Playing at the Park and Misc Pictures

This first picture Kylie asked Megan to take so she could email it to her kindergarten teacher so her teacher would see her webkinz ~


I promise I had nothing to do with this :) Beth and Jack LOVE playing that one or the other of them is a dog and the dog crate is a very popular prop. This particular day, they were both dogs and had two baby dogs (Megan and Kylie's webkinz). Beth figured out how to close the top part of the door from the inside of the crate. They were so thrilled to actually be closed in the crate! Yet another proof that no matter how much money you spend on toys, the simple things that weren't meant to be toys at all are what they end up loving!


One night last week both Rob and I were actually home at the same time, so we loaded the younger kids into the stroller and put the dog on his leash and set off for the playground. Rob, Meg, Kylie and Simon did sprints up the sidewalks on the way there. Beth tried to get me to do sprints while pushing the double stroller with 50 lbs of children in it. I declined for some strange reason.

They all made a beeline for the slides first.

Megan gave Jack piggyback rides down the slide ~


But Jack did quite a bit of sliding on his own. He must have pushed off at the top of the slide very firmly as he would shoot down the slide, sort of missing the whole middle part of it. He seemed to enjoy it though!


This picture was taken just after Megan slid down the slide into Kylie, who was standing at the bottom. I'm thinking it was on purpose :)


Jack on the jungle gym ~


Beth didn't slide for very long. She decided the swings looked more appealing.


Rob agreed with her ~


The other three kids followed suit ~


Beth and Jack loved how high I pushed them - they got to swing higher then usual due to the type of swing ~


I tried to get a good picture of all four together, but Jack banged into Beth's head when he slid down the slide after her, so it was less of a success than I hoped it would be ~


Simon smelled the crumbs in the animal cracker container and tried to get each one, resulting in a few very funny moments :) ~


Brittney came over to hang out on Saturday. We haven't gotten to see her much at all except Sundays since school started and we've missed her! I got a shot of Megan doing her hair while Brittney and the kids watch Taylor Swift music videos on youtube ~


After dinner tonight I let the kids eat popsicles outside. It was bath night anyway :) They came running in after a few minutes and asked me to bring the camera outside as they had found a caterpillar that was spinning a chrysalis on our fence.




I love that my kids notice things like that! Another thing I love is that hardly a day goes by without one or several of them picking flowers for me, either in the backyard or on the way home from school :)

In other news, I finished my third quarter at Capella. I got a 100% in the class :) I had a rough night the last night when I turned my 15 page paper in and the computer told me it was late. I thought all assignments were due at 11:59pm, however apparently the final day of class ends at 5pm. I had never turned in a paper the day it was due - I always try to turn them in at least 24 hours early in case there is a problem (such as a technical issue). I turned that paper in just after 8pm. At first I thought it was just a technical problem, such as the computer defaulting to 5pm and the time hadn't been changed or something like that. I checked my other classes and discovered that all my final assignments had be due at 5pm. My teacher, whom I love, told me that she was going to accept the assignment and didn't even dock it for being late. Since I had done all the other assignments early and had a 100 in the class, she had no problem believing that I had made an honest mistake. It made me so grateful for every night that I didn't feel like doing my assignment, but got up and did it to the best of my ability anyway! That was really hard for me during this class especially as the final paper was worth 60% of my grade, so by the time I got down to the last few weeks, I could have gotten 0's on my weekly assignments and still gotten an A as long as I did well on my final paper. I still have a 4.0 GPA and am going to try to keep it that way! I'm so grateful for a husband and family who support me! They make it so much easier :)

My friend Crysta (who I stayed with in the hospital) had her babies last week. She was 28 weeks and 2 days. Both girls are doing well, but are obviously still in the hospital as they are less than 3 lbs. Everything went as well as it could considering how early they were born :)

Another of my friends just lost her baby this morning when they discovered that her pregnancy was ectopic. My heart breaks for her. It makes me hold my little ones tighter and not mind as much when there are tiny cut up pieces of paper all over the playroom floor because Megan decided to make a cup filled with "magic", which apparently translates to "the tiniest pieces of paper she can cut".

Rob is working his second job tonight, so I'm missing him. Meg, Kylie and Jack are asleep, but when I went to investigate a noise in the playroom, I discovered Beth had snuck downstairs, quietly built a little castle out of blocks, and was happily playing by herself. She followed me back into the dining room, spotted the camera on the desk, and after taking several pictures of me, requested that I take a few of her in her Dora nightgown ~