Hurricane in OK?

Southwest Oklahoma = Hurricane? Oh my.

All joking aside, we hope this blows over and everyone stays safe.

Riding lessons

After all of that rodeo excitement last weekend the girls decided they wanted to be cowgirls when they grow up. They've been yee-haw'ing and galloping all over the house. Lucky for Claire, I had already scheduled her to start horse riding lessons today. Maddie made sure I didn't get confused and think she wanted lessons by reiterating all morning long, "No me pet neigh." (Translation: I don't want to pet the horse).

Claire will be learning some horse basics (like don't get your feet stepped on and how to not get kicked) plus she's getting to actually ride the horse a bit. If Maddie ever warms up to them then she can take a lap around the ring at the end of Claire's lesson until she's old enough to have her own lesson.

The horse's name is Yankee, and he's actually the very same horse she rode at the 4th of July party. He's quite a nice horse and didn't seem to mind getting led around this morning instead of enjoying his usual pasture time.

Here she is getting ready to catch her horse:

She got him!

Comb him while having a water break:

Look at our girl go (do ya think she's having fun?)

What's more American than...

...a parade down Main Street?

Today Altus had the rodeo parade. It went right down Main Street, then down 62 to the rodeo grounds across from Bar S Foods (no, I'm not making this stuff up). Pretty cool. Claire loved the horses; Maddie couldn't decide if she liked the "neighs" or if she was afraid of them. They both really liked the candy. In fact, Claire informed us on the way home, "Well, I really liked the whole thing, but my favorite, favorite, favorite part was the CANDY!!!"

Is that the sound of... a cattle drive?

We live in Oklahoma. They have rodeos here. This is a new thing for us, aside from a very brief trip to a rodeo in San Antonio when Phil and I were dating (and it was really more like a carnival than anything else). Anyway, they really rope and ride at the rodeos around here. Unfortunately most of that ropin' and ridin' starts at 8pm, which is a bit late for our little cowgirls. Lucky for us, though, there are some events that take place during the day. Like the cattle drive. You know, the one that goes through the base and right through housing! Crazy? Yes. But it's true.

The girls were in school & Mother's Day Out when the cattle came through housing, but I managed to get them back in time to see some steers (or are they cows?). Claire now officially wants to be a cowgirl when she grows up.

I didn't have my camera with me, and I'm still waiting on photos from a friend who was there with hers. In the meantime, you'll just have to believe me that we had longhorns and cowboys here today!

Guess where we're going

Can anyone guess where we're going right now?

Claire's uber-excited for her first dance lesson; Maddie's dressed up for moral support!

No lazy Saturday for Phil

Phil has been putting in some really long hours for the last few weeks. And it looks like there will be a few late evenings at work yet to come, so I kind-of guilted him into a nice new swingset for the girls. After all, if I'm going to have a couple of extra hours during which I need to keep them occupied every day then we have to add something cool to the arsenal, right? Thankfully Walmart had just marked down a nifty swingset, so we picked it up and poor Phil had his work cut out for him.

Of course the girls knew he was up to something when he started banging around in the garage. Claire joined him a bit to "help Daddy with his project" and it didn't take her long to announce that her daddy was building her a PLAYGROUND! We really had her going for awhile, trying to convince her that it was actually a shelf for my plants. She got pretty exasperated with us and started talking to us slowly like we were 3 years old, "No guys. Mommy's plants would slide right off of that slide. It's a PLAAAAAAYGROUNNNNNND!"

Phil built the whole thing himself (I occasionally held things in place when he ran out of hands) and the girls thought he did a great job.

He started in the garage:

Then moved to the backyard:



Then (after a short rain- and lunch-break) he put in the final screws and the girls got to play!

Now for the unending chorus of, "Mommy, come push me on the swing!" or, in Maddie-speak, "Mommeeeee! I 'unt fwiiiiiing!"

School begins

One could almost hear an audible collective sigh from the moms around the block today, as all of our kids went back to school. Mother's Day Out started today for Maddie too, so I was kid-free for a couple of (short) hours.

Phil was home this morning because he's flying tonight, so we dropped off the kiddos together and -GET THIS!- went out to breakfast. By ourselves. With no children. And we ate leisurely. Sure, we were eating Altus-diner-breakfast-food, but no matter. It was nice.

Of course, a photo of the kidlets (and more if you click on it!):

Hopscotch

As you can see, Claire is learning the art of hopscotch. Yes, we've finally had a few days in a row where it wasn't 105 degrees so we actually ventured out and did "outside" activities, like draw with chalk on the sidewalk. Maddie tries to hopscotch too, but she was napping when I took the video.



And HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAWPAW!!!

Hot Enough for You?

If only we could push some of this north...

What happens if you take your kids...

...to the pet store?

I really should have known the answer to this. But we were bored and it's too hot to play outside, even at 9:30am, so we packed up and went to the pet store. Give me a break; we don't have a zoo for about 150 miles so this is as good as it gets! Anyway, the girls fell in love with all of the pets and Claire decided that she wanted a hermit crab. Here's her argument for hermit crabs:

Claire: Mommy can I have a hermit crab, please? (she pulls out the manners when it matters)
Me: No.
Claire: But WHY?
Me: Because I don't care for hermit crabs.
Claire: (muttering) Well I care for hermit crabs.

I stood my ground on hermit crabs. They look a bit too creepy to me and Maddie didn't like them either (she kept trying to hide behind me while pointing at them and calling them "bugs"). Claire did, however, discover my soft spot for feeder goldfish. I mean, the poor things are are sitting on death row - they're DOOMED! - and they don't even know it. So we now have a classic fishbowl with two feeder goldfish, whom we saved from their terrible fate. Though living with two young girls who like to tap the glass may be a fate worse than death for a goldfish. I dunno.



Claire picked out names for the fishies from their Limu, The Hawaiian Turtle book. The white one is Maddie's and its name is 'Ele 'ele ; the orange one is Claire's and it's Kakanaka.

Boy, is Phil going to be surprised if he reads this at work!