Chloe's 1st visit to the ER

Chloe slipped today at school (on a wet floor in the bathroom) and hit her head on the sink.  She was fine on and off for a couple of hours, and then started vomiting (all over her desk, clothes and everything...)  The nurse called me in to come pick her up and recommended that we take her to the ER to get her checked out.   We took her to the ER (thankfully, it wasn't very crowded, so we were in and out in about an hour).  By the time we got to the ER, she was already pretty back to her normal self... They checked her out (& decided she didn't need a CT scan or anything).   Her impression of the ER??  "Mom, that was fun!  The next time I'm sick, I want to go there again!"  And she loves her bracelet, and asked if she could wear it until Monday so that she could show it to all of her friends at school... 

Julia walking & our weekend

Here's a video from this weekend of Julia walking (and she's coming to give YOU a kiss at the end...that is her kiss-y face).  She's doing really well walking and is starting to walk a bit further.  She still has her arms out for balance and still can't stand up in the middle of the floor, so if she falls, she has to crawl to something to stand back up, but she is starting to walk more and more.  We had her in tennis shoes, but she's not sure what to do with them, and doesn't want to walk when she's got them on.

Here are some more pictures from this weekend from Cracker Barrel (the girls love to rock in the rocking chairs outside)...

 

  

...and from the park (the park near us added a bunch of new toys recently...a merry-go-round, see-saws, and lots of new climbing things).  It's fun to have new things at our park... now we'll just see if they stay up for the winter (the past couple of winters, this park takes down their swings, and some of the other things... but all this new stuff seems fairly permanent, so we're hoping they'll stay for the winter)

 

Can you see Gracie falling off in the 1st one?  She was fine, you can see, she got right back on and back to having a blast.

   

  

More Funny Gracie sayings

Gracie likes to use metaphors, but she doesn't really understand the point of a metaphor... some of her favorites are...
"I'm as sleepy as a chicken" and
"I'm going to open [this newspaper] to be big as a peanut"
And then of course, we laugh at her, so she continues to say it over and over!


The other day, we were riding in the car (& we had been talking about the upcoming Cowboys/Eagles game) and Gracie announced "When I grow up, I'm going to be a Cowboy guy... I'm going to throw the ball and then I'm going to run and run and go catch the ball" So, apparently, Gracie will be the first female quarterback/wide receiver combo...

The other funny word she says is "hippy-cotch" as in hopscotch, so as she's hopping randomly down the hopscotch board, she's singing "hippy-cotch, hippy-cotch, HIPPY-COTCH!!"


Just a few more Gracie-isms to remember

Chloe's "All About Me" Robot

Chloe had to color on a picture for Meet the Teacher night at school. She had a great time filling in all the boxes with her "Favorites", drawing pictures to go along with them, and coloring the robot.

Here's Chloe working hard.

And the finished product. I did a couple close-ups so that you'll hopefully be able to read what she wrote.

Gracie's Gymnastics & Dance class

Gracie started today in a Gymnastics and Dance class (they do some of each at every class). It's a brand new gymnastics place (that has preschool gymnastics during the day!!! which we are very excited about). So far, it's only Gracie and her friend Sami in the class. I'm sure it'll grow as we go through the year, but for now, it's just the 2 of them, so they get a lot of one on one time with the teacher (and not very long to wait for their turn on the balance beam, etc). She had a really good time today!

She was so excited to go. All morning, she was running around singing "I love gymnas-kicks". What fun to see her so excited to go try something new.

Sami's big brother Andy was also there today to do a make-up class...

(Chloe's going to do a Gym & Dance class at the same place...her class is tonight...although I probably won't take pictures of that since she's done Gymnastics before....)

FIRST STEPS!!!

Julia had taken a few random steps here and there, but nothing very real. But today, she took off! Ben & I were in the nursery at church this morning (and she was our only baby...) and she was taking a few steps, so we thought we'd try to take some pictures. And she kept walking, and walking over and over! She still only took about 5 steps at a time before falling over, but she's continuing to practice.

She's always very excited for herself when she's walking! And here she is falling...

The funny thing is, Chloe asked us a few days ago, "when Julia turns 1, then she'll be able to walk, right" and we told her "no, it'll be a little longer still..." But Chloe was right...she turned 1 yesterday, and then today, she's walking!

I also thought I'd post this picture just because it's cute. Julia grabbed one of the big kid's bowls after they left the table and was finishing up their strawberry shortcake for them.

Julia's 1st Birthday (& my 31st)

We had a fun day celebrating our birthday yesterday! Julia was not very interested in opening her presents to start out with, but once her sisters helped her get started, she was ready to go.

She only really opened one present, and then she was much more interested in playing with the toys.

You can see that she's having fun investigating things while her sisters "helped" her open the rest of her presents.


She LOVED all her presents and had lots of fun carrying her baby doll around, brushing her hair and playing with all her various toys.

EXCEPT for this penguin... we gave her this thinking it was so cute, and looked like lots of fun, but she is VERY afraid of this toy. As soon as she sees it she takes off (at one point, she crawled around the table and the penguin was sitting right around the corner, and she turned and crawled as fast as she could in the opposite direction)

Chloe & Gracie helped me decorate our birthday cakes (can you see the "MOM" on the big cake?) They had a great time making the cakes beautiful!

Julia was ready to dig in...she didn't want any of this singing or blowing out candles...she was just ready to get eating...

US Open

Ben had the opportunity on Wednesday to go to the US Open. Olympus (his work) is a major sponsor, so they had a block of tickets and had a bus to take them over to NYC. He had a good time! He went during the day, and mostly got to see some of the Doubles matches. He played tennis in high school, so he was excited to go and get to see some good tennis action. He even got to see a "Champions Match". He got to see Martina Navratilova play against Jana Novatna. He said that was neat to see them play and interact with the crowd (he was in about the 3rd row). Here are a couple pictures...