It was huge! I mean ostrich big! But he had the most beautiful colors.
...and I think he was trying to perform some jedi mind tricks through his fence.


And although we see storks, cranes, herons and egrets all the time in the ponds here by our house, I was totally amazed to catch a glimpse of some baby egrets! Awwww!


...and that was when my camera battery dieed.
Crap.
Of course it was on the one day the toothless crocodile was smiling wide, the kimodo dragon came right up to say hi and Maximo, the biggest alliagator ever was in the water observation tank which (never happens).
Yeah.
I missed it all.
So you'll have to take my word for it whenI say that we had all sorts of fun!

Snakeskin

Literally. Snakeskin.
The girls found it mighty cool that they found this incredibly long and totally in tact snake skin...it was taller than 44" Bryn!



But all that means to me is that there is an even bigger snake slithering around waaaaay to close to our yard. Ewwww!


I know my blogs have been lagging a bit, so I will be updating soon. It seems every ounce of energy I even think about has been sucked up by the growing baby bump...
But we are in fact still alive and well.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

Hopping Down the Bunny trail!



Ava obviously was not "down" with her sister's Easter basket tomfoolery...


I found it very interesting to watch the girls look for eggs this year, as their distinct personalities shone through in their search methods.

Bryn ran from egg to egg...she collected as many possible!




Ava, on the other hand, walked around almost methodically. She would open each egg on the spot to decide whether it was worthy of putting into her basket.


After the girls decided they found all the eggs (and ate quite a bit of sugary goodness), we played outside with some new spring toys.
Once again, good ol Daddy was there to play.

I even managed to capture him playing with the purdy ribbon streamers. All I can say is it takes a strong man to be comfortable to play with pretty ribbons.




Yes, I lerve that man.



A beautiful fun-fulled day.
Let the sugar comas begin...

cauch

This is what Avie calls "chalk"....she says "cauch"...makes me smile everytime. I dunno, it sounds like a taboo word or something to me.

Spring is well underway down here, so chalk, skipping ropes and bubbles are in full bloom.
The girls really love to color on the driveway with Tom. This is good because Tom is good at drawing and they always come up with some interesting pictures...although I really do have to monitor him to keep his pictures G-rated.
Me, on the other hand, can barely draw a stick figure. It's so bad that Ava has infact denied my attempts at drawing lions and elephants. She even asked for Bryn's help as Bryn draws better than I.

Here they are drawring with their Dad. (you tell me who's having more fun).




I am sure there will be about a billion more chalk pictures as it seems to be something we do on a regular basis.