Little Fish

Annslee has been taking swim lessons this past week (and will all next week) and Mama has been doing them with her...tonight Daddy got to come along. Having someone else in the water with her meant Mamarazzi could take some pictures!

She found these goggles and has insisted on wearing them ever since...hey, all the big kids swim with goggles afterall! Of course since they are cheap and not tight enough they fog up so she can't see where she is going LOL

She had a great time with Daddy!

My little twin

I have a weird habit..it is the way I stand. I have done it my whole life..it is a flamingo like thing. It is with my weight on my left leg and my right foot resting against my knee. I do this when on my laptop at the counter and apparently Annslee noticed ; )

Oh..and happy Friday the 13th : )

Every child must

drink the remaining milk straight from the bowl when the cereal is done. She was enjoying her fruity cheerios (less sugar than fruit loops) and when it was gone I told her to drink the milk in the bowl. She bent her head down and tried to do it that way...guess she has only seen dogs drink from a bowl ; ) So I had to go over and show her how to pick it up to do it the "correct" way...of course she thought it was hilarious and asked for more!




Another childhood must is running through the sprinkler. When we were in Charlotte Aunt Stacy told us to take Dora home with us as it didn't work well with her hose....seems to work fine here


* ok..notice her hair at breakfast...does anyone else's child wake up with a rat's nest in the back of her head every morning??!!

Weekend Wrap-up

I am finally caught up on posts from our long 4th of July weekend. Annslee is still talking about her cousins and everyone at Gigi's house. Aunt Beth taught her the sign for the first letter of all their names and she is walking around doing an M, E, B and R asking about them. Now we are doing the other cousin letters with her since we will see them all at the beach next month. Of course I would prefer her to just say their names but at least it is a start.

Here she is with "M".... they had such a fun time and he is so good about letting her do what she wants, like pretending to push him off the chair as he dramatically fell to the floor ; )





Anyone think she had a good time???




At Gigi's house...ice cream is always on the menu...with LOTS of sprinkles




I wish she got some attention....

Here are the results of our tie dye session with everyone...well, here are the kids anway!

A busy day!

We only see Grandaddy a few times a year (shame on us) but he just recently moved back from Mexico so hopefully we will do better. Annslee always points out that he is Daddy's Daddy...too cute. She is really working hard on figuring out family relationships. We met at Aunt Ann's house and of course headed straight to feed the animals. The other highlight was getting to drive the jeep...Andrew helped steer and you can see two others ran behind to aid...hey, I was taking the pictures (and moving out of the way!!!)

*Be sure and click on the collages to see their crazy faces better : )

Annslee was thrilled to try on cousin Mari's flapper dress....

Finally Grandaddy arrived and she ran to greet him! Later he and Mari tickled her feet on the couch....she would laugh even after they stopped...silly girl.

We ate lunch and she looked out the window and saw a horse in the barn. We told her we could go pet it later. By the time we headed up there it had gone out into the field..this is the face she had when she thought she wouldn't get to see it. No worries....it came back around for some loving



After our visit there we went to see the rest of the crew and karaoke broke out. As you can see she enjoyed her time on the mic belting out "Daddy, dadddyyyyy" She has some serious stage presence too...

Yes, that is chocolate ice cream on her shirt...I had a change of clothes with me...but hey, we were with family....

Our Hubei Honeys!

We got to see Molly! We had only seen them once since China and the daddies weren't able to make it so this time we all were there. We got to know each other in our Yahoo group and then of course shared a moment few get to enjoy together as we received our children in a room on the other side of the world. It was so wonderful having them in our travel group and of course we were thrilled to see them over the holiday weekend.

When we arrived the girls ran for each other and gave a big HUG!!!

They played, ate, played, ate snacks and played some more....

They have a red couch so of course a "red couch photo" was needed ; )

As we were getting ready to leave they ran for Molly's bed and pretended to be asleep, then they would "wake up" with a surprised look on their face (Molly's is particularly funny) Then they put the blanket over their heads and we would rip it off so that explains the bottom photo ; )
We have a travel group reunion in Atlanta next spring but we plan to see Molly and family before then!

Independence Day

Happy 4th of July!!!!! Annslee really enjoyed her holiday..swimming, playing with cousins and doing fireworks!








She wasn't angry here...just intently eating her goldfish : )


You can click on this one to see their sweet expressions...cousins are the best



She got bit by something...here she is with her swollen bottom lip..hey, no lip plumper needed...

I know the bottom two photos are kind of blurry and the light is bad but they definitely capture the joy she found in the fireworks!

Is there a doctor in the house or a deer nextdoor?

We love our pediatrician! Doctor Johnson is so wonderful and really loves the kids. She never makes Annslee get "on the table" and always lets her sit in her lap and play on her laptop while we chat. I never feel rushed and she always puts me at ease. Even with all this, Annslee does scream when we first go back because she knows she will be weighed and measured and she cannot stand that part. Hey, I don't blame her! At 32 months old she weighs 32 pounds and is 34.75 inches tall. For all you stat rats that puts her in the 75th percentile for weight and the 18th percentile for height. At her two year checkup she was in the 78th for weight and 10th for height so she is starting to "even out" it looks like : )



We went so she could get a written recommendation for speech therapy since apparently our Early Childhood Intervention cannot seem to get their act together. I could rant on and on about their ridiculous screening process but suffice it to say we will probably not receive any help until she turns 3 and the school system takes over. Mama bear is not happy but my hands are tied. Anyway, hopefully she will suddenly catch up on her own and we will no longer need to worry about this...hey, she is such a prodigy in every other area afterall : )

Here she is with her favorite doctor

Here is what we saw in the neighbor's yard the other morning.....

Her masterpiece

As promised...here she is in her tie dye shirt. It turned out really cute : ) She is so proud of it too...she even slept in it last night. She keeps pointing to it saying "Anns" letting us know she made it.
The second picture is her hugging herself during the "I love you " song on the Barney CD. I just love it when she does that!

She can always use some dog kisses (yuck) I tell her all the time "not on the mouth" but she obviously doesn't listen . I will admit it makes for some cute pictures

The celebrations begin!

Our neighbor's had a Pre 4th of July get together and of course we were invited..well, actually AnnaMarie invited Annslee..but she couldn't go alone LOL

I brought cupcakes and obviously Annslee really enjoyed it...at least the icing!

A lot of water fun was there and that was definitely right up her alley. She went down the slide, played in the pool and did the slip-n-slide. She and AJ also fought over who got to hold the hose but gave each other some hugs and kisses too

Another highlight was tie dying some shirts. She was a huge help and loved squeezing the dye onto the shirt. We chose purple, green and blue (all of our fav colors) We are washing it today and I will post the final result : )

Now all three of us have ridden a camel!

We met some friends at the Zoo ... and not "our" Zoo so we had little idea what was in store for us. When we arrived we grabbed a map and started walking around. The kids of course started the day running through the mist showers that were everywhere, eating a snack and having us buy them something to drink.

After we saw a few animals...and yes, the African Wild dogs were asleep... we spotted the camels. There were three big ones and one really cute baby one. Garrison (who is 8 yrs old) said he wanted to ride so Annslee headed to pet the baby one. I was telling her all about how Mama and Daddy had ridden a camel before when we were in Africa. I told her how Daddy's camel wasn't very nice and tried to bite him. Suddenly, she proceeds to go over to the place where you get on the camels..she pointed and said "Anns" I couldn't believe what I was hearing so I asked her if she wanted to ride and she said yes and cheered. I paid the $3 and thought I would be coming back for a refund...well, I was wrong! She jumped up there and never looked back. I do admit I got pretty nervous because it was a really tall camel LOL

*I was pretty far away so you can click on any photo or collage to see better

After the ride she hugged and kissed the camel goodbye...I know, yuck! Then we went to look at the penquins. On the way we tried again to get a photo of Annslee and Garrison together...this was the best we could do

The baby zebras were really cute and we watched them for a while. The second photo is her reaction to the gorilla picking his nose and then..well, you know : ( She got one of those pennies you crush and have an animal on it and she was showing it to the monkey and I think he wanted to eat it. Finally, we were resting and she said "Mama" and obviously thought I should take her picture.

I bought a carousel token eventhough I know she usually won't ride it without me on there in a choke hold. She chose the red panda and I thought was going it alone (she did ride a camel earlier ....) but no, I had to ride too. I will say she is getting better and I was able to just stand there without her grabbing me...I really can't figure this one out ??

After lunch we passed the camels again and these boys handed her some watermelon to feed to the baby camel. I then bought some feed and she loved it eating out of her hand...it tickled : )
It was hot, late and naptime....and she was still being silly!

VBS

I realized I never posted any photos from our Vacation Bible School experience. We had a great time and she loved being around other kids. I took a ton of photos because we made little photo albums for all the parents at the end of the week. A lot of the ones I have of Annslee are kind of blurry because she was jumping around so much during Rally time!

We are out of town right now and I didn't bring my memory card reader so I can't download any new photos. I will tell you she rode a camel...so stay tuned for those pics.

In the meantime..enjoy these from a few weeks ago : )

Here we are in our matching shirts!

Our neighbor AJ was in our class and they spent a lot of time together. Each morning they started out by rocking the babies in the room. Oh, and this picture of her praying just melts me : )

Going out anyone?

Yesterday she wanted to "go shopping" so I snapped this cute one of her at the door


I was noticing how easily she can reach the door handle and it reminded me of this photo from last summer.

She actually can reach the deadbolt too so time to put the kiddie proof handle on the front door! One thing that hasn't changed is her love for going outside but now she could actually do it on her own if I am not careful.

They grow up so fast.....