Cheer up, Tinkerbell!

Yesterday Rachel was dressed up like Tinkerbell, and she was really super grumpy and mopey for some reason (I think it got started when her Tinkerbell costume got splashed with little drips of water, and she claimed that it wouldn't get dry for the rest of its life).

I told her it still looked really good, and in fact, I wanted to take pictures of her in it, so I got out the camera and started clicking. At first she was still very depressed and sullen in the photos, hiding her face and stuff, but then she just couldn't bear it any longer, and started smiling for the camera.

Nothing like a good photo shoot to cheer up this 3 year old!

Say Cheese!

Lizzy learned a new trick - she learned how to say cheese and smile in a very cheesy and goofy way for the camera. Every time I even get the camera out, she starts yelling, "Chee! Chee!" and then squints her eyes up and does this big weird smile.

I think I liked her old smile better. I remember Rachel went through a similar stage, but I think she was a little bit older. It might be a while before we get a normal looking picture of Lizzy now, unless I catch her off guard.

Quality Time with the Snake

Tristan reading The Golly Sisters Go West to our snake. I'm sure she would appreciate it, except I think snakes are deaf, so maybe she just feels good vibrations.

Swimming with Dad

The kids love it when we go swimming with Daniel after he gets home from work.

Lizzy Blooper

I know it sounds mean when I laughed at her, but at least I checked to make sure she was okay.

Undippable Things

The other day my kids were drinking smoothies and Oliver and Tristan were asking permission to dip random things into their smoothies, and on most of them I was saying no, just on the grounds that it was gross.

Then it made me laugh because I remembered as a kid dipping POPCORN, of all undippable things, into both orange juice and carob drink. For those of you who don't know, carob drink is similar to hot chocolate. My dad used to make it for us all the time, and we always had a great time because it seemed like EVERY TIME he made it he would manage to lose control of the blender and it would spray hot carob everywhere. We thought this was so funny. Looking back, I think Dad always got pretty frustrated when this happened, but we still thought it was funny for some reason. We didn't even offer to help clean up. We just sat there dipping our popcorn and laughing uproariously. Sorry, Dad.

So anyway, I decided to let them go ahead and dip their peanut butter sandwiches into their smoothies, because I know it could be a lot worse.

Dancing

The last few days Oliver and Rachel have been on this dancing kick - they love me to turn on music and they dance around together in the family room.

Yesterday Rachel was a princess and Oliver was her Batman/Spiderman prince, and I kept hearing them talk about how they were getting married, and then I overheard lots of kissing noises, and I peeked into the family room, and they were dancing around in a circle holding hands, but stopping every few seconds or so to do a little kiss.

I heard Rachel tell Oliver how handsome he was, and Oliver said something to Rachel about how she needed to stop talking because they were just supposed to spin around and look at each other and smile because they loved each other so much.

SeaWorld, San Antonio

We went to SeaWorld on Friday and had lots of fun. Tristan was really brave and went on a huge roller coaster with Daniel (it's so big that the first time I went on it - a few summers ago - I felt like crying a teeny tiny bit as it went up the first big hill). Anyway, he was very brave and went on it, and then went on it again with me (I had to pretend I wasn't nervous to go on it again). He did get scared on the first drop (he requested right before we got to it that I put my arm around him) but he was yelling with glee (mixed only with a small amount of terror) the rest of the ride. As soon as we finished, he said 'That was AWESOME!' He thinks a lot of things are 'awesome' and 'sweet' these days (it must be a 1st grade thing).

Oliver is also a brave roller coaster kid. There is a new ride at Seaworld that has one big drop at the end where you go straight down and then splash through some water. Not a kiddy ride - I was nervous on this one, too. Daniel took the boys on it first, and then they wanted to do it again with me. Tristan was a little nervous before the drop (he hadn't done the huge one with Daniel yet, so he didn't realize how brave he was going to turn out to be by the end of the day), but I looked over at Oliver right as we started going down, and he was lifting his arms way up in the air and whooping loudly like a roller coaster pro.

Rachel went on a little Shamu roller coaster and kind of nervously said, 'woo-hoo' the whole time over and over again in a timid little voice while clutching me tightly. The sad thing is that it wasn't scary at all and I think she would have really liked it, except our whole family had just been on a log ride (including Lizzy) that had a few big drops, so Rachel kept thinking that the Shamu one was going to drop suddenly, even though it didn't.

Lizzy only went on the log ride and hated it. She was okay when we were just floating along, and she liked pointing to Daniel, Rachel, and Ollie who were in the log boat ahead of us, but she really didn't like the drops.

So I guess that was just a roller coaster summary, there. We also saw lots of animals. Lizzy called all of the dolphins and whales and sealions 'doggy'.

It wasn't hot at all, and it wasn't crowded, either, which was nice. It did rain on us a few times, and a show got delayed once because of lightning, but it ended up being a great day. Whenever I see the dolphin show or pet a dolphin I get a little bit sad that I am probably never going to work at SeaWorld. That doesn't mean Rachel can't, though - as we were leaving I started prepping her for her future career. She'll thank me someday, I'm sure.