August 2013

Here’s Henry and Cynthia, working hard at learning how to draw giraffes:

And here’s Cindy drinking two of her favorite things simultaneously – applesauce and spinach smoothie.  She’s always much more pleasant after she’s had her first sippy cup full of applesauce of the day, and she’ll never turn down a smoothie of any kind, but this was the first time I’d seen her try to combine them. 


There were also lots of forts built in August.  I think this was what was called a “mini-fort.”  These things would crop up all over the house in the most random places.  The kids would ask if they could build a fort, and I would say, “hmm”, and they would say, “we’re just going to use a couple of pillows!”.  And then we’d get this:                                                         


And this:                   


This picture makes me laugh.  Tristan and his friends got really into card tricks, and Tristan even made his own website with videos demonstrating and teaching the tricks.  Lizza really wanted to learn how to do what Tristan did, so she watched the tutorial videos over and over, practicing her moves.                  


Here’s one of Tristan’s videos from his website.  Unfortunately, I did not watch the tutorial video for this one, so I have no idea how he did it:                

The kids had been asking to do a lemonade stand all summer, and they finally managed to put one together a few weeks before school started.  Cynthia was their first customer.                    


Oliver turned 11!  I’m never surprised when he gets older, because I tend to think he’s older than he is.  I’m always like, “oh, you’re just barely turning 11?  Are you sure you haven’t been 11 all year?  He wanted something different for his birthday cake, so we looked online and found this lemon cheesecake.  It was pretty easy and really good. We did the cake and ice-cream the day before his birthday, since he was going to be gone the next day (at a Mariners game in Dallas).            


All the kids.  I don’t know why Tristan is wearing sunglasses.

The next morning Ollie got up early and opened his presents. That is a homemade duct tape weapon in a sheath that he is wearing, I think from Rachel.  He has such thoughtful sisters. 


French toast with strawberry sauce and whipped cream:    


Building his new lego set:                                                      


Then it was off to Dallas for Daniel, Tristan, and Oliver to go to the Mariners/Rangers game.  The Mariners come play teams in Texas a few times a year, and we decided as loyal fans we should go see them when we can.  Ollie thought it was the best birthday activity ever. 


Especially since he got to see King Felix pitch:                       


Happy boys:                 


I love when my kids fall asleep in the middle of reading a book. 


A few days before school started Lizza and Henry teamed up to do a major puzzle day.  They decided to tackle our Las Vegas puzzle, which is 750 pieces.  They begged me to leave it out that night and not clean it up, and they finished it up the next day.

Cynthia takes after her older brothers and sisters.  Except that she likes to do her puzzles while wearing Spiderman jammies and a towel cape.                                                                 


The first day of school! Tristan in 7th, Oliver in 5th, Rachel in 3rd, and Elizabeth in 1st.  Lizza was very excited to wear the exact same dress that she wore on the first day of school last year.  And now that I think about it, I think Rachel wore that shirt last year, too:


Yep.  Haha.  This was 2012.                                                 


Henry and Cindy were a little lost at home without all the big kids.  Cindy kept walking around saying, “where are all my friends?  I can’t find any friends!”  And Henry decided the best thing to do to cope with the loneliness was to see if he could cover the whole table in puzzles.                       


Then there was lots of waiting at the window for the big kids to come home.

The next day I took them to the pool at lunch.  We were the only ones there, which was awesome. 


Henry is a back-floating champion.  He can stay like this forever. 


Then there was another Mariners game, this time in Houston.  Rachel got to go along with the boys for this one.  They left in the morning, drove 3 hours, went to batting practice and the game, then drove home super late.  They got so many balls and signatures at this one, and they had a ton of fun interacting with the Mariners players.  Oliver said that for sure some of the players recognized him from the game 2 weeks before.

At the end of August it was time for the boys’ first football game of the season.  Tristan and Oliver are on the same team again this year, which I love.  Daniel is one of the coaches, so he takes them to all the practices (3 times a week), which is also nice.  Their first game was down in Austin (you can see the downtown buildings in the background), and it was so hot!  The hottest football game I’ve been to.  I don’t know how they survived with all their pads and helmets on and everything, and then running around on top of that.  But there were no complaints from the boys – they were just happy to be playing (Tristan actually tried to tell me that he almost felt cold at times because he was so soaking wet from sweating so much).   


Here is a video of Tristan sacking the quarterback on one of the first plays of the game.  He is number 15, in white, on the left side of the field:                                           

About to make another tackle:                                               


Here is Oliver all pumped up after a tackle.  He is so funny to watch.  And whenever we’re watching football on TV and the NFL players do lame touchdown dances, Daniel and I look at each other and we’re like, “oh, brother, this is giving Ollie all sorts of ideas.”                                                                              


Happy brothers after a win:                                                     


The boys with their team:

That’s it for August.

P.S.  Actually, I forgot another big thing that happened in August, because I only had the pictures on Daniel’s phone.  Daniel got Lasik surgery on his eyes!  No more glasses or contacts.  I’m going to wait and see how his turn out (so far he’s pretty happy) and then maybe in a few years I’ll be brave enough to do it.

Before:                                                                                                  


During.  I got to watch the whole thing through a little window.  I could see his eye on that TV screen, and it was crazy to watch.


Done!  The whole procedure only took about 15 minutes.  He got these fun little sunglasses to wear after, and then he had to go home and try to keep his eyes shut for 6 hours straight. And I just realized that these are the sunglasses that Tristan is wearing in Ollie’s birthday picture, and that Henry is wearing at the lemonade sale (both of those were taken the day after Daniel’s surgery).  I’m glad they were so useful.                                            

July 2013

Here are some pictures of what we did with the rest of our July once we got back from our big road trip:

Rachel, Lizza, and Henry hard at work copying some Fancy Nancy illustrations.  Robin Glassner is one of my favorite illustrators, so I love that my kids think it’s fun to try to draw people like she does. 


And here is a really tall leaning tower of Legos:                       


This is what happens when Henry doesn’t take a nap and then gets sent to my room for a time-out because he’s acting so grumpy.  He didn’t even make it all the way onto the bed:

As if our road trip wasn’t enough travel excitement for July, Daniel also got to spend a week in Slovakia and Austria for work.

Here he is with the kids when he got back.  He brought back lots of fun things. 


This was the day before Rachel and Henry’s birthday.  There’s always a general excitement in our house in the days before a birthday, which for some reason seems to lead to arts and crafts and plans and projects.  This time it was the making of animal masks.                          


Finally the big day arrived – July 30th, our double birthday.  This year it was Rachel turning 9 and Henry turning 5.  Here they are ready to start the morning with some birthday presents (one for Henry, one for Rachel, etc.).  They are wonderful at sharing the spotlight:






Cynthia also wanted to share the spotlight, and requested that I take a picture of her by her toilet-training sticker chart.  Which actually is worth some spotlight.  No more diapers for this little girl!

Then it was off to the pool for our favorite summer birthday activity. 


The birthday swimmers:

A picnic lunch with friends:


At the beginning of the summer Cynthia started out wearing this swim tube, which I love.  A few months in, though, she started asking me to give her swim lessons “with NO tube on!”  She had seen me teach Henry how to swim, and decided it looked pretty fun.                                                                             


She quickly learned some of the basics, and in no time was jumping into the pool and swimming out to me.  She loves diving under the water and getting things off the bottom, and I have to remind her to come up for air sometimes.  She still is not completely water-safe, but every time we go she gets a little better.  Just a few weeks ago (we’re still swimming in October here in Texas, although the water is getting a little chillier) she showed me that she had figured out how to roll over onto her back when she needs a breath, and I didn’t even teach her that. 

Since I had brought my camera to the pool to get some birthday pictures, I asked Tristan to video-tape Cindy swimming.  It turned out that the whole time he thought he was making a video, he was really just taking pictures.

So you can scroll through these pictures and imagine that it is actually a short video clip of Cindy swimming.  That first picture is me saying, “are you video-taping now?”  Ha.  You can tell by my face that I might be questioning how this video is about to turn out:


Then it was time for some fancy cookie-cake:                                           


Followed by their actual birthday cakes later that night.  Rachel wanted a fluffy angel-food cake with chocolate whipped cream frosting, and Henry went with a fruit pizza (lemon shortbread with cream cheese icing and lots of fresh fruit). 


I love looking at all their birthday cake pictures from over the years:

Here’s Rachel on her 4th, just a few hours before Henry was born.

And one year later:

Rachel turning 6, Henry turning 2:

Rachel turning 7, Henry turning 3 (they had two birthday parties this year, since we were out of town on their actual birthday):

And last year.  Rachel turning 8, and Henry turning 4, with a dinosaur-volcano cake, just like Rachel had on her 4th.  Except this one was easier to make because I wasn’t in labor during it. 


Back to this year.  They are getting so old.  I just tried to imagine what their birthday pictures are going to look like when Rachel is 16 and Henry’s 12, and I can’t do it.  They will probably be too cool for fancy cakes then.




The next day was the end of Rachel and Lizza’s summer session of gymnastics.  They love this class so much. 


That’s it for July.

P.S.  Unless you want to watch this video of Cindy talking about all the food she likes.  She really does love food.  She kept going for about 5 minutes after I turned the camera off, adding more to her list of all the food she likes.