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Thursday, March 17, 2011

All We Do Is Play

A little update for the record books...
My kids are getting bigger and funner, as well as funnier, every day. I love the things that keep them little, like that they are both totally and completely emotionally tied to their blankets. I smile every time I hand Lucia her blanket and she squeals in joy and shoves it in her mouth and bites it. Gabe's blanket provides untold calming, and he likes it to be cold, he says so he can scratch it better??? The other day we looked and looked and couldn't find it anywhere. It was a total mystery. Eventually it showed up in the freezer...he forgot he stuck it there to make it cold enough. This Arizona summer is going to be hard on blanket temperature maintenance.
Gabe's preschool participated in a trike-a-thon to support St. Jude's Hospital this month. We went to watch him ride, and stayed to read stories in his class and eat pizza with him afterwards.
With his friends from preschool, AJ and TJ.
Riding their trikes around and around!
Uncle Josh wants to love on Lucia, and Lucia is not too sure of this big dude with facial hair. He came with a tractor to redo our patio and we're soooooooo happy!
Lucia loves books. She likes to sit on the fireplace and set up the books standing in front of her to just sit and stare. It's hilarious. He vocabulary is slowly budding. She'll now say "narni"=nariz=nose; "jew"=juice=any kind of liquid beverage; "shew"=shoe. The other day we took Gabe somewhere and when he got out of the car and not her she began wailing loudy "adfrbkllker GAY adlkjfnfdalkj GAY blelbhelblehoi GAY!!!!" Clearly not happy that Bage was going somewhere and she was not!
Gabe had pijama day at school, and insisted on wearing his favorite pijamas - the ones I made him for Christmas that I made poorly and are too small. But he's cute anyways.
He is a complete cowboy. Loves his boots, and always wants to rope EVERYTHING. Lucia wasn't so into sitting on the horse while he pulled it around, but he insisted.
We went to Cave Creek for the day with Lindsay, Matthew and Olive, and Gabe made buddies with a fellow cowboy boot wearer.
just because she's adorable.
Cave Creek is the total western town, and it was fun to visit.
Of course Gabe wanted to sit on the horse, even though it didn't go anywhere. all day. seriously, 5 hours later this horse was still sitting in the exact same place.
This was my failed experiment. The beginning of February I met this old Italian man picking olives from the trees all over our neighborhood and I stopped to talk to him. He told me they were delicious and I just had to hang them from a tree in an old pillowcase, covered in salt. I went home and the internet verified this method of curing olives, so I did it. I took the kids out, we picked tons of olives, I made a cute bag to hand them in, and we covered them in salt and hung them...for a month or so, shaking them up every so often. Then we took them down, washed them, and soaked them in water, changing the water every day. After about three days they were rotten and I had to throw them all out. I'm not sure what went wrong??? I was so excited for my olives...I guess I'm back to buying them at the olive bar in the market for $$$$$.
Even though it's just a big patch of weeds, we've been playing outside in the yard a TON. WE got some old boxes and made a play house and painted it. Lucia mostly just ate the paint, but Kallie, Birdie and Gabe painted and played.
I got extra stars on my mom chart that day for creativity and fun with my kids!