June 2008 has been the wettest month in WI since they started keeping records of these things. We made the most of it with living room forts, and dress up, and lots of movies and video games:





As soon as it dried up a bit the girls and I have been going non-stop. On Monday Tess went to her last gymnastics class to say goodbye to Miss Jenny. Then on Tuesday we went to the zoo:



Tuesday was also Matt and I's 8 year wedding anniversary! It's hard to believe it's been that long already. Then on Wednesday the girls and I went to the mom/baby movies to see Alvin and the Chipmunks. $2 gets you in and a bag of popcorn per kid. Plus there are so many kids/babies there noone notices if my kids are noisy! Then today we had to go and spend a few hours at the Nissan dealer getting the van ready for all the driving coming up in the next couple months.

Oh, and since last week when Liv finally started crawling, she has figured out how to pull up onto everything:
This is before her discovering the step and how to climb it:
And this is after she realized she could escape:

And her first tooth has finally broken the surface. You can't see it well yet, but it can definitely be felt. I will get pictures when it is poking up a bit more.

Becca's play went pretty well. We weren't supposed to take any flash photography, so I had to sneak a couple pics at the end. The official video is supposed to be out in the next couple weeks. So if I can I will post that on here too. In the meantime, here is the cast. Becca is 4th row from the left, 3rd down:


Here she is with Mrs. Gagnon, who is retiring. Becca was absolutely distraught about the end of 1st grade today because she is going to miss her so much...
Here is one of the only pictures I was able to sneak. You can kind of see Becca closest to us between the heads.Look what Livvy can do...

I don't have any pictures of Tess or Tia this week. We went to the beach(Lake Pewaukee) on Saturday morning but I have learned my lesson about taking cameras to the beach so no pictures from that. Most of the rest of the week we were trapped inside with all the storms we've been getting so not much exciting to take pictures of. We have another round of storms on the way too, so hopefully we will stay as lucky as we have been and keep our house dry!

Have a good week!

Cecilia's official last day of preschool was last Friday. They had a big carnival for the kids. It was nice. The teachers were wonderful and will be sorely missed!


On Saturday, I had to take Becca to Toys R Us to get another gift for her to take to a Birthday party she was going to. (Another because Tess thought the first one we bought was for her so she opened it and was playing with it before anyone caught her.) I told Becca she had a $20 dollar limit, but of course they had a deal I just couldn't pass up:


(It was the display, so it was VERY discounted)
Then we used our new fire pit for dinner. Hot dogs and Marshmallows, doesn't get much more nutritious than that!

I realized this week that I don't have any professional pictures of Olivia by herself, and the last professional picture I have of Tess by herself was from Jun of '06! I felt guilty enough that I made an appointment that day and here are the results:



There were more cute ones, but I couldn't afford to buy all of them, so I had to just got with a couple favorites. There should be some digital proofs coming soon. I will post the link when I get it.



Oh, and I had to make a costume for Becca's play tonight. She is playing a Renaissance middle class woman. Here is a preview. I will have more pictures of the play after the performance. (Pretty good for thrift store finds, 4 dollars worth of Wal-Mart material and my limited abilities with my sewing machine, right?)

Here are some short clips of Becca's Patriotic Program at school. They did this for Veteran's Day.

DISCLAIMER: You WILL get motion sick watching these clips. I was trying to video with one hand while holding Olivia with the other and keeping Tess and Tia quiet at the same time. In one of them you can hear Tess sliding her chair around on the floor and the camera swoops around to stop her. Sorry about that. You watch at your own risk! haha

My regular Thursday post was delayed because blogger.com wouldn't let me upload pictures yesterday. I've got them up now though:
I love that Liv is getting big enough already for the big girls to include her sometimes. They were having a tea party and had four mugs, so instead of getting a stuffed animal to have the fourth they got Liv.
We spent most of Memorial Day playing in the yard. The girls found this frog hiding under my strawberry plants and played with it for a long time.

Cecilia's school has three farewell events for the kids. The first was a farewell park day/picnic. Their families were allowed to come for this event, so that means Tess got to go and make friends! She wasted no time and had a good sized following by the end:
They actually had a merry-go-round at this park and I was sitting there wondering why they don't have more of these when I found out: if you spin them fast enough, little children go flying off without warning!
We moved on to the swings after this realization. The lady pushing is Mrs. Heeley. Tia will definitely miss her next year!!

Here is Becca before her First Communion with her "George Washington" hair. That's what she called it. And she hated it and made me promise not to show anyone if she let me take a picture. Oh well, what are mom's for if not to provide your children with lots of topics for their future therapists, right?
Here is everyone else ready to go to church:


Future dentist maybe?

First Communion.

Today was Becca's First Communion. She looked beautiful!!

I had every intention of slacking off this week and not putting a post up, but was told in no uncertain terms that people (who shall remain nameless) were looking forward to a Thursday post and would be disappointed if there wasn't one. So, here ya go!!

The girls were playing outside after a rainstorm the other day and found several worms. They picked one up and made it a house and named it Princess:




Liv didn't take part in the worm fun, but she enjoyed her first Popsicle the other day:
She has also recently discovered that she likes to be upside down. She does this on the couch by herself and then laughs and laughs. Also while you're holding her she tries to toss herself into the upside down position. (This is especially fun when you are not expecting it and almost drop her):

Tess goes to a new gym for gymnastics where she is terrified of the coach that helps out. The only way I can get her to participate in the slightest is to do the "tricks" with Liv first. Tess sees that Liv likes it and then Tess is willing to try. I think this is where Liv got her love of being upside down.

Becca passed her First Communion test on Sat that we have been studying for and dreading, for several months. Yay!!

Not much else going on here this week, so til next week...

This was a very low key week for us. We just hung out at home for the whole weekend. Winter made a brief return visit on Sat night and Sun morning when we got a little bit more snow. We've had more than enough winter so we were all content to stay inside and not "enjoy" that weather. This is how we pass the time on a low key weekend!

Becca decided she wanted to help me bathe the "babies" one night this week. Surprisingly she did a really good job and didn't make a bigger mess like I expected her to.

Liv is at the stage where she kinda scootches around just far enough to get random bits of paper and small toys in her mouth. Anything that might be a choking hazard really grabs her attention! Someone has to have an eye on her at all times!! This is a perfect job for Cecilia and it makes her feel very grown up when you ask her to do it!

Tess loves playing with this book. It is one that you are supposed to practice tying, snapping, buttoning, zipping, etc. But Tess loves it because she thinks it is to wear. She had that "shoe" on for a while that night and later she tried to get the shirt on the next page on too. I wanted to get a picture but she was too tangled and upset to make her wait while I ran up to get the camera. You'll just have to use your imagination!


Liv has been "rolling her R's" for a couple weeks now, but I had been unable to get it on video before this. I just find it very amusing so I had to share. She does it before she gets worked up to a real cry.


Matt was trying to recreate the top pic of Cecilia (from Jun '03) with Liv. The top one is one of our all time fav pics of our girls, so when he saw Liv sitting like this playing with the Baby Born he had to try.

Til next week...