Saturday at Pine Flat

So Saturday Doug and I took the kids to the home and patio show at the Visalia Convention Center.  Ho hum.  It wasn't quite what we expected, but we got in for free, so no love lost.  All loaded back up and in the car we decided we were in a wandering mood (when are we not?).  So we called Paul and Christa to see if they'd like to join our wandering.  We met up in Sanger, originally thinking we'd head up to the snow, but since this was a spur of the moment idea, we weren't really snow-ready, so we decided to head up to Pine Flat dam instead, let the kids run around by the river and such.  It was a fun, relaxed afternoon.  It was nice to be out (we haven't done a lot of wandering/outside time since Kylie was born).  The kids had a blast, and here's the evidence:

Our whole pack (sans Doug the photographer, of course).  That's Alexa under that checkered blanket:)

Keilana and Dylan LOVE throwing rocks in water--it can literally entertain them for hours.  Keith liked that, too, though I noticed he was fond of throwing in sticks as well.

Our little Canon has some fun features, one being the ability to play with the color settings.  The boys were in blue. . . . 

. . .and Keilana in pink

This one was based off the brown in Paul's sweatshirt--check out how well it picked up their skin tones!

Oh, their hair.  I love their hair.

These two are the ultimate boys.  They love each other, though I swear they've got to spend half their time fighting.  Monsters, the both of them. 

So, we tried to get a picture of all the kids sitting in this cool tree.  Dylan took off.  He climbed to the top of this branch, and then got stuck.  He couldn't go any further, but didn't know how to get down, either.  

Looking like a treed cat! :)

Snapped one last shot (not realizing the color settings were still altered) before Christa climbed to the rescue.  I thought we should just leave him there until he got desperate enough to jump, but that could've taken a while.  

We did get a few photos before he escaped:)

Baby Girls

I got a couple of cute shots of all the little girls together over at Amanda's house on Monday (she and I have to sing on Sunday, so we had to pick a song).  Thought I'd share:)

Claire, belonging to Amanda, born 12/15.  Kylie.  Alexa, belonging to Christa, born 11/16.
Kylie and I after a night of fun over at McDermont.  She slept the whole time, but was wide awake once we got home.
Sitting on Mama's lap while Keilana and I play Candyland after Church.
Doug looked at this picture and said, "What is this? The meeting of the minds?"  Cracks me up.  Look how cheeky/jowl-y my little girl is :)

Doing better

Made some good headway today. . .

starting to feel like I live in my house. . .

feeling a bit silly for feeling so frustrated

because my life is easy

and my challenges so small

Feeling ungrateful

House tidy but not clean. . . .

closets/spare rooms disorganized and piled. . . .

counter tops, table tops, dresser tops all with piles. . .

walls and baseboards need cleaning. . .

desk needs to be overhauled from top of hutch down through every drawer. . .

carpet needs replacing (it stinks from the dang cat). . . 

toilets and bathtubs need to be scrubbed. . .

floors need to be mopped. . .

stairs need to be vacuumed. . .

papers need to be filed. . .

garage needs to be organized. . .

backyard looks like white trash, wood scraps everywhere, no grass. . .

in the mean time, lost both pacifiers. . .

baby wants to be held constantly, harder to get to sleep. . .

want candy/pasta/cookies

and fresh flowers. . .

a kiss and a hug. . .

tired and frustrated nearly to the point of swearing and tears (yes, I'm that bothered by clutter and disorder). . .

but not quite. . .

Babies!

OK, someday I'll blog about something besides babies again, but for now its what you get.  Yesterday morning I watched Claire while Amanda went to the gym, and her and Kylie took a nap together on the couch.  It was too cute to pass up.  For those who don't know Amanda (Doug's sister) and I have the twin babies:  Clayton and Keilana born almost exactly 2 months apart; Conner and Dylan, born three days apart; and Kylie and Claire, born 3 days apart.  Kylie looks massive in this photo next to her pretty, petite little cousin. :)

Keilana takes a lot of pictures.  Most of them end up being deleted before downloading (we only need so many pictures of Keilana taken by. . .Keilana), but she gets some pretty good ones, too.  Every now and then she gets one I love.  She snapped this one this morning while I was chatting with Kylie (and Kylie was very happy to be chatted at!)  She's a happy baby :)

Got one!

Ok, so I have had no pictures of Kylie smiling up til this point, because usually when she's smiley its because I'm utterly focused on her and unfortunately not thinking about pictures.  Then when I get the camera out to take pictures, she always suddenly becomes quite solemn.  We'll have to work on that.  But I remembered, my camera was in reach, so I snapped a few.  Forgive the poor framing, I was not looking at where I was pointing the lens, as I was trying to take pictures winding the camera around the other two children who were also on my lap.

Don't blink

Today as we were walking home from preschool, I was watching Keilana run down the street in front of me, with her long body so apparent in her little fitted tshirt and her long, lean legs so cute in her little jeans.  She looks so big, I thought.  Not like a little toddler girl or a little preschool girl, but just a plain ol' little girl.  She can read some very simple books and no longer calls me Mama or Mommy--just simply "Mom".  I suddenly thought, Where'd my baby go?  When did this:

Become this:

She's so beautiful and so much fun.  But I couldn't help thinking when I looked at this:

Don't blink.