Laughter

Things that make Fox laugh:

Being wiggled - mostly if you put him up above your head and shake him a little. Make sure to laugh while you are doing it.

The girls making faces at me. Tonight at dinner they were all making google faces at me to prove their point that my new muffins I've been making are better without nuts (whatever?), and he was laughing as long as they were making faces at me - as soon as they turned to him with their kind of serious faces, he got very serious, too.

Peeing on himself. Hey, I don't make this stuff up. I won't be doing this one on purpose, but hey if it happens...

Last week
this week..

Last night when we left basketball it was raining harder than I've seen it in a long time. We were only running about 20 feet to the car and by the time I had Fox and the stroller in, my hair and jeans were completely soaked through. Lauren was soaking because she was stuck standing on the sidewalk because she didn't want to jump over the giant stream of water running past the curb and Brooke was soaked from trying to help Lauren. Ashley meanwhile was still pretty wet, but was too busy being completely freaked out by the storm. She was stressed out the entire way home that we were going to get in an accident or be tipped over by the wind. Of course as soon as we got home Brooke and Ashley still ran outside to get even wetter.. crazy kids.

Robie was doing a quick check of the yard this morning and Ashley was very concerned about the trampoline. We couldn't really check on it, though, since Robie couldn't get past the lake that is now that part of the yard. Guess the drainage can't keep up.

Since the kids still walk a ways after school in the rain, they made sure to bundle up this

morning. Ashley has 4 layers on top, Brooke has 2 pairs of pants and 3 layers on top.
It's kind of nice for a change. (for a short change, anyway :))

Changing Interests

Lauren has been focusing on some serious talent development this week. First she started work on a "dancing show". This involved a lot of running around, but also a pink clipboard with the names of all interested parties (either attending or performing). For one whole afternoon she walked around with the clipboard telling people she was busy working on "the show." The next day the show creation actually began. Costumes were donned. Ashley actually helped her quite a bit (mostly as a stalling tactic on her homework), with a little support from Brooke. The focus changed after Brooke got a new musical instrument at school. Then Lauren decided she should start a band. So her interests moved to all things musical. Thank goodness her friend, Abby, was available for some preliminary rehearsals. I mean, you can't just throw this stuff together at the last minute, right?

Such a skilled kid..

Not doing much work..

I think I've actually missed the kids while they were at school this week. I liked having fun things to do with them as my excuse for not doing all my work around the house.

We did get back to fun this weekend. Robie did a 15k this morning and I did a 10k. I was more worried than i wanted to be about the 10k (painful knees, painful back - the list of excuses for not training as much as I wanted could go on and on), but I did train and I ended up doing better than I had been hoping. I had convinced a bunch of my friends to do it as well and some of them had done the 5k, so towards the end I was running into them and it totally pushed me through. The best part of the day, though, was after Brooke and Ashley's basketball games (Brooke actually had two games today which was really rough). These guys don't look thrilled but it is actually really exciting and fun to watch the basketball games:Then we came home and just goofed around most of the afternoon - we played basketball with the girls out front for a while. Then Brooke was playing dart guns with the neighborhood boys, so I stood around and chatted with the moms (By the way, my favorite moment was when they were starting the nerf gun war and Brooke and her partner both jump into this truck and are waiting to shoot the other team, but the other team came all the way down the street and were hiding behind some trees waiting to shoot Brooke's team, so they were both sitting there for like 2 minutes until they realized no one was coming then thye both jump out and just run towards each other shooting away - classic). We had laundry to finish and cleaning to do and we just totally blew it all off. good times.

Visitors in our hometown

We went to the zoo last week with my sister and her kids. It was the busiest day I have ever seen - the entire parking lot was full, but we still had a great time! The funniest part was that all the kids brought their new cameras from Christmas, so every time there was an even remotely interesting animal, they all lined up to take pictures of it.

They even went through all the little reptile houses (nice for a busy day since no one usually goes there). Here's Ashley analyzing the best picture for this small reptile)

Petting zoo was a hit. Tyler wasn't feeling it, so he stayed out with Fox - he made a great babysitter.

The hippos were putting on a show for us, which was nice because right after that both Lauren and Mia lost it - they both wanted to ride in the strollers that their baby siblings were riding in - it was getting ugly, so we headed out of there.