...the Rivers are His

Day two was lots more exploring - we played around on the land near their house most of the morning while the dads took out their "motorcycles!"

Looks like Jillian is in need of some help from Mike on her chalk-art project!
Kay showed the girls these little groves of trees that formed little "houses" for them to play in. We had lots of babies sleeping in those trees! This was a huge highpoint, especially for Grace!

I think Neal and Corey were on the lookout for a biker gang to join.
All the kids were entertained by watching their dads ride!

The Steiger's land includes a stretch of Los Pinos river and a great suspension bridge. After Jillian went down for a rest, we headed out to explore with the big kids.

Meredith looks slightly nervous of the moving bridge- or the moving water. Either way, we later learned, she had every right to have a healthy fear of that water!

The kids got to play on some really large boulders with their Dads close by.

We did more playing outside that evening - frisbees, baseballs, waterballoons and a very competitve game of Hooks vs Hanks horseshoes.

Jillian loved playing with Kay while we threw the horseshoes
Look at that form. No wonder the Hanks family won! :)

The Mountains are His...

...the rivers are His, the stars are his handy-work too! And we got to see it all on a trip to visit our wonderful friend's home in Colorado! We were so blessed by their invitation to join them along with the Hooks family.

The first adventure of the trip was us deciding to pack a van full of all 5 kids with the two moms driving. The dads took another car and we headed out at 9pm for our 15 hour drive. This worked well to allow the guys to blast loud music to stay awake and made it super fun for the kids until they fell asleep. We hit a few snags as we would have different kids waking up at different times asking for a potty stop and just the exhaustion of driving without sleeping. But when morning hit, we piled the two boys into the guy car to give everyone a little more room and kept on going! When we got to Colorado, the Steigers very kindly scooped up all the kids and let the parents nap. I can say that made me a new woman!

Later that night, we headed to the local high school for a the chilliest 4th of July fireworks I have ever experienced - we were wearing jackets! That does not happen in Texas! Meredith was a little nervous about the noise, so she watched from the inside of the cab of Mike's truck, but Jillian just stood outside playing, pointing, and talking to the fireworks the whole time.

The camera came out to take pictures of some exploring little kids and so did Meredith's inner model!
More posing!
Meredith was ready to explore in her boots and binoculars! She loved collecting pinecones, watching the birds and chipmunks that ate from the buffet of bird feeders at the edge of the deck.
What hams!
Jillian enjoying her fireworks time!

We have a swimmer!

Meredith has been "swimming" since she was about 10 months old - we started Mommy and me swim lessons the summer before she was 1 - but she has never really been a fan. She liked the water, but try to get her to do anything UNDER the water and she was out! Last summer we could hardly even get her to go into the big pool all summer, although she had a blast in the little inflatable pools. We still took mommy and me lessons last summer but it was pretty disasterous and we even stopped going before the season ended.

This year, I decided she would probably do better without me and signed her up for a two week class with Miss Suzy. I was really encouraged the few weeks before swimming lessons as we tried out Gigi's pool because she was loving being in the water again! Of course, she loved being in it with a swim ring, but I felt we had already made progress. Then swimming lessons started. She was excited. I dropped her off and she didn't even flinch that I was leaving her in a stranger's backyard, so Jillian and I went to the park without worry while we waited on her.

When we returned, I found a very sullen Meredith in the lounge chair. She wouldn't talk to me or smile. A friend of Meredith's was in her class and he said, "She is mad because she just screamed the whole time." Oh. That is when Miss Suzy laid it out for me - she wasn't going to be able to teach her or the other kids anything if Meredith just screamed, so she told us we could come back on Day 2 and hope that it turned out better - but she even sent me back home with the money I paid "in case." That was tough.

I went home and obsessed - I called another swim teacher to see if she could switch teachers. I got her advice. I called Miss Suzy and got her advice. Then we went to Gigi's house. Gigi made Meredith a swim chart with stickers and I took a no-nonsense approach making her go underwater more times than I could count. Then I prayed and prayed. And I had Meredith pray and pray. Day 2, I dropped off a crying little girl, but when I went nervously back to pick her up - there she was with a sucker (the true sign she did great). Turns out, the tears turned off right after I left! We had a few more rough days when she didn't want to do as much jumping off the side as Miss Suzie would have liked, but we went to Gigi's practically every day to keep practicing. I was amazed by her progress and confidence growth!

The last day, we were invited in to watch the end of her lessons and it was so fun to watch all of the kids - especially Meredith, who had turned from a screamer into a swimmer!

Meredith and her friend Marc ready to show us some jumps into the water
"You watchin, Mama?"

Ok, terrible picture - but look at my little girl (yes, the one that screamed so much she almost got kicked out of lessons) jumping off the diving board!!

And then she swam all the way to the side underwater to Miss Suzy
So comfortable in her surroundings, she had time to pose before jumping in for more!
There she goes!
Doing her airplane float
I am so proud of her for pushing through her fear and working so hard! It looks like she is a little proud too!

Happy Father's Day

I love that there is a day to celebrate Dads. Especially since I not only have a great one of my own, but because God has blessed me with an amazing Daddy for my beautiful girls. He is kind, he is patient (especially when I am not), he knows how to have lots of fun, he can throw an amazing dance party, he loves us, and he works hard for us every day. One of the things that I have loved most about Neal as a Daddy is seeing how much he has thrown himself into being the center of Meredith's world (and I know this list will expand to include things that he does specifically for Jillian pretty soon!) He takes a Meercat to work with him every day because she decided he needed to. He got up on stage at a big dance recital in an 80s outfit. He gets talked into letting her stay up late to watch baseball games. So when Meredith decided she he needed a Star Wars lunchbox to take with him to work, I knew he would take that in stride!

She actually set out to get him Star Wars underwear "because he loves that movie" (I guess her underwear has characters from her favorite shows and movies, why shouldn't his, right?) Sadly, Target did not have Star Wars underwear. But when she saw the lunch box, she knew that was a great alternative! And since, he actually does take his lunch to work quite a bit, and usually uses a grocery sack, I didn't think it was that bad of an idea. Of course, I had to grill her, begging her not to tell what we had gotten him. When we saw him after buying it she yelled "Daddy, guess what we got at Target?" I reminded her not to tell, to which she replied "I wasn't going to tell him about his present, I wanted to tell him about the other stuff we got." Come to find out, only a few minutes later, when I was out of earshot, she told him all about it in a whispered voice, even when reminded her it was supposed to be a surprise. Oh well!

Someday, I hope she can look at this picture and remember back to the days he took this with him to work and know that it shows how much he truly loves her and know that not all dads would do the things he does for her.

Neal, we are so blessed to have you in our lives and as the Daddy in our house - your three girls love you tremendously!