Retro Toys

First of all, that last post was my 300th post - wow!  I'd like to thank all 3 or 4 of my readers for sticking around.  :)

I have mentioned Audrey's new fascination with Star Wars.  Last Sunday while we were at Grandma and Grandpa F's for Uncle PJ's birthday, Andy grabbed all of his old Star Wars figures to bring home. 

Andy wasn't home from work when we pulled them out on Monday and she kept asking everyone's names.  I didn't know some of them, so she named one guy Buster and then went and got her Ariel doll to play with Princess Leia.  And then this happened:

She is quite creative!  She was playing Pet Store Restaurant the other night.  She said that it was a restaurant for pets and she had her animals eating puzzle pieces (those were the food).  I had to call her Audrey Rose, B was Anna, Andy was Roger and I was named La La.  I'm not sure why everyone got normal names and I got a stripper name!

Yesterday while I was picking up the girls from Mom's house, I went into the basement and brought home my old Barbies and Strawberry Shortcake dolls.  Audrey was playing with Barbie tonight and said "These dolls are so cool.  They are SO old!"  I took offense to that!

In Bridget news, she is talking up a storm lately and boy is she bossy! In addition to "Mine" and "Me," she also will grab for something and yell "Let go!"  When she wants Andy to lay on the floor and wrestle with her, she pushes him and yells "Get down!"  I guess when you are the smallest one in the house, you have to make yourself known.

Here is Bridget dressed up in one of Aunt Steph's old dance costumes (well, I think the hat is from New Years).

I downloaded an app to my iPhone that gives pictures a vintage look.  Here are some of my pics - I think they look kind of cool!

St. Louis Part 2

On Saturday, Andy and I took the girls to Grant's Farm, which is a farm on the former property of Ulysses Grant and is owned by Anheuser Busch.  The Clydesdale stables are also located there and I must say, I am not much of a horse person, but those are beautiful animals!

After seeing the horses, we took a train ride through the farm to get to the attractions.  On the train ride, you drive through a ton of wildlife that are right up next to the road.  We saw zebra, buffalo, deer, and longhorn cattle (plus other stuff that I can't think of right now!).  Back at the exhibits, they had elephants, llamas, a capybara, and lots of birds, including flamingos that luckily were not talking so we didn't have to worry about them saying the wrong noise!  Andy really bonded with this gal:

There is a little area where you can buy bottles and feed these adorable little mini goats.  Luckily we decided to bypass the bottles and just go pet them, because the girls were not super fond of them!  You would think that Audrey would be in heaven petting baby goats since she loves animals so much, but she was so scared that she jumped on my lap while I was squatting down petting them.  I guess she just likes to look!

Poor Bridget bent down to look at the gravel and this little guy thought her hair looked like a good treat.  Those goats will try to eat anything!  They munched on my backpack straps, Andy's shoelaces and shirt, and then they found the drawstring on Audrey's skirt!

Since it was our last night in town, we spent the rest of the day and late into the night hanging out at Grandma's.  The girls never really warmed up to her, plus it was 10:30ish GA time, so they were not very pleased when we tried to get them to take a picture with their great grandma!

They did well on the ride home too, although B's twins now have pink hair! 

Now that we have our first trip with both girls out of the way, I'm ready for our next adventure.  The plan right now is to go to Charleston, SC in the fall because I have never been there.  I just need to get Andy to commit to a date so I can book it (hint, hint honey).

St. Louis - Part One

Last week we took the girls (along with the Stevens, Grandma and Papa) up to St. Louis to visit their Great Grandma.  We haven't been up there since Audrey was Bridget's age and this was our first trip with B. We were about 4 miles down the road on the way to St. Louis when Audrey asked "Are we there yet?"  :) But, between the games on my iPhone and the DVD player, the girls did great in the car!  Bridget had to pose on the hotel bed as soon as we got our luggage to the room.

We got to Grandma's in time to go out to a late dinner at Grandma's favorite Italian restaurant.  That was the first time we have gone out to dinner with all 5 kids and considering that they had been in cars for 9 hours, it turned out well.  I learned at the restaurant (and throughout the weekend) that Bridget loves to color.  I don't let her do it much at home because she usually eats the crayons, but she sat with the boys and colored and colored and colored!  Audrey is just now started to enjoy it too.

On Thursday we stayed around Grandma's house.  Uncle Ronny filled up a little kiddie pool.  We left the girls swim suits at the hotel, so Bridget got to run around naked and Audrey wore Jack's suit (he stayed in his shorts).  Audrey had already met Mom's brothers Ronny and Jerry, and when Uncle Bob came over on Thursday, Audrey looked at me and said "Who's this other brother??"

That evening, our second (or third - I'm not sure how that works!) cousins came over with their little girls.  We used to play with Angie and Heather all of the time when we were all little and we haven't seen them in years.  Thanks to Facebook, we were able to reconnect with them.  It was cool having our kids all play together in the same yard that we used to all play in!  My camera was acting up again, so I'll have to get the pictures from Mom or Tina (which means I may never see them!).

We headed straight to the St. Louis Zoo on Friday.  I wasn't expecting a lot because it's an old, free zoo, but it was better than our zoo here!  It was huge and it appeared that a lot of the exhibits had been recently renovated.  Uncle Butch and Aunt Jaynee met us at the zoo ("Mommy, what is this other brother's name??") and we were able to use their zoo pass to see the sea lion show and ride the zoo train for free.

Towards the end of our zoo day, Audrey kept saying that she wanted to see the flamingos, so we headed back to the flamingo exhibit.  Once we got there, she sat on the ground a burst out into tears.  She was upset because she didn't think the flamingos were making the correct noise.  She plays a Fisher Price game online and the flamingos go "Ah Eee," so when the real flamingos didn't make that noise, she kept saying "The flamingos don't make that noise.  They say Ah Eee."  I kept trying to explain that these were real flamingos, so that was the real noise that they make, but she was just insistent that these flamingos were making the wrong noise!

Although we were at the zoo for close to 6 hours, we did not see everything.  We were all getting beat (plus is was 92 degrees outside), so we headed to the gift shop where Audrey picked out a stuffed pink flamingo that she named Sarah.  We held up different stuffed animals to Bridget until she grabbed one - she picked out a baby penguin.

This post is getting much longer than I anticipated, so stay tuned for Part 2 of our trip!  I know it's boring to look at other people's zoo photos, but here is a link to our trip photos if anyone is interested!  I had to edit a bunch of animal pictures out and in doing so,  I learned that Andy has a thing for camels.  Seriously, there were more shots of camels than there were of the girls! ;)


Shutterfly Pictures

A Baby

Bridget has been all about baby dolls lately.  Until recently, the only dolls we had were Audrey's.  She doesn't play with them much and she is usually good about letting B play with them, but I went ahead and got Bridget her own baby doll.  She carries that baby (and sometimes 2 of Audrey's) around the house and hugs it, pats it's back, pushes it around in the stroller, rocks it and sings to it.  For some reason, she prefers to have two babies with her (maybe she wants to have twins like Aunt Tina?).  If you just hand her one baby, she will cry and say "A baby!  A baby!" until you hand her another.

This picture is out of focus b/c I took it with my phone in the dark, but this was her last night.  She fell asleep tightly hugging her twins.

We found a big praying mantis on my car yesterday.  Check out B's "WTF" look in the reflection.  It made me chuckle when I looked back at the picture!

Audrey also found a little white (dead) moth on the ground that she carried around the driveway and named Olivie (like Olivia without the A.  She is creative with her names - she has a stuffed sheep named Daphne too!).  Well, she dropped Olivie and cried and cried because her best friend was missing and she missed her.  When Andy got home from work, she ran up to him crying and said "You got rid of Olivie.  I miss her."  He had NO idea what she was talking about! 

Blaming random people for things is something new that she has been doing lately.  A couple of weeks ago, we found a dead butterfly on the ground and I said "Oh, someone ripped his wing and he couldn't fly," to which she replied "Yeah, I think Uncle Jason did it."  There is an orange marker stain on her sheets and she noticed it yesterday and said "Tyler got orange on my sheets.  He had orange sticky candy and ruined my sheets!"  I had to assure her that Tyler has not been eating orange candy in her bed!  The imagination of a 3 1/2 year old is interesting!

Evening at the Lake

After work yesterday, I packed up the girls and we went up to Lake Lanier for an evening cruise on Jenny and Sam's new pontoon boat (I totally want one now!).  It was a little rainy, so we just hung out on the boat at the marina for a little while.  I wasn't sure how the girls would react once we got moving, but they smiled at the wind in their hair and Audrey yelled "I'm not scared.  I'm having fun!"

Jenny asked her if she wanted to drive the boat and she said "I can't drive.  I'm just a kid.  I'm too short and not too tall."  :)

We pulled up to an island to swim and grill hot dogs and the second I set Bridget down, she ran right into the water like she can swim or something.  She loved it!  Audrey wouldn't get any deeper than waist deep, so Jenny took B out to float with everyone.  She kept looking at me and saying "Ta da!"  My stupid camera batteries were dead, so I took this with my phone:

It's kind of fuzzy (and sideways - thanks Blogger), but I zoomed in on Bridget's face so you can see that big ol grin!

We got everyone back on the boat to eat and Audrey was mad that she couldn't play in the water anymore, but after I showed her how to throw food down to the dozens of little blue gill that were around the boat, she didn't mind.  She told Andy that her favorite part of the trip was throwing food to the fish!

It started to sprinkle again as we finished eating, so Madeline drove us back to the marina.

This morning, I was treated to a mani/pedi from Audrey.  I think a career as a cosmetologist is not in her future! ;)

Fourth of July

We had a busy holiday weekend that started with cousins Ian and Dylan coming over on Saturday night.  On Sunday, both sets of grandparents came up for a cookout and to come with us for the girls first fireworks show! 

We sat far enough back that it wasn't too loud and I think both girls really liked it.  The fireworks started an hour and a half past Bridget's bedtime, so the poor little thing was a zombie by the time the show started.  She would watch for a little while, clap and say "Yay!" and then try to run down the sidewalk.  Grandma Carol and I had quite a workout!  You can see how sleepy she is in this picture and this is before the fireworks even started.

Audrey really enjoyed the show.  I think she got a little bored in the middle, but she perked up at the grand finale and said that she wanted more fireworks!

They both managed to stay awake on the drive home and then camped out in the tent in the backyard with Daddy.  I had the whole bed to myself so I popped some Tylenol PM and slept very well!

While the grandparents were over on Sunday, Bridget showed off her ability to shriek "MINE" at everything and also picked up a new phrase.  Every time someone would play with Audrey, she would run over, hold her arms out and scream "ME ME ME."  Now whenever she wants something, she points and says "me me."

Audrey acknowledged the fact that Roscoe wasn't here for the first time yesterday.  We took a walk on the Greenway and when we loaded Hazel into the dog box, Audrey said "That side is Roscoe's side.  We miss him.  It makes me feel sad."  :(  We miss him too, baby.

MINE!!

That is Bridget's new favorite phrase.  If you are trying to take something from her, she shrieks "MINE!" and runs off.  The girls now spend a great deal of time fighting over toys or who gets to press buttons on the online toddler games that I found.  Audrey is pretty good about taking turns.  She will stop playing and say "It's your turn Bridget," but when she thinks it's her turn again, she gets mad and yells at B, "Stop!  It's my turn!!"

When I picked the girls up from daycare today, Bridget's class was coloring on dark construction paper with chalk.  Her teacher told me that Bridget kept trying to put the chalk on like makeup, so it looks like I am going to have two little fashion divas on my hand!

Not much else has been going on.  It's been hotter than heck here but I can never convince Audrey to go to the pool.  She is just not a big fan for some reason.  We are going to attempt fireworks for the first time this year, so wish us luck!