1st Day of Summer

Today was the first day of Summer (June 21st). What does this mean in Idaho? Well for me, it means that if it is below 70 degrees during the day, then I can complain and not feel bad about it. It was a nice 78 degrees today, so the girls put their swimsuits on for some sun bathing.

Next it was time for them to sit on the back porch in their lawn chairs and eat Otter Pops.

Then came the real fun. I bought this thing that hooks up to the garden hose and sprays water for $5 at Walmart. The girls had fun running through the spraying water. It was busted by the end of the day, but I don't feel too bad about that. It was a one hit wonder, but the entertainment for the afternoon was priceless.

Samba

Last weekend we took the girls to the $2 theater to see the movie Rio. If anyone hasn't seen it, I highly recommend it. It was really cute. The story was based in Brazil, so there was lots of Samba music in the movie. Darin loved it cause he could understand the Portuguese and said that they did a really good job capturing the feel of Brazil for an animated movie. The girls had to do the Samba when they got home and for the entire rest of the weekend. Luckily for us, Darin had a bunch of Samba music that he picked up on his mission. The girls have been having a blast choreographing dances to the music for several days now.

Samba Movie

To watch this video, click on the picture. You will then need to turn the volume on your computer up and click full screen.

Ride A Little Horsie

Grandma and Grandpa Ralphs have a horse in Rockland that is very docile and loves to have kids ride it. (Adults - not so much). The girls love to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Rockland and ride Odette.

Blogger Is Being Weird

So for my bottom 3 posts, Blogger would not let me type next to my pictures. I don't know what is going on. Does anyone else have this problem? Earlier this month, blogger would not let me put the pictures next to the text that I wanted to. Getting a little frustrated, since I have been doing this for 3 1/2 years now and am just starting to have problems with my posts.

So here is the commentary with the posts.

Garden 2011 - I have been working on planting my garden since late may and things are just starting to pop up. My Tulips have gone away and now I have Iris blooming. I am loving my bulb garden in the front of my house. I can't wait until next year when I will be having more Tulips, Iris, and some Freesia. My vegetable/fruit garden is in sections. I have a strawberry patch, a raspberry patch and a viney plant patch. In the viney plant patch I planted cucumbers, yellow crook-neck squash, zucchini, 3 different kinds of pumpkins, butternut squash, watermelon, and cantaloupe. My viney plants haven't popped up yet, but I hope they do well. The other section is my vegetable garden in it I planted dill, cilantro, basil, green beans, tomatoes, 3 kinds of onions, peas, carrots, radishes, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, and an herbal salad mix which includes arugula. Yum! Yum! I can't wait until harvest. Next year, I hope to plant some fruit trees. We shall see.

Teddy Bear Picnic - We went to the library on Friday for a teddy bear picnic. It was a beautiful day, but very sunny, so the girls had a hard time keeping their eyes open for pictures. We set out our picnic blanket and the kids listened to stories and poems about bears and sang songs about bears and then we had cookies and punch. The best part about this activity for me was that it was FREE! I love the library!

Mudding - Our back yard has a less than desirable amount of grass in it. The people that lived here before us had a bunch of animals that destroyed the grass. We have focused most of our landscaping energy on trying to grow grass this year. There are some patches that have filled in well and some bare spots. The other day while Darin was watching the kids they got the great idea of putting the hose on the dirt patches and creating a mud hole. Abigail then, wanted to drive the Jeeps through the hole. I came out and saw a flash

Garden 2011

Iris

Strawberry

Raspberry Patch - Don't mind the weeds. Weeding is on my list of things to do this week.

The dirt patch is where I planted all of my viney plants.

Things are starting to pop up in my vegetable garden,

Carrots

Peas

Tomatoes

Lettuce

Teddy Bear Picnic

Getting Ready for the Teddy Bear Picnic. Elizabeth is the kid that has to always do something weird in pictures.

Mudding

Dance Recital 2011

I am not quite sure why I can't get my pictures in the order that I want for my blog posts, but oh well I guess. Friday was the girls dance recital and I am so proud of them, they did an excellent job. The theme was the Wonderful World of Dance and each class was assigned a different Disney movie song to dance to. The twins danced to Beauty and the Beast and Abigail danced to A Whole New World from Aladdin. All of the pictures are of the girls in their Ballet costumes. I was so busy getting everyone changed into their tap outfit that I totally forgot to take pictures. The girls each did one ballet dance and one Tap dance. The twins tapped to I Just can't wait to be king from the Lion King and Abigail tapped to Friend Like Me from Aladdin. It was a really cute recital. The girls favorite part was when the "REAL" princess came back stage to sign autographs in their dance programs. I also did not get pictures with the princesses, but the girls were in awe. The REAL princesses did an opening number and it featured Jasmine, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Cinderella, Tinkerbell, Ariel, and Snow White. Back stage in the dressing room, one of the big girls does some stretches with the twins class. I would just like to say how much I love the studio that my girls dance at. They offer a variety of dance (Ballet, Tap, Jazz, Contemporary, Hip-Hop, etc.) and they are good at what they do. I think they are the perfect mixture of fun and professional and they turn out beautiful dancers. The older girls take care of the little ones and it is really like one big happy family. Just recently a graduate from DSDS made it to Vegas on So You Think You Can dance. She actually made it into the top 30 just shy of the top 20 chosen to be on the show. Pretty impressive, I think. Dance is very expensive and we have to sacrifice quite a bit to have our girls participate in it, but they love it and I can see everything it is teaching my little girls, which is why I think it is well worth the money. Also, the studio owner is LDS (she actually danced with the Osmond's) and I feel like she has a pretty good moral compass, so I don't need to worry about things being tasteless.

Elizabeth - Princess Belle

Mommy & Her 3 Beautiful Princesses

Emily - Princess Belle

Abigail - Princess Jasmine

Dancing Sisters

Wow, can I just say that it is a lot of work to be a dance mom of 3 little girls. It took me 2 hours to get the girls ready start to finish. I was exhausted. Thanks to Aunt Alana's suggestions we had some pretty good looking buns with the help of some hair pieces and a bun donut.

Crack Down

This blog post is really jumbled up. I couldn't get my text and pictures to go along with eachother and I don't want to take the time to type this up again, so it is kind of like a brain teaser trying to figure out which picture goes with which paragraph of text.

Picture #1 See Picture #2

Picture #3

Picture #4

June 1st was our last day of school. I have been really excited for the summer so that I could do some fun activities with the girls that I don't usually get to do during the school year. I also want to make sure that Abigail doesn't regress over summer with everything that she has learned this year. We have worked so hard. Another thing I want to do is teach my kids the importance of hard work and I want to do chores with them and stuff. I know, ambitious, right? Well, I was really excited about my plan, butI forgot that my kids don't always make life easy and even fun things aren't so fun when there is so much fighting, screaming, arguing, etc. going on. Especially when all three girls are together for an extended period of time (like the summer). So, this morning was the crack down. I came up with a few charts and rules so that I could keep my sanity, the girls had a goal to work towards and we could get to all the fun stuff.

Here they are... the potty charts.

See picture #4

"But wait" you say, "Aren't your twins 3 1/2 and potty-trained already?" My response to that is yes, friends, my twins have been potty-trained about 4-5 different times. I think we started discussing this when they were 2. This last time I was sure we were in the clear cause both girls had gone an entire week with not one single accident. That is what I get for thinking. We are back to several accidents a day now for what seems to be the one-thousandth time. We even threw a party last time and did a conga line all around the house when I was sure the twins were potty-trained for good. This is getting beyond frustrating and ridiculous and the thing is that I know the girls can do it. I think they choose not to sometimes out of sheer laziness or just not paying attention to what their bodies are telling them to do. So here we go AGAIN on the potty-training. This time, they get a sticker if they go in the potty, but they have to get an X through a sticker if they have an accident. Once they have 21 stickers on their chart with no X's we can go to Wal-mart and pick out a toy that is $10 or less from the store and if this doesn't work folks, I give up and they may just be wearing diapers at their high school graduation.

"Here we go again."
Elizabeth is a sneaky one. I have to keep an eye on this girl. She got a hold of the stickers that I was keeping safely tucked away and was filling her chart up. I made her remove all of the stickers and we had a chat about honesty. Little Stink!

See Picture #3
Thankfully Abigail is potty-trained, but she needs some improvement on listening, obeying, and doing things the first time that Darin and I ask without argument. So, this chart is very similar to the potty chart except she will get a sticker on the smiley face chart if she does what she is told the first time she is told to do it. If she doesn't do it or has to be reminded she gets a big X through her sticker. When she gets 21 stickers that don't have X's through them, she gets to pick a toy out at Wal-mart under $10. Why 21, you ask? Well, because it takes 21 times of doing something before it becomes a habit.

Picture #2

Nazi mom is out in full force. Do you remember the Zero Tolerance policies at your grade schools? Well my house now has a Zero Tolerance policy. I was beginning to notice that I have become more grouchy, loose my temper more than I should and I don't like how that feels. The things that frazzle me the most are screaming, fighting, and arguing. So, I now have a Zero Tolerance for those things and the children have been informed that they will be immediately removed from what ever they are doing if they start screaming, fighting, or arguing. There will be no negotiating or trying to talk things through. I just can't take any of that stuff. Today was the first day implementing these things and I think it went well for the most part until about 4:00 in the afternoon. I will try again tomorrow and see if we can make it to 5:00 with out any major issues.

(See picture #1) Now for the things that started this all. There are 3 jars that I have made a chore jar, a learning jar, and an activity jar. The girls get to pick out of these jars each day: chores first, then learning (reading, math, writing, etc.), then if they have finished those things the reward is the fun jar. The girls were really excited about this, so they really stayed on task with their chores and "homework" so they could get to the fun stuff. For our fun activity today we made a time capsule. We will be burying it in our backyard tomorrow and plan on opening it in 10 years when the girls are 16 & 13.

School's Out

Abigail's last day of school was today and she was very excited to begin summer. We have had a tough first grade year with the move right in the middle and all of the adjustment that goes with that, but I am so proud at the progress that she has made and excited for some fun things that we have planned this summer.

Re-Charging

Elizabeth fell asleep ontop of my laptop cord the other day. I had to laugh cause it literally looked like she was re-charging her battery.