Road trip!

Remember when you were in college and you used to take the most awesome road trips with your roommates? 

This was nothing like that!

I had a conference to go to last weekend in Columbia, S.C. You may recall that Ashlyn and Maleah, friends of this blog, live there, as do their parents, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to get our two families together again. The trip up only took about 7 hours, which isn't bad considering normal people do it in about 5. Upon arrival at the hotel, we discovered that the phones didn't work and they were so apologetic they gave us two adjoining rooms, which worked out so much better than all cramping into one small one.

Kennedy definitely enjoyed the bed. (And not, I'll point out, her pack and play, as planned.)

While I was out doing conferency things, Harvey took the girls on wonderful adventures. One day they went to the most amazing children's museum called EdVenture. (But forgot the camera.) That night we met up with the Lomicka-Anderson clan and had a wonderful dinner, albeit sans camera. 

The next day Harvey took everyone to the zoo, thanks to passes from Lara (although her family got sick and they couldn't join the fun). It was, from what I hear, a great zoo. 

They had statues to climb on

and of course real animals too. They took the turtle pictures for me.

And there was a merry-go-round as well!

Although Harvey and I go a little stir crazy being cooped in a hotel room, Resli and Lela (and by force, Kennedy) really enjoyed just hanging out and being silly. 

In retrospect, everyone did really well on the trip. It was tiring and a whole different experience than what I used to call a road trip, but it is also nice to have these family vacations.

8 months!

Kennedy turned 8 months old on the day we began our road trip up to South Carolina. So her 8-month picture this time around is an action shot. 

Happy 2/3 of a year, little K!

The trials and tribulations of curly hair

Lela hates her hair. She hates brushing it, she hates that everyone talks about how wonderful her curls are, and she hates that it's not straight and blonde like she wants it. (Which just breaks my heart because her hair is absolutely amazing!)
But in spite of that, and in spite of the endless arguments that seem to ensue from some hair-related incident, she has her moments in which she appreciates it. These often involve a minimum of two accessories, and often more.

For example, in the above photo we have: headband, feather clip, pony tail holder, pony tail ribbon.
What would we do with boys in this house!?!

Polka Dots and Prunes

A winning combination!

Hey you guyyyyys!

To follow up on Resli's birthday festivities, we had a big party at our house Saturday. Because Resli  - and Lela and, let's face it, Harvey and I - all love the new Electric Company show, we decided to make that the theme of the party.

The invitations started with Hey You Guyyyys! and asked Resli's friends to come help the Electric Company celebrate her birthday. These are the folks from the real electric company, who were of course there in spirit.

Before everyone got there, we did some decorating. 

And Resli and Lela helped prepare the goodie bags.

The bags contained pencils, notepads, magnets with the logo, some word search type worksheets from the PBS website, 

and word balls. If you don't watch the show you may not know what a word ball is, but they're among the 'skills' that the Electric Company members have. This is what they look like:

So I made rice krispy treats with alphabet cereal, and dyed them blue. This is how they turned out. Not perfect, but close. 

And when the friends all arrived, we had a bunch of fun games planned. 

We had word-making relay races. 

We played freeze-dance.

We had a story separated into different pages, and each person got one page and had to draw the sentence. Then we worked to put them in the right order.

We also played a brief game of pictionary.

Then it was cake time. For the cake I tried my best to reproduce the Electric Company (new) logo.

For comparison, here it is:

Here's my cake.

(We also had snacks of apples, grapes, and Scrabble Cheeze-Its.) 

Then Resli opened the wonderful presents her friends brought.

When it was time to start heading home, we handed out the goodie bags. Everyone dug right into their word balls which, we discovered, have an interesting side effect of turning teeth, lips and tongue very blue!

All in all, it was a great party, blue mouths aside, and everyone had fun. Resli was an extremely gracious hostess, and she and Lela behaved wonderfully.

They're growing up so fast. 

Happy 7th Birthday, Resli!

Last Wednesday Resli turned 7 years old. 

We all got up extra early to have time to open presents before school.

There were some wonderful gifts, from this dress from Lela

to many awesome books.

The highlight though was this American Girl doll from Grandpa.

Resli's been wanting one for forever, and she's thrilled.

Mm mm good

Kennedy is getting better at this whole "real food" thing. She's still not too fond of veggies, but pretty much any fruit generates at least some interest. Here we have prunes.

Slowly but surely. And clearly she's not lacking in the nutrition department!

Nothing like a good book

Reading time is so much fun.

Especially when you have someone to share it with. 

I absolutely love how much all three of our girls are into books. Just like me and Harvey. And for that I thank our parents.