Our life these days...

I am so very sorry for how long it is in between posts, especially for the family over the ocean and through the woods... we miss you guys over there a lot and think of you often. we are so excited to that mickie is moving in with us this up and coming week... sorry for stealing her rocky and elisabeth, but we need her around here... life without mickie just isn't quite complete... who else can i get annoyed with for never having their key with them when they come home and have to knock on our window to let her in... we are so eager and excited to have her here with us...we closed on our house on wednesday.. it seemed slightly uneventful, but i guess it is exciting... i guess every month the mortgage is due, it will be exciting to mark that date off!!!! Next, Jonathan started school this last week, he is taking chemistry and computer programming online. Chemistry takes up a lot of time, but i have enjoyed helping him with it.. which brings me to my reason for not posting often... we ordered internet over a month ago and it has worked less than 50 percent of the time..needless to say uploading photographs was worthless... but some nice att man helped us out a little, so i do believe i am back on track!!!! looking forward to blogging more now.

Ruthie takes memphis

This picture cracked me up because she looks like the marshmallow man in ghostbusters.... great camera angle tristan!!! so impressed with my camera/picture taking abilities.. honestly. anyways.. my friend and jessica's friend andrea came to town last week and we had a lot of fun with her and played games a lot and ate a lot and just enjoyed each other's company a lot. i also went out with some great ladies on saturday night for the play sound of music.. had a blast!!! so overall, minus i am sure the times where we sat at our house all day long while children took naps, which some days happens here at our house... we had a very fun time. i wish i could get together with jaime and jessica more... what fun girls!!!!!

Water fountains downtown...

I would like to say that we all enjoyed our downtown experience, but overall it felt slightly uneventful for me and of course jonathan and i argued the whole time about whether or not memphis felt like a city..i am sure andrea finds our arguments hilarious and pointless.. i guess i should ask her. Anyways.. we went to see the ducks at the peabody.. way too many people there, but the girls got a kick out of the duck anyways.. and then we walked to the hot dog stand that sold hot dogs way too small to feed anyone that hadn't had lunch and hour ago... so we were still hungry and when i say we.. i mean the girls and i!!! everyone else seemed satisfied, so we munched on animal crackers until we got home. then we walked to the fountains... they were kind of fun, but a little chilly and very powerful for small children and ruthie kept falling backwards and hitting her head on the glass on the ground, but i did get a couple pretty good pics! anyways.. i will quit complaining.. i had a good time, just not the best, maybe i was grouchy that day..hmm.. retrospect.

funny little ruthie

I often refer to ruthie as little, but she behaves as though she is so big. She does everything beyond her time... definitely hard to keep up with.. i feel like she needs to learn new words or commands constantly, just to add to her already too large for her age vocabulary.. but there is also a side to ruthie that is extremely silly. i am not sure who she gets it from because both jonathan and i have extremely silly sides... i guess we all four do... hmmm. anyways.. she had the time of her life wearing her swimmie diaper on her head.

Typical Breakfast for little miss Ärta...

Here is Ärta eating her breakfast so peacefully... everyone watching desiring exactly everything she has.... i think ruthie said Ärta 40 times while she was eating breakfast this day.. you would think ruthie was starved considering how much of Ärta's breakfast she ate. I had forgotten i had taken these pictures.. but times like this are just priceless at our house...i think we need to get a spray bottle though or just cut one of each of the cat's legs off to keep them off the table.. seemed to work with our first one.. hmm....????

THE potty training...

some good days... some not so good days.. i am not sweating it though....i am sure by the time she is twenty... she will be pooping the potty. We have about 50% poop down and higher peepee... i think ruthie might be fully potty trained before elly m. she at least talks about it more than elly m. does. gotta love two little talkers.. but i mean check out how cute little elly m. is in her little girl undies...adorable i think.

Sardis Lake

We went to Sardis Lake a couple of weeks ago.... fun was had by all.. clothed and naked!!! We had grilled hot dogs and turkey burgers. We went swimming... danced in the water.. sang songs... and then both of our girls did head first falls into the sand and that is when we decided to go home..... so much fun!

one more thing

I just want to let everyone know about this fun place here in memphis at the botanical gardens... the big backyard for kids... so much fun... the girls and teresa and grandma and i had so so so much fun. It was fun the whole time. you could burn a whole afternoon there without even thinking about it and to top it off... it is free on wednesdays from noon to 6... i mean can't beat free fun.

Elly M. at 2

I started to think for a couple of days that two was going to be absolutely horrible. the girls were both screaming, neither or them were sleeping and i declared to the Great God above.... "have mercy on me" and He did. I took them to the doctor to find out that they both had double ear infection! i was greatly pleased to know that this was not my future with two small children, i would soon have my sweet elly m. back to normal.. or her new normal of potty training and having big girl bed and just not being anything like a baby anymore. She is doing an excellent job potty training...my mom and many others told me that it would be easy once they decide they are ready to do it. I am shocked that one saturday about 2 weeks ago, she just flat out told me "no more diapers mommmy!" that is after spending the entire morning in them, but from that afternoon on, she has been a big girl. i am amazed at just how fast she has grown. She is a rather amazing two year old... as she grows.. she becomes more and more entertaining. she definitely has her two year old moments, especially with her little sister, but that is to be expected. i am trying to think of a couple cute things she says at two, just so that she can remember later...swimsuit is swimsoup, everything that starts with f comes out sounding like s, for instance flower is souwer, frog is sog, fork is sork.....but most words she says and she says mostly well... yesterday sitting in the bathroom we had a very important conversation, or she made it feel important... sitting on the toilet she says "mommy, piglet has a butt!" in the most excited tone... "mommy has a butt", "daddy has a butt", roosie(ruthie) has a butt", "my baby has a butt"... what two year olds discover!!! fun and entertaining to discover everyone has a butt!

cuteness to the max...

I couldn't help but blow up ruthie in this picture. It just captures her fun personality to the T. She is a blast most of the time. Elly m., ruthie, and evie spend most non-nap times together doing fun things. We are so fortunate to have little miss evie and her parents as are friends. We get to do lots of fun things with them. I noticed that I have a lot more pictures of ruthie recently on the blog. i think i would like to say that most of my pictures of elly m. are of the back of her head. She will not look at the camera anymore. She is too busy doing other things like dancing and running and looking around at her surroundings. her world has opened up past just her mamma and daddy. it is fun to watch her be so curious. she loves to sit and talk about everything that she has just seen. at the end of the day, she will often lay in my bed with me and just talk about the things that she enjoys doing. She is definitely a little girl that needs to her word quota done before she goes to sleep. sweet little thing she is.