May Randomness

And one left over from April. Not a great picture, but the memory is funny. Caroline gets so bored sitting in her stroller at Austin's baseball games. Of course she wants out. But I don't want to chase her around, so I only let her loose during the last few minutes. This game she decided to talk on her "phone". "Hi Daddy! Hewwo Daddy... Okay. Bye Daddy." She repeated this one-sided conversation over and over with her shoe. Silly girl. She often pretends rectangular objects are phones and has similar conversations.


Caroline doing her homework: She found this picture she'd colored earlier in the day, then was "writing" with her wand. She kept telling me, "Homewook! Color. Do homewook."


Fresh strawberries from our garden: They are so sweet. It's fun to get these and eat them with dinner. :)


Austin has to read a couple of chapters from chapter books, every day, for homework now. He brought home Junie B. Jones books several weeks in a row. I told him the same thing I told Julia when she used to read them: "If you start acting like Junie B., no more reading those books!" They always got a big grin about that, because Junie B. is naughty! I think that's partly why they like reading about her!

Picture 1: For Julia's Awana T&T book finishers' party, they had a bake-off. If the girls wanted, they could bake cookies, cakes, etc. Julia made two pizza cakes all by herself! I was proud of her! The only thing I did was grate the white chocolate bar, because I didn't want her cutting her fingers on the grater. The food processor didn't work well for it... The pepperoni is red fruit roll-up, the olives are black licorice. We saw the idea in a magazine. And, she ended up winning 3rd place in the bake-off, earning herself a $5 Michael's gift card!

Picture 2: May 19: Austin came home from school with a bee sting! His first ever! He'd been playing soccer at recess, and got stung. He went to the office, where the secretary got the stinger out and put ice on the sting. Julia said she and her friends knew there was a bee nest in the grass, in a gopher hole on the playground field, but her friend didn't want her to tell anyone b/c she was afraid they'd kill the bees. Julia told her her brother got stung, and her brother's friend (the next day!), and told her teacher anyway! Come to find out, there were two nests in the grass, and they had an area around them spray-painted, so the kids would know to not play in those spots. At least that is what they tell me. Big excitement around here. ;)

Another injury from May 19--same day as Austin's bee sting! Crazy! Julia collided with another kid at school and fell on the pavement. She must have sprained her wrist when she fell, as it was black and blue and pretty sore for a couple days. She didn't tell anyone at school (told her she should have!), but iced it at home the whole rest of the day.

Bailey has a kitty friend. It's so strange--Bailey doesn't like his own "brother", Pongo, much, but likes this neighbor cat. Neighbor cat visits our house all the time! Both Bailey and Pongo chirp at him through open windows, and neighbor cat and our cats seem to be friends.

Picture 1: Caroline is always eager to greet Brian when she hears the garage door going up. "Daddy home! Daddy home!", she calls out. If Brian doesn't come in as soon as she thinks he should, she asks, "Where Daddy?" She runs to meet him when he comes in the house.

Picture 2: Caroline thinks she is a big kid, surely as big as Lauren. They're buddies, after all.

Happy to be with Daddy

Caroline put these necklaces on herself. And put the Pet Shop party hats on, too. She calls them "buhrday cakes". Funny!

I tried to get a picture of the four after church. Girls in their matching dresses and all. The little one wouldn't cooperate (what else is new???), but these three were pretty cute. Julia wanted her hair in a bun (amazing, since she always wants to wear it down, with nothing in it these days). She bought her rainbow earrings with her allowance money when I took her to Claire's a couple weeks ago. She's not into shopping, but we spent a long time in Claire's! I think she looked at every pair of earrings they had before making her selections! :) That's my girl--got to make sure you make the right decision! ;)

Picture 1: I guess I did get a nice one of the four. Caroline has her thumb in her mouth. But that's her!!

Picture 2: How I found Pongo relaxing one afternoon. I guess he was comfortable?

Memorial Day, the very last day of May, I was snuggling with Caroline before bed. Brian got out the camera, on his own, and took our picture. Every night she is the last kid to bed, and every morning, the first kid up!

How was that for random? Even the kitties were in this post!

Wet Weekend

We ended up having some hot weather for Memorial Day weekend. Our May had been pretty unusually cool up to now, so it was nice to feel the sun! After the Strawberry Festival and naps for the little girls, Brian set up Lauren's new Slip 'n Slide. Austin broke the one she got for her birthday last year, so I bought her a new one for her birthday this year. :) All the kids have so much fun with it!

Caroline just stood on it for the longest time. The big kids were extremely patient, and I think even got a kick out of her just standing and then sitting staring at the water.

Eventually they had enough waiting, though, and Julia came to get Caroline off! Caroline was not happy about that! Julia would take her off, and she'd right away walk back to the Slip 'n Slide. Austin at least was entertained with his new squirt gun. I got a pack of 3 in the Target dollar spot. Can't beat that--3 for a dollar! We'll see how long they last! ;)

Finally Caroline moved out of the way, and the big kids could slide. These girls crack me up! They are so not daredevils! Cautious to the core, both of them! They both only kind of hop/skip along the slide, then plop to their knees, and that's it! Crawl to the end!

Austin will run and slide. He'll show them how it's done. ;) And he did, but he was also really into squirting his sisters with the squirt guns. Especially the bigger sisters. Baby sister was spared. He adores her. :D She was shivering, but not unhappy, and he nicely sat in the chair with her to snuggle.

Memorial Day we went to Avila Beach. The weather was still really nice and warm, and it was a great beach day. The only thing, I think everybody else thought so too. You'd think our beaches were tourist attractions or something. ;) We found a close-ish [free] parking spot, and claimed our own little area of sand.

Austin dug the whole time, and built a sand castle that he played with with Lauren. Lauren had a whole imaginary story going, and chattered on and on about the queen and prince living in the castle. I think she was meaning she was the queen and Austin was the prince, because she was calling Austin "Prince" as she talked to him!

At one point Austin got two sticks and "cut down" the castle, and Lauren, incredulous, said, "Oh no! What about the queen?! What about the prince?! They were sleeping in there! Queen? Prince? Where are you?!" After the castle was destroyed, she took to making angels in the sand. Yeah, the bath tub had a layer of sand in it that night...

Julia and Brian wore their bathing suits. The water was cold! But Julia didn't care. She ran and played in it almost the whole time we were there.

I was there too. ;)

Lauren ran in the waves once, then immediately back to our sand area. The water was too cold for her. She tried it once more with Julia, happy to tag along with big sister, but still, the water was too cold. Caroline liked it, though!


You always see something interesting at the beach. Austin was busy digging, and Brian said, "Look Austin! There's a pirate!" These guys proceeded to take their boat (actually a box covered in duct tape) and sit in it in the ocean. It did not float.

So their next strategy was to cut leg holes in the bottom and go wading in it. That was the most interesting thing we saw at the beach this day, I thought.

This group had a flag hanging from their shade tent. Appropriate for Memorial Day, right?

There were lots of groups that had their coolers and BBQs out on the sand. Not for me. I had enough grit in my eyes and teeth just sitting there; didn't need to eat it too. So we ate our picnic lunch up by the playground. Which the kids liked just fine, because then they got to play there!

I tried to get a group picture of the four before we went to eat our lunch. This was as good as it got! Caroline tried her hardest to escape the whole set up!

Julia had some Doc Bernstein's ice cream certificates she was given for finishing her Awana book. So we stopped there on the way home for ice cream. We also found another certificate hidden away in the glove box! So ice cream only cost about $3 for us all. Thanks for sharing, Julia.

Brian had set up the pool Sunday morning before church, and the kids went in it that afternoon. The water was so warm, like bath water! The little pool was even warmer! After we got home from the beach and ice cream they went in it again. And there's Austin, shooting his squirt gun again. They had a good time out there.

Sweet Sisters

Every day Lauren and Caroline play together. They like to watch pictures on our computer screen saver. They watch Dora, Oomi Zoomi, and Max and Ruby together. Max and Ruby is Lauren's favorite. Thankfully, I might add! Dora drives me a little nuts. I think it's cute enough, but pretty silly too. Lauren says she learns math from Oomi Zoomi.

All these pictures were from last week. I caught them being sweet while watching the pictures.




Last Thursday Lauren had Kindergarten Round Up. She did great! Jennifer, her Speech teacher, had told me Lauren was ready for Kindergarten, and the Kindy teacher who evaluated Lauren pretty much said the same thing. Lauren can count to ???--I know past 100, the teacher stopped her at 40. Lauren can recognize her letters and knows most sounds they make. She knows her shapes and colors.

Things we have to work on over the summer: making sure she holds a pencil correctly and practicing cutting with scissors. Julia also held her pencil incorrectly before Kindergarten, but not Austin. Interesting. Lauren also needs to practice writing her name with capital L, then lowercase letters. Now, I tried to teach her that way, knowing she'd have to write it like that for school, but Lauren refused to do it! She isn't thrilled about it now either, but knows the teacher said she had to learn the lowercase letters!

Lauren was so excited to go to Round Up, but then got a little shy when it was time to be evalutated. It was pretty cute. She got a snickerdoodle cookie when she finished going to each station, and told me, "All the kids who did good get a cookie!" Never mind that Caroline got one too... ;) They also got free chocolate chip cookies at the Vons bakery. A lucky cookie day. Ha! They do always remind me to get a cookie there!

Back at home, after Kindergarten Round Up and grocery shopping at Vons:

I think someone will miss her big sister when she goes off to Kindergarten!

They were drawing with chalk and dancing around the patio.

Caroline incognito!

Strawberry Festival

For the second year in a row, we went to the Arroyo Grande Strawberry Festival. It happens every Memorial Day weekend, and this was the second time we went. There were tons of booths there. Lots of places to buy food, lots of vendors selling all kinds of things, and of course, some police officers...


Julia and Lauren got their faces painted. A church in the village had free face painting. They were accepting donations for their youth group, though. ;) I thought the painters did a really good job! And that that would be a fun job to do! Caroline sat on my lap and watched, and poor Brian and Austin stood outside the area...watching people? leaning against the brick wall? What I do know is they were standing right next to the ice cream shop but didn't go in and buy any!

We bought lunch shortly after we arrived: gyros for Brian and me (YUM!) and hot dogs for the kids. It was very hot--mid 80s?--so we bought a huge cup of lemonade that we could refill for free all day long. It cost $7, but was worth it! We refilled it 6 times! We'd brought our own water, but it was gone in no time!

The kids wanted to go on the rides from the time we got there. They did not let us forget! Over and over and over and over and over and over and over we were reminded! Then the ride situation was kind of sad, I thought. There were two kiddie rides: a bumpy elephant round-and-round ride, and these swings. The age limit was 2-12, and weight limit was 90 lbs., but no height limit. Even Lauren's feet dragged on the ground! Look how Julia's feet are sticking out! And then there was Austin, who dragged them along the grass much of the ride...

This was the second kiddie ride: the elephants. Only Lauren rode it. Austin went through a bounce house obstacle course thing, and Julia refused to do another ride. I think she was mortified after riding that itty bitty swing ride. She said when she got off, she thought it was for little kids Lauren's age! Yet even Lauren was too tall, I think!

So Julia got to keep her $2 (what each ride cost). She wanted to go back up to the street vendors to look at jewelry to buy, but the rest of us were too hot and tired and didn't feel like it! I will say, she handled that well, at least. Unlike the middle sister who threw a huge fit, yelling and crying and balking the whole way to the car about not going on any more rides!

The only pictures of Caroline at the festival:

Don't they look like a happy bunch? I told Brian I don't think we need to go back next year! No thank-you's from the kids, a bunch of expensive rides... Well, Julia immediately piped up, "Thank you, Mommy...", from the back seat. Still looking disappointed about not being able to buy jewelry. But later she said she did have fun and does want to go again next year. We'll see.