Mami's Nail Spa, LLC

Today the Ward girls went on a very special trip - all the way to the world-renowned Mami's Nail Spa (LLC). 

First, old nail polish was removed, 

and then they enjoyed the foot bath.

After a great deal of discussion (and believe me, I do mean a great deal), they chose their colors... Sort of. 

They couldn't really decide, so they ended up with two colors each.

Overall, a successful trip to the spa!

Hide and Seek

Resli and Lela's favorite activity while we're getting a meal ready is to run and hide. Luckily, they make so much noise giggling and laughing with each other that it's never hard to find them.

Peek-a-boo!

Language Teacher Summer Institute 2010

Wondering why there haven't been many posts lately?
Here's why - Mami and her friend Chris have been teaching an intensive workshop last week and next for K-12 language teachers in the state of Florida.

They teach 9-4 every day, and it makes them tired (and Mami gets a little grumpy sometimes too).
But it's a great group and they're having a wonderful time and learning a lot!

How to leave a comment on our blog posts

Good morning blogfans! 

Given the recent paucity of comments on our posts, which we work very hard to bring you for your entertainment and enjoyment, we thought perhaps there might be some technological glitches preventing you from posting. So in the interest of being as helpful as possible, we thought we'd post a brief tutorial reminding you, faithful readers, of how simple it is to leave us a comment, a note, a reply or a question. 

Below each post, you will see a link indicating how many comments there are and a kind request asking you to click to comment. 

Just click that blue text to leave your comment. 

When you do, you will see a new window open that looks something like this:

1. In the top box you can leave your text.
2. Then there is that funny looking word that you have to type in the box below - this is just to make sure you're not a computer spammer. Sorry to have to do that to you, but it's what prevents random comments selling drugs, websites, and other things we're really not interested in. 
3. Below that you sign in, if you have a Google or Open ID account already. If not, you can click "Anonymous" and your comment will show up without any name associated with it. (In that case, please make sure the text you type does include your name, so we know who you are!)
4. Finally, click the ORANGE publish button (or you can preview it first if you want, but if you do you still need to publish it, or it will be lost!), and you're good to go. Once you refresh your page, you should see that the number of comments on that post has increased. 

See, that's not that hard, right? We thank you in advance for your contribution to our blog. 

Sincerely, 

The World Wide Wards

¡CAMPEONES DEL MUNDO!

Yesterday was the final game of the FIFA World Cup, and Spain won! We're not normally big soccer fans around here, but because the World Cup only happens once every four years, and because Mami lived in Spain, well, we followed along. And then when Spain got to the final, we had to watch.


SO today I'm wearing my red Madrid shirt to celebrate the victory.

¡Viva la furia roja!
(Sorry, Uncle Mathias)

How's your soup?

They say that too many cooks in the kitchen can spoil the soup, but we don't necessarily agree with that around here.

Give us each an apron,

and a spoon,

and we're set for fun! And how could the end result be anything but delicious?

Earning their keep

Harvey decided it was time for Resli and Lela to pay their way a little more around here, so he sent them out to wash the cars over the weekend. Lela was a little put out about having to work for her food.

But Resli got into it with great joy and enthusiasm.

The problem is that they only got the lower half of the cars clean, so Harvey had to step in and help out anyway. But now they look great! Resli thought it was so much fun she wants to do it every weekend. Harvey isn't so sure...

A scientific experiment

Research Question: How much sunlight do hydrangeas need?
Hypothesis: About what we get next to our front door.
Results:

Conclusion: Hypothesis REJECTED.

Do you all have any suggestions for what we can put in this spot? The very hardy green plant that was there before (in spite of how rarely I remembered to water it) died in the cold over the winter, so I thought we'd try something a little more visually appealing to replace it, but perhaps that's not possible...?

Hippie girls

Resli and Lela made tie-dye shirts as an art project at school the other day. (What kind of tree hugging school is this that we're sendin' 'em to, anyway?!?!?) Here are some "Fotobabbles" we created about them.

There's no business like show business

Credits (sort of) to Annie Get Your Gun, which we stumbled across on TCM this past weekend and was clearly a real hit!

Operation B.G.P. - Day 1

Lela has been doing a great job keeping her pull-ups dry all day, or mostly all day (and sometimes even at night!), so her teachers suggested we try her in Big Girl Panties. Today was day 1 of the experiment.
She was sooooo excited to put them on this morning she practically peed herself. [just kidding]

Unfortunately, she only lasted a couple hours today before she had an accident, so we went back to a pull-up. We'll try again tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Girl meets pork

Girl loves pork.
Like father like daughter.

Get your liberty on!

To celebrate the Fourth of July we went over to Cedar Key today for their big CLAMERICA festival. Not that we're great clam lovers necessarily, but it's one of their big local events, it has fun stuff for kids to do, and, like we said before, we fear all those areas along the gulf are soon going to be very different, so we want to enjoy them - and the girls to enjoy them - while we can.

So we donned our red white and blue and headed out. Or, as Harvey illustrates, we got our liberty on. 

(And you'll notice he's not wearing any red. But don't worry, by the end of the afternoon the top of his head was sunburned enough to be considered red.)

The "downtown" proper area of Cedar Key isn't that big, but there are some restaurants and shops and there's a beach area,

with a nice park too. This is where they had everything set up. There were activities for the kids, from educational exhibits about the clam industry to games and clam races with prizes. In spite of all the special fun stuff, though, I'd say the plain old playground swings won out for best entertainment.

There were also the SnoKones, a first for Resli and Lela, which were a huge hit. 

 

But judging by the mess they made, and the odd looks I got from Lela which I'm assuming were a result of her first head-freeze, we may not do that again for a while.

Since we had explained the whole concept of Independence Day to the girls as "America's Birthday," they had been wondering all day where the cake was at this big outdoor party. So, to humor them, we surprised them after dinner with a birthday cake. (And kudos to our server, who played along like a true sport.) 

It was pretty cool, they actually sang Happy Birthday and Resli filled in "to our country" at the end of every line. It got quite a few smiles around the restaurant, too.

All in all, another great day down here. Happy fourth of July to you all, we hope you all got your liberty on!

Playing baby

One of the girls' favorite games to play together is "Mommy-Baby," where Resli pretends to be the Mommy and Lela pretends to be a little baby. (Lela is getting tired of this more often lately, with an angry "I'm NOT a baby!", but it had a good run.) There are all kinds of scenarios involved in this game, from feeding to diapering to everything in between. Picking baby up was a relatively new addition, one which made the real parents very nervous.

Not only is it generally unsafe, but Lela only weighs about a pound and a half less than Resli. So we knew it had to end badly at some point. As, you can see, it did:

You'd think these resulting looks of defeat and hurt knees would help them learn their lesson -

- but of course not. It's still on the top of their list of fun things to do. We just try to avoid doing it on concrete and other similarly unforgiving surfaces.