If You've Heard it Once....

....you've heard it a thousand times: the nicest thing about this blogging gig is the people you meet! Yesterday was a prime example of this.  I have no idea when Jen and I started to follow each others blogs but before we knew it we were emailing and we always said that when the occasion presented itself we would meet. A quick phone call mid week and the time and place were arranged and all the details were ironed out.

Jen's blog is password protected, for now, so I can't share it but she has just received her referral for her little girl in Thailand and let me tell you she is gorgeous. I just can't wait for this little one to be united with her Mummy and Daddy as they are such a perfect family.

Anyhoo, back to yesterday. We drove up to Boynton and met at a restaurant and it was just like meeting an old friend. We walked in and she was already there and bam things just unfolded as if we hadn't seen each other for months as opposed to having never actually seen each other ever. She gave both of the girls gifts and Lily was almost speechless when she saw the horse necklace and Rosie was delighted with her little pony. I love the little dress that she gave to Rosie it is beautiful. Since Rosie won't leave the house at the moment without her sunglasses she picked a pair of sunglasses for baby "R" and Lily chose her a dress.

The necklace that left Miss Chatterbox almost speechless! It was difficult to convince her to let me take it off to photograoh it but since she cannot wear it to school she had no choice.


Rosie's Dress and Pony


The pony looks a little bit loved, cos she is.

After lunch I wanted to let the girls play in a park for a while before putting them straight back in the car for the drive home. Jen decided she would join us. So we all headed out to let off some steam and it was really lovely. My girls just loved her but that is so easy to do. 

Jen pushed Rose on the swing and was concerned that she wasn't smiling. I felt so bad cos she was being so very gentle and careful. In the end Rosie face was getting sadder and sadder so I had to point out that Rosie likes things a bit rough. Jen, she is a second child and everything Lily does Rosie thinks she can do.



This is how I like it.


Silly Lily having fun.




The slide train

Thank you so much Jen for taking time out of your vacation to meet up with us. We loved spending time with you it is too bad it started to rain..

BULLETS

• 4 more days of school. Yee Haw!
• This time next week we will be in New England.
• When I went in Rosie's room this morning after her nap she said, "it's so nice to see you".
• I cut my hair this morning. It's getting shorter by the hair cut. Soon it will be short again even though I said I wouldn't go short again. 
• Rosie is growing. I don't care what the scales say, well I do actually but she is growing. She is nearly in 18 month clothes exclusively. Just a few 12 month stragglers hanging on.
• Lily is huge. She turns 7 next week. There is such a difference between turning 6 and turning 7. 
• She wanted to go the American Girl Store for her birthday so we let her chose the location. I secretly hoped she would chose NYC but she chose Boston cos her Aunties live there and we can see them. That is great cos I can't wait to see Fran and Shell either and I know Andie will love them...they are nuts too.
• I am finding it increasingly more difficult to be pleasant to Lily's teacher. As the days to the end of school count down my smile gets more and more fake. I have to be the grown up but it is proving to be a challenge. Nasty old bag.
• Lily makes me laugh all the time. She really is a funny girl with a great sense of humour.
• I am so ready for a vacation we have not been away as a family since we went to China last year. Andie is meeting us in Boston and there is going to be so much silliness. 2 weeks with Andie and then another week on the west coast......bliss.
• I don't think it is ever going to stop raining. For those of you that don't live in Florida you don't know what rain is until you have been to Florida during rainy season,  especially this one.
• I haven't even got any closets left to clean out during all this rain since I went on a major cleaning bender a few weeks back.
• I think Rose is going to have a lisp. This probably should  not be making me laugh but right now it is comical. She says horsth, nicth, huth for horse nice and hush. Perhaps it is a speech learning curve but me not so sure. 
• With regard to the aforementioned lisp Lily's comment was, "oh no, does that mean I am going to get wet when she speaks?" I told you she has a sense of humour and it is wicked just like mine.
• When I started this post the roofer had not been, now he has. He will be back to mend the roof if it stops raining for more than 5 hours at one time...I will see him in October. Ha ha ha.
• Hurricane season starts again in a few days. 'Nuff said about that. 
• The girls really love it when we drive through big puddles. I loved it when I was little too and I called them wooshers so now the girls call them that too. My dad used to seek out the biggest wooshers he could find for me. Jacob thinks I should avoid wooshers at all costs since I drive a car not a boat. Dull, very dull. Little does he know we seek them out and we just don't tell him. Well I don't at least but I cannot speak for the girls since I never tell them not to tell their Daddy anything.
• Tomorrow we are off to meet up with a blogger whose blog I have followed for ages and she has finally and I mean finally received her referral. Her baby is so beautiful and is waiting for her in Thailand.
• If you have made it this far you deserve a stiff drink or at least a whole bag of sweets all to your self so off you go and indulge. 
• Have a fabulous weekend and if you are from these parts...stay dry!

Little Miss Fix It.

We still have one VCR and have said that when this one bites the dust that is it. One day last week Lily decided she wanted to watch Raff*i so she tried to eject the tape that was in there and but it wouldn't come out so I went to assist her. She was correct it was stuck! After a few minutes I was able to retrieve it with the help of a knife but we never could get Raff*i to go in. As I silently cheered and thought about how we would be able to lose all the old clunky tapes Lily was quite sad. Jacob had a look at it on Sunday evening and unplugged it and plugged it back in again and what do ya know, success! The tape went it and then he tried to eject it but it got stuck again. He used my nifty technique and used the knife and got it out. Being a guy he decided this was not good enough so he got a flashlight and started to peer into the opening and suddenly announced, "aha, I see the problem, there is a CD in here but that's not all it's still in it's flipping case!". We laughed and commented on who the guilty party must have been. He was able to get the CD out with the aid of yet some more kitchen utensils and now that darn VCR still works. I guess we are stuck with those big clunky tapes for a while longer!

When Rosie woke up the next morning we showed her the offending article and explained that she must NOT push them into the VCR and she looked at us and said, "ohh" with such innocence. Yeah right!

I need to add we do have dvd players as well and that is why we so desperately want the VCR to go bye bye.

I Love You........

Rose and Lily love the song, I Love You, A Bushel And A Peck. I searched on You T*be and found one particular rendition that they love. I ended up commenting on the video and the people wrote back and challenged the girls to sing along to their video and for me to tape it. We took the challenge and here is the end result. I have written permission to use their video so no copyright laws are being violated here...just in case anyone was getting into a panic.




P.S. No, I don't normally take challenges from perfect strangers but these people seem nice enough and oddly enough there is a China connection. Weird huh?

P.P.S. After all the years of using Dropsho*ts I am now hooked on the Tube. I love it, it is so flipping easy. Dropsh*ts and I have a supposed lifetime membership together but until they figure out their relationship with Mac my side of this relationship is OVER.

By Jove I think I've got it.

This afternoon the kidlets and I went over to a friends house and played in their pool. We had so much fun. I took my camera but barely took any photos or video because foolishly I took my favourite camera as opposed to the waterproof one....DUH. Richard and Shara have a huge backyard and 2 dogs and the girls just ran amok. Even Rosie who is usually very wary of animals just had a ball. She played with Sophie, or Dophie as she calls her for ages. Lily was in heaven cos the neighbours have horses and she was able to feed them carrots over the fence. All in all it was just one of those days that you don't really ever want to end. When I put Lily to bed this evening I asked, as I always do, the highlights and lowlights of her day, the lowlight was the day ending and she just couldn't pick one highlight. She even thought dinner tonight was outstanding but I think after an afternoon of swimming anything tastes good because you are sooooo hungry. Even Rose ate like a horse.

So after the girls were sleeping I decided i wanted to attempt to edit a movie. Jacob has been doing it for years and can whip out a really outstanding job in about 15 minutes. I used a really short clip from today and fiddled about for ages with the help of imovie but I finally have something. Nothing really special but it was to short to do much with but I cracked it. At the end it says it was directed by Jacob...I think not! I have no idea where that came from and have no idea how to get rid of it but never mind I will learn and I'm sure he will be quite relieved when I do cos the likes of amateurs like me using his moniker on their work is not going to make him happy. I'm also a bit confused about the box at the end that says."your text here", oh well first attempt and all in all not to bad.

Ask And Thou Shalt Receive.......sometimes.

Last Saturday we went to the airport to welcome home yet another family that came into fruition through this awesome little thing called adoption. I have lots of piccies but I failed to ask if it was OK to post them so I haven't done so. Anyhoo, we met up with lots of old friends there and one of them asked Lily to ask me to post more riding photos of her on the blog. So Miss Tammie, here you are:
Disclaimer: this is Miami and these are Pasa Fino's so some of the lesson is in Espanol.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I love our new imac for photos it is so much fun. I can do so much with the pictures so easily however my old faithful dropshots and imac do not like each other so the videos are still a pain. I used one true media today for the first and last time, it is really grainy. Any MAC users out there with any ideas. Blogger videos take way to long and are tiny so me no likey.





Lily turns 7 in a couple of weeks and as I was putting her to bed we were all snuggled up and I told her I just wasn't ready for her to get so big yet. She responded by telling me she wasn't ready to get big yet as she doesn't want to waste her life but just wants to use it in emergencies. I asked her what she meant and this was her reply. "well, I just want to keep on being a kid and having fun and being silly so I just want to be 6 but if I make you mad then that is an emergency and then I will be 7 so that I won't be a kid anymore and I can get out of trouble really quick. Sounds to me like she is already grown up cos that is a rather clever idea.

Old Photos

My friend Jakie now has 2 teenage daughters, heaven help her, and over the past 2 years both of these girls have had their Bat Mitvah's. This morning her and I compiled a disc of photos of my girls at these events. These pictures are old but I love them so I am posting them anyway. Some of them you have seen before.



A Rose with a rose









Hanging with the big girls








So sweet





I love you, a bushel and a peck.





Happy, dancing, carefree girl.





Who is this feathered friend?

Mothers Day

LEGACY OF AN ADOPTED CHILD

 Once there were two women who never knew each other,

 One you do not remember, the other you call Mother,

Two different lives shaped to make you one,

One became your guiding star, the other became your sun,

The first one gave you life, and the second taught you to live it,

The first gave you a need for love, the second was there to give it,

One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name,

One gave you a talent, the other gave you aim,

One gave you emotions, the other calmed your fears,

One saw your first sweet smile, the other dried your tears,

One made an adoption plan, that was all that she could do,

The other prayed for a child, and God led her straight to you. 

Now, which of these two women, Are you the product of? 

Both, my darling, Both, Just two different types of love.

---- Unknown

Random Yipping.

• Rosie has decided that she wants to be potty trained. She is doing this all herself as I am in no rush as we only have another month before we go away and vacations equal lots of planes, car trips and public bathrooms...yuck! I am hoping it is a faze.
• Rosie is talking a mile a minute (now that makes 2 of them) and she speaks really clearly but one word that she messes up is this one, squiggle (squirrel). She loves squiggles and squeals when she sees them and each time she says it I crack up.  She really likes their fluff-oo tails.
• Rosie is still petrified of the vacuum cleaner. The other day she was being a real pill and I told her that if she didn't stop I was going to get the Hoover out. She totally freaked out and started to cry and begged me not to Hoover her up.  I felt really bad and explained until I was blue in the face that there was no possible way that she would fit up the Hoover but she still isn't buying it and every time she sees it she freaks out. Oh dear. She does however love her little hoover that is the exactly the same as mine and really works.
• Every day when Lily comes out of school Rosie runs up to her with her arms out stretched to give her a hug. It gives me the fuzzies.
• Lily is our little brainiac and just made the principles honor roll for the  3rd grading period in a row. 
• Lily has now reached the point when she rides a horse that she can gallop without stirrups and actually manages to look as if she is part of the horse. No more of the bouncing all over the place and hanging on for dear life antics. She has found her style and it is really quite graceful. Graceful isn't a word easily associated with Lily ;0)
• This has not been Lily's favourite year at school. She doesn't think her teacher is very nice and I can't say that I am very impressed with her either. When a teacher of a 1st grade class makes this statement:"my first grade class last year was much better than you", I think she is really thoughtless. We have taught Lily to deal with her and when she makes these ridiculous statements Lily usually makes one right back to her but keeps it inside her head. 
• Lily has a wonderful sense of humor and is now seeing things as funny that are well beyond her years. The other day she came home and said, "My teacher was actually funny today, she called herself nice!" Now that is pretty darned smart for a 6 yr old.
• The girls fight like cats and dogs but they can also play harmoniously for hours and hours.
• Lily can be really bossy and the other day Rose came onto the kitchen and told me that she was going  into the naughty corner. When I asked her why she told me that Lily had sent her there.  Poor kid. I quickly resolved that one and told Lily that was not her jurisdiction. 
• Top0max still rocks.
• Jacob bumped Rosie on the head accidentally with the camera the other day, very lightly. Ever since then Rosie keeps saying, "Daddy hurt Rosie". Talk about a guilt trip. 
• That is it for this wonderfully exciting installment.

Bad Parents, Laughing at little Ro-ree

We had such a silly day today. We had no plans at all and the girls spent the morning painting and then they took all of the petals off of my very droopy roses and added some water to them in a bowl and made perfume. It wasn't long before they realised that the water had gone pink so we added strips of an old t-shirt for them to dye. Then they got very complex and started tie-dyeing the strips. Wet, fragranced fun and they had a blast.

After a quick Bent0 lunch ( more on that later) we put the bike rack on the car and headed to our favourite park to feed the ducks. There are never any ducks there anymore just Ibis and they are so friendly The girls love feeding them so every single time I open a new package of bread I have to keep the crusts in a special container in the freezer so that we always have ducks yummies at the ready. Even Rosie is brave enough to participate now.






I love black and whites



I Love this photo


Rosie took this photo. She took lots of others but none that came out very well.


After we spent a good amount of time sitting there feeding the birds we rode all around the park and ended up at the playground and this is the part of the post that matches the title! Now don't go and get all upset with us I am sure all of you do these sorts of things sometimes. Well, perhaps you don't but it was so darned funny there will be no stopping us now! And just in case you are worried, Rosie loved the ride and went on it again and again and went on it prior to me taping her. I wouldn't have done it if she didn't like it. She went a bit to fast the final time and scared her little self silly...poor thing,

Ladybug Sighting

Yesterday we came home to find that UPS had delivered a box during our absence. I was expecting it as Jacob had warned me of it's impending arrival but I hadn't said a word to Lily. Many, if not most, of the the packages that are delivered here are for the girls so when Lily saw it she bolted straight for it and was quite disappointed to see it was addressed to Jacob. She then saw that it had holes in the side and started to read what was printed on the outside. Dear Lawd, the shriek of delight nearly blew out my eardrums.

We are having a problem with aphids on our gardenia bush so Jacob sat at the computer very late one night after returning from work and ordered ladybugs to take care of the problem. He told me the next morning and quite honestly I didn't believe him. I really thought he was joking but I found out yesterday that he was serious.

Lily was really excited and immediately rang him at work to ask what she should do with them and he told her, most emphatically, to leave them alone until the morning and then and only then, they would set them all free. He then spoke to me and said he felt we would be getting up very early in the morning.  Lily spent the rest of the evening shoving her eyeball up really close to the air holes and talking to them...oddball.

The rest of the story needs no narrator. We were woken up at some awful time by a  child who was desperate to see a boxful of ladybugs and set them free. After breakfast, with the girls still in their jimjams we went outside and set the buglets free. I don't mind ladybugs, I think they are the only bugs that don't give me the willies but I was a tad skeptical about a whole box full...eeeek. Lily was in heaven and I even managed to get Rosie to hold one on her finger and she ended up really liking it. I did video the shenanigans but as usual it won't upload. however this is just a minor glitch as we have a new computer and other videos are uploading so things will be back to normal very soon.