He's 5. I'm 32. Where Does the Time Go?

The Veil

Grace's hair is finally long enough to do a veil style!!! That might seem like a silly thing to be excited about, but we have been limited to two styles since she came home; the 'fro and puffs. It took 2 episodes of Blue's clues, lots of playing with the hair "pretties", a number of rounds of Itsy Bitsy Spider & Pat-a-cake, a few extended hugs from her big sis while singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and finally; Daddy held her down for the last two rubber bands. Doing hair on a toddler is no small feat! In the end, I was very pleased with the result, and Gracie was too. We all know, that's what really matters anyway, right?









Update: The hair went from "veil" to twisty puffs within about 15 minutes of the above photos being taken. Oh well. At least we're making progress. I can settle for baby steps. 8^) BTW, Grace still doesn't have all four of her front teeth (2 upper, 2 lower) in, but she has cut 3 of her 4 two year molars. What can I say? This girl does things her own way!!

As Soon as We Got Home...

....last week, we unloaded the RV, got a good night's sleep in our nice, cool house and then headed to the park. You see, we had hauled all four of the bigger kids' bikes to Las Vegas. Will even unloaded them from the rack while we were there, in hopes that it might actually cool off enough some evening to ride them. No dice. The kids were very disappointed; as was Will. When it came time to go home (a day earlier than we initially planned) Will loaded the bikes back onto the bike rack, and we promised the kids that they would have an opportunity to ride when we got home. They were very relieved to see the bike rack transferred onto our Suburban the day after we returned to sunny So Cal. They all had lots of fun riding around the park, and Grace thoroughly enjoyed the slides and swings. It doesn't get much better than this!!

Our 4th

Mostly we just stayed home and enjoyed the A/C. After roasting away the previous week in Vegas, one could hardly blame us. Anyway, long about 4 PM, Will and the kids went out to play in the pool while I worked on making homemade ice cream. We had a simple, traditional BBQ (burgers) and followed that up with a yummy dessert. Since ALL fireworks are banned in the county we live in (yes, even sparklers), that was the end of our celebration. Hope you all had a nice 4th too. 8^)

Sneaky Little Bugger

Do You Have One of These?

If not, I highly recommend you get one. I used this vanilla ice cream recipe (the custard one). They even have a video if you are feeling a tad uncertain. Just a quick note, I doubled the recipe for our family of 6 (Grace is lactose intolerant). It just fit in the ice cream maker, and we all had a nice sized serving. Here it is just before it was ready to eat. MMmmmm!!!


PS The ice cream was our Fourth of July dessert. Tonight we had shaved ice. We have this machine. It's nothing fancy, but it gets the job done without too much elbow grease required. I even found a recipe online to use in place of the store bought syrups. Between that, and using plain old plastic cups instead of the special paper cones, dessert couldn't get much cheaper. This is sure to be a summer favorite at our house. 8^)

Thank a Vet