Camp Hickory

This week we are having our camp at church.  It's a sports and arts camp mixed with devotionals and songs.  I've really enjoyed helping out this week with the camp!  They opened it to preschoolers this year so Emily and Abigail are getting to attend.  Technically Abigail is too young but since I was volunteering they put her with the 2 year olds.  I was afraid she might feel overwhelmed but her teachers and other staff have been telling me how well she has been doing.  They took the 2 year olds outside yesterday for soccer and they said she paid attention to the coach and when he asked them to put their foot on the ball she did : )  They also had their own worship time once the big kids went to their activities and when the song director was going over the motions to the songs they said Abigail did her best to follow along and did her version of all the motions.  I would have loved to see that!

We started out this weekend getting all the registration packets together.  Here was our kitchen and living room most of Saturday while Joe and I got the packets together:

 Abigail wanted to play in the pile of shirts so I gave her one to wear and she was happy:

Emily and Abigail entertained themselves with the piano and played while we sorted:

Here are some pictures I took today of camp.  I think it's neat how they have the kids separated.  They have them in groups by color so all activities in the worship area and lunch time and bathroom breaks, they are with their color group and team leaders:

But on their name tags they have an Activity 1 and an Activity 2 that they have chosen for the week.  The choices are basketball, soccer, cheerleading, arts and crafts, painting, or mixed media.  So if they pick basketball for activity 1 and painting for activity 2 then those are the two activities they do all week.  So when it's time to break for an activity, those of us helping in the particular areas get all the kids for our activity.  I'm working in arts and crafts:

After activity 1 session we break for snack and have a small devotional time with our kids.  We have 3 group leaders in arts and crafts so we each got 9 kids and sat down to eat snack and talk with each other and share on the topic of the day and pray together:

Then it's back to the worship center for some more singing and then we get the group of kids that chose Arts and Crafts for their 2nd activity.  The devo time and time in the worship center gives the activity leaders time to clean up and get ready for session 2:

I've been really impressed with one of our teens, Matt, who is in charge of all the activities in the worship center.  He has done SUCH a great job with the kids!  He shaved his head for this week : )

 

After session 2 we take them back to the worship center and they have a Bible lesson time and then head to lunch.  We spend this time cleaning up our two arts and crafts rooms and then head to lunch.  All volunteers have lunch prepared for them!!!!  This has been an extra special treat.  After lunch everyone heads back to the worship center for some group activities and free time and announcements and then all groups head to the hallways for carpool time.

I am really having a great time!!!!  And Emily and Abigail are enjoying the preschool version of it.  Their version of camp is more like a day at preschool with art time and outside time.  Emily told me that yesterday she played soccer and today she played basketball with the other 4 year olds.  Emily will be old enough next year to participate with the "big kids".

Happy 4th!!!

We had an enjoyable 4th of July!  On Sunday the girls wore some sun dresses that were made several years ago when Emily was a baby.  Michelle and DeeDee made matching outfits for the 4 grandchildren at the time:

So on Sunday, Emily wore Sarah's dress and Abigail wore Emily's dress.  My how time flies!!!

 When we got to church, Jason got up to lead singing and we noticed that Joe and Jason were wearing the exact same shirts : )

Sunday afternoon, Joe and Emily went to see the new Cars movie and had a great time together!  And then that evening we had dinner with our neighbors.

This morning we went to the Marietta square to enjoy the festival.  This is our 3rd year to go and we had a great time together as a family.  It was much hotter this year so there weren't as many people there.  This made it nice for Emily:

While Emily was spending her tickets on jump houses, Joe and Abigail went in search of fans and came back with prizes!  Abigail tossed a coin and it landed on a free t-shirt for Joe and a gold necklace for Abigail:

We then ate our traditional festival food of corn dogs!!!  I brought some fruit from home to get some nutrition in for the day : )

 Just chillin . . . .

 

Tonight the Lydas came over for a cookout:

 

 

The girls enjoyed playing in the dirt : )

 

After dinner we made our way downtown to watch the fireworks . . . . but about the time we got all setup, a police car came around blaring on his loud speaker that the fireworks were postponed due to the rain:

Oh well . . . . they have rescheduled them for Tuesday.

 Happy 4th of July everybody!!!!!!

Water Park Part 2

Well we attempted the water park again on Friday with friends again and had a MUCH better time this go around.  We met April and Riley and Shannon and Kyle and Sydnee on Friday morning when the park opened.  Emily was still sensitive to the water in her face, but after lunch April talked us in to going to the wave pool.  I thought Emily would be too scared but that girl got out there and rode the waves and let it splash all around her and had a great time!  She made me nervous with how adventurous she was being.  Then we went around the lazy river several times and had a blast!  Who knew!  So thanks April for suggesting that we try these two areas of the park because I never would have thought Emily would have enjoyed them.  We were there from 10 - 3:30 and Emily didn't want to leave : )

Abigail even got drenched because she walked thru all the water sprinklers in the play area while Emily rode her favorite slide.

 

 

 Emily even attempted the middle slide this time.  She was too scared to go down this one because the rush of water at the beginning was bigger than the other slides:

 

Lightning

Our house got hit by lightning two weeks ago . . . it tripped all the breakers for the upstairs and cost $920 in damaged parts on our A/C.  It also ran thru our cable line so we lost phones, modems, routers, cable boxes, the DVD player, messed up the picture and sound on our TV, and then last but not least my computer died a few days later.  I guess it had a few extra sparks left in it to last a couple of days and then died.  So we've been really busy the last couple of weeks dealing with the insurance company and checking out equipment and buying equipment, etc.  Today is the first day I feel "normal" again when it comes to our stuff and where it all goes.  Luckily my hard drive was still good so I've been spending time copying data over to my new laptop.  So glad it's not all lost!  It's amazing how much I rely on my computer to know what to do each day!

In the midst of all of this I took the girls to go see the Peter Pan play at the local children's theater.  We had gone to a tea party about a month ago to meet the cast and then got to see the play last Wednesday.  The kids in the play did a good job and Emily enjoyed watching the play.  Abigail lasted until the last 20 minutes so she did good too.  She didn't watch a lick of the play but spent her time eating snacks and digging thru my purse and playing with her diaper bag . .. but hey . . . it kept her on our row until the end.  Right about the time I took this picture of the girls waiting for the play to start, one of the pirates yelled that there should be no flash photography during the play . . . so he told me I had to walk the plank : )

Last Wednesday was such a rough day for us.  Emily was SO GRUMPY that day and had several run ins with her friends and with me.  Everything made her cry and she even caused our neighbor to want to go home because Emily was being too bossy with her.  I was pretty stressed out about all of this because I was trying to figure out what was wrong with her, how best to handle it, and how to teach her how to treat her friends, etc.  But this weekend Emily and Abigail went to stay with my parents for the weekend and since Emily has been back she has been a complete angel.  No meltdowns, she doesn't fight me on stuff when she doesn't get her way, etc.  It's a mystery to me.  I guess kids have their bad days just like adults do . . . and maybe the change of scenery for a couple of days did her some good.

Speaking of the kids being at their grandparents, Joe and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary last Friday.  We had a weekend to ourselves and it was SO NICE!  We were busy shopping to replace damaged equipment from the lightning, but still had an enjoyable weekend together:

We saw a movie in between computer shopping on Saturday and went to the water park together on Sunday afternoon.  We had a great time riding all the water rides!  We hadn't been there in over 10 years and at first I was anxious about getting on all the rides because I assumed I was too old to handle it : )  But we saw lots of people in their 50s and 60s having a blast so I overcame my anxiety and had a great time!

When Emily and Abigail came home on Monday they were sweetie pies and made coming home an enjoyable evening together.  That afternoon, Emily told me she was an artist and wanted to paint some flowers.  So I set her up in the kitchen and was very impressed with her drawings:

I also captured her on camera the other night in her life jacket.  She LOVES wearing this jacket when we are at home.  She played in it and had it on during dinner and put it back on after her bath and kept it on until bedtime!!!

We are looking forward to a quiet enjoyable 4th of July!!!!

Water Park

On Monday we went to the local water park for the first time.  I met my friend Shannon there with her kids because I didn't want to try this adventure alone : )  I decided to get the annual pass this year because Joe and I had already decided to go all together later this summer, but for us to go on 1 day was just going to be $9 cheaper than for Emily and me to get an annual pass and then use the free passes out of the coupon book you get for us all to go up to 4 times together this summer.

Long story short, going by myself was a little stressful for me so I think we will enjoy it more when Joe is with us.  Abigail is too small right now for me to feel safe with keeping up with her and helping Emily with her fear of water in her face and getting her to try the fun things at the park.  After much convincing and a lot of tears (and a good show for all those around us), I finally convinced her to try this slide.  Once she went down it once she was hooked!  I think she went down the slide 20 more times.

 

 

There was a big slide in the middle that adults could go down with their kids, so Abigail and I went down that slide several times and she loved it too!

When we first got there I didn't put Abigail's life jacket on her but when we got in the pool she kept trying to jump out of my arms to try swimming like everyone else, so she had to wear her jacket the rest of the day:

 

The kids taking a break from swimming:

When we got to the parking lot and I got the kids changed, Emily informed me that she needed to go to the bathroom "really bad."  I didn't want to hike all the way back up to the park entrance so Emily can now say that she knows how to pee in the grass : )  I pulled the car over to the corner of the parking lot and helped her squat down.  She did a great job and didn't get her shoes wet . . . and security didn't come running at us when we watered their grass for them : )

Running Errands

On Sunday the girls wore these dresses I made for them:

Abigail got upset about something but I took several pictures of her anyway : )

After church we had several errands to run and the girls enjoyed going to all the stores with us.  Abigail thinks she is just as big as her sister so she has to walk everywhere too:

By the time we made it to Target it was time to contain them to a buggy and give them snacks so we could concentrate on what we needed to get:

We had an enjoyable day together.  Speaking of Abigail thinking she is as big as her sister . . . this girl has learned to climb!  Emily NEVER climbed on anything but Abigail can now climb on all the couches, the piano bench, and the kitchen chairs:

She ate her lunch sitting just like this the other day.  What really has me worried is that she also figured out how to climb onto Emily's bed!!!!  I still don't know how she did it and Emily has told me 10 times that she DID NOT HELP HER SISTER UP THERE.  I have to watch this girl like a hawk!

Abigail has also enjoyed reading books to herself and playing with baby dolls lately.  The other night we found her reading her book to herself while she sat in her pool float:

 

 

Emily

I have often seen pictures that parents post of their children falling asleep in the craziest places and thought, "wow my kids have never done that."  I think because I have always been so diligent about nap time in my house since that's when I work.  Well, now Emily can be added to the "crazy napping places" group.  The other day I was busy trying to figure out what computer equipment was working since our house had been hit by lightning and Emily said she would wait for me to get done before going downstairs together.  When I was done I went to look for her and found her here:

She was completely asleep.  I picked her up and moved her to the couch and she stayed there for an hour.  Bless her!  She went to church camp all last week and by Friday afternoon she was tired.

I love this little girl so much and she is getting so big!  She helps me out with Abigail and is so good about letting me get work done while Abigail is napping.  She plays so well and has such a great imagination.  Here are several things she has told me lately that I want to remember:

She was singing the alphabet song and told me that "LMNO" is Spanish for M

She loves to tell me that there are 3 rules for whatever it is we are doing.  Her rules for poop are this: You cannot touch it, you cannot eat it, and you cannot throw it up in the air.


She told me this morning that she wanted a heart shaped purse.  I said, "ok, we will be on the lookout for one."  She said, "Mom, can you draw a heart."  I said yes and she said in a matter of fact voice, "well you can just sew me a heart shaped purse then."  As if she couldn't believe that I had not thought of that.  Smart girl!  So I'm actually going to attempt to make her a heart shaped purse with straps.


I love to watch her try to get Abigail to play a certain game with her or try to read her books.  I love it when I look in the backseat and they are holding hands together.  I love that she gets so excited about going places and meeting people.  She says hi to everyone she sees no matter where we are.


I love how she says:
mecidine for medicine 
mazazine for magazine
ephalent for elephant 
lellow for yellow

I LOVE to hear her pray


I love how she talks with her hands and has such a beautiful smile


I love how much she loves her daddy and I pray that she will always have a great relationship with him.


I could go on and on.  I just want to remember my sweet girl of 4 just how she is and to always cherish her and love the spirit that God gave her.