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.