Kansas City here we come

We stopped on the way home in Kansas City to see my Aunt Mary. It was so good to see her and Alison again, though I was a bit surprised to find Alison was not the 10 year-old girl that I remember. She's a senior in high school and is getting ready for prom and college! How does that happen??? Anyway, she was so kind as to give the girls her room and share her neat-o hammock chair with them and Aunt Mary read them LOTS of Dora (thanks!!!):

The Shea Homesteads

It had been a long time since Phil was in South Dakota, so we took some time to see some family sites. We adventured onto the dirt roads in search of the old Shea farms, it had been probably over a decade since he'd seen them last, and Katie and the kiddos had never! It was a good thing that Grampy LeRoy was leading the way, since Phil would have missed the road by a mile. The folks who own the land now were very nice and let us wander about and take some nice pictures. It was fun seeing some of Grampy's old stomping grounds.

Click for more photos!

Grandma Shea's birthday

The big event was Saturday and the girls were very excited to sing Happy Birthday and eat a bunch of cake. Of course, we did all of those things, but it was also fun to get together with family (most of whom the girls didn't know they had!). Here's a photo of Claire and Maddie with the birthday girl:

Click any of the photos for more pictures of our trip

Claire discovered she had a cousin that was just about her age. They were soon best friends and spent the afternoon playing.

Claire and Maddie saw the hotel's swimming pool during their wanderings at the party, so Phil ran back to the farm and got their swimsuits. They had so much fun splashing in that pool! Maddie was laughing so hard that she sounded a bit psychotic. She screamed like crazy when we pulled her out, but her little lips had been blue and chattering for quite awhile. Claire had a lot of fun using her "kickers" and "scoopers" to try to swim with her daddy.

South Dakota - it's COLD!

We took a little vacation and drove up to South Dakota for Phil's Grandma Shea's 90th birthday party. Checked the weather before we left and it was supposed to be in the 50s and 60s while we were there. Not the 90 degrees we were getting in Oklahoma, but we were ready for a break from that anyway. We spent the night in Nebraska and got a phone call from Phil's dad in the morning telling us to change our route because it was SNOWING!

Thanks to LeRoy we managed to avoid the bad roads and got to Grandma Millie's with no problem. Fortunately we had remembered to bring the girls' winter jackets and they were able to get out in the snow. Claire loved playing in it; Maddie wanted nothing to do with it after discovering it was cold.


As always, click the photo to see more from our trip!

Summer is here?

Well it was 85+ degrees yesterday and the girls were spun up and excited to take advantage. Cindy, Claire may be your protege!

Fun and games

Well, maybe not games yet, but the girls sure are having fun together! They play school together (Claire = teacher, Maddie = student), they play Mommy together (Claire = Mommy, Maddie = baby who gets lots of bottles), they play hide-and-seek... Most importantly they PLAY COOPERATIVELY! It's wonderful. Now, don't get me wrong. This cooperative play doesn't last more than 5-10 minutes at a time and then it ends with some loud screaming. But it does give me hope for the future, that one day I may be able to take a shower without physically separating into different rooms or putting on a TV show (which causes a vegetative state that they are unable to break for the duration of the show). Here's a video of them playing together:

Potty time!

OK, so I'm not getting my hopes up for any lasting results right now, but I'm so excited because yesterday Maddie went pee-pee on the potty 3 times! Per her request ("I 'unt peepee)! And today she's already gone twice. It's actually more of a pain in the neck than diapers because I have to sit there with her (or we have accidents on the bathroom floor - that happened once yesterday too) and she can't pull her own pants up or down. But she thinks it's fun, probably because her big sister does it.

I would never have started real "potty training" this early with her, but if she's interested then who am I to say no? I'm just hoping that she doesn't burn herself out early on this and decide she's not going to give up the diapers until age 4 or something...

GO MADDIE!

Lilacs

Spring has sprung around here and the shrubs are getting leaves. We had two mystery bushes on each end of the house which recently began leafing out -- and now they're blooming! We have two nice-sized lilac bushes. What a great surprise! The girls and I went out to cut a few blooms this morning and they had fun sniffing and playing with them.

We're back!

Whew! Long time, no post. Sorry about that. We sadly sent off Grandma, Paw-paw, and Max a little over a week ago. We were confident we sent Max away on the right foot, though, as you can see here:

After they left, Claire busied herself with a tea party:


And Maddie got a new 'do, which she's not too sure about:

Airplane visit

This morning Phil took us out to see one of the C-17s. I think Max had a great time. We even got to see a T-38 (a fighter training airplane) do a touch and go on the runway. I'm guessing this was a tad more fun for Max than the doll dress-up activity that the girls tried to talk him into this morning. As usual, click any of the photos below for a slide show of more pictures!

Gardening

We've been putting in a nice vegetable garden for the past few days (OK, who am I kidding? Mom and Dad did most of the work and we tried to learn how to do it so that they don't have to come set it up in every house we move to!). Anyway, it's all set out now, but it took a bit of work. I think my parents are going to send us a bill for their massage therapist when they get back home...

And here they are, taking the kids out for a walk. It sure is nice to have Grandma and PawPaw in town!

They're here!

After much anticipation from our girls, their grandparents finally arrived yesterday. And they brought a bonus playmate - their cousin Max! Claire is diligently working on getting Max to play princesses or ballet with her, so far to no avail. His resolve to stick to boy-type activities has been strong.

The weather has been beautiful again. It was in the 80's today - almost too hot for all of the running around the kids were doing outside and we even turned on the air conditioning. Max was able to ride his bike here, which is nice because the weather at home hasn't been very good for that. We haven't downloaded many photos yet; there will be more to come. In the meantime, here's one of Grandma reading Peter Rabbit: