Family Week

We have been quite the little partyers these past two months....I feel like every time I update the blog I've been playing! This last week we went up to Angel's Camp and stayed at Gammie's house for the week. The whole Reese clan was there....well, minus a few males (meaning mainly husbands). Every year Greenhorn Creek puts on a Family week which is like a Camp. There is tennis, golf, swimming, arts & crafts during the day and then something at night like an ice cream social (my personal favorite). So we went up on Sunday night and kicked off our last hurrah for the summmer. We had a great time and Lexi even started to swim on her own! WHOOOHOOO! For those of you who have not been in on the "Lexi Will Never Know How To Swim" saga, it's been just that. A saga. A long, drawn out fight to get her to try to swim. We have been trying to get her past the extreme fear she has of getting into the pool without her floaties for the past two years. This past week she has really improved....I think the social pressure got to her. She was watching all of her cousins swimming and having a good time without her. She is still not ready to go off by herself but she has definitely made some progress. Here's a couple of pictures of the girls doing some crafts. They had a huge blow-up water slide outside which would explain the swimming suits. Kendri's favorite was the painting.

Anyhoo, we had a good time and Gammi always throws a good party! Kyson had such a good time during the day that he decided not to sleep at night....that got a little old after the first 3 days. Now he's in the habit of getting up a bazillion times even in his own bed. (I could possibly be the world's most sleep deprived mother. I'd be willing to run for the title because I do believe I'd come close to the gold.) And here we have all the girl cousins except for Kaitlyn....she may have been napping. Rachel, Lexi, Kendri, and Anna blowing bubbles.

This was the second day of golf lessons for Lexi. She got the hang of it pretty fast and seemed to really like it. Kendri wasn't old enough. She'll have to wait another year or two. Now on to other matters....Lexi had her first day of kindergarten today. Sniff, sniff. I couldn't believe I was sad and no, I did not cry. But her daddy did. Well, maybe not on the outside but certainly on the inside there were manly tears shed....He took her to school today and was a little miffed by how readily Lexi got rid of him. Here she is walking to her classroom.

Her teacher's name is Ms. England.

And here are some of Lexi's friends from the neighborhood, Evan and Jacob. She has 3 friends in her class! There are 3 different classes and Lexi managed to get all of her good friends with her in the same class. Watch out Ms. England!

So her first day of kindergarten was a success and she came home at 2:00 and crashed. Tired little thing. And Kendri certainly missed her big sister. She told me, "I sure do miss Lex" probably 7 times today. Maybe more. She was happy to have Lexi home from school. I think she may hate kindergarten by the end of the week. Oh well.

Oh, how we love the ocean.....

We are back from our vacation down at Newport Beach, and boy did we love it! We left early Saturday morning (last Saturday that is) and got there at about 4:30 in the afternoon. Mapquest told us that it should only take 6 1/2 hours from our house. It actually took us a little over 8 hours. I blame Kyson. He decided he was not excited about our little road trip. We had to stop a few times and let him play and look around before we buckled him back up in that awful carseat. (I really don't think carseats are awful but I think Kyson might...) Right when we got there we headed to Costco because Ryan and I were in charge of the meals for Sunday. (Did I mention it was a Reese Family Reunion? Well, it was and there were lots of people. Everyone was in charge of food for the whole group for a day.) Anyhoo, we made sandwiches and spaghetti. From scratch. Okay, I didn't really make the spaghetti sauce from scratch but I told everyone I did. (Prego, really pulled through for us :) Just kidding.

So, really all that was on the agenda was relaxing on the beach. I did manage to get together with two old roomates. We had a good time having a mini barbeque and swimming party. Thanks, Amber!

Lexi and Kendri loved the sand. They played in it most of the time. In fact, they played in it so much that Kendri blistered her feet. Yes, the sand was hot. She told us her toes were hurting one night as she gimped around on her heels. When I took a peek I saw that she had blistered every single one of her little toes. But she was a trooper and only mentioned it a couple of times that night and then she was back in the sand in the morning! What else did we do? We saw dolphins twice. Very cool no matter how many times you see them. We boogie boarded, played frisbee, made sand sculptures that were unidentifiable, and soaked up the rays! Oh, and Ryan and I took a cruise on the boardwalk on a bicycle built for two. See?

FYI, we did not ride on the sand even though this picture leads you to believe that we did. We did have a picture taken of us on the boardwalk. However, the man who took it turned it into a head shot. Totally defeated the point of having a picture taken on a tandem bike. I graciously let Ryan "drive" the bike even though I secretly questioned his qualifications for it. I mean, he did back into someone on our way down there not to mention that I have several years of experience behind me as a self-proclaimed "tandem bike chauffer". Amber and I used to have one. P.S. Can someone ask Uncle Brad where that is? And, here you have a couple of cute pictures of my little beach bums...

So, there you have it. We had a good 4th of July, but that will have to be for another day because this beach bum is pooped and in desperate need of some sleep!

Six Flags

Well, we have a busy summer planned. We kicked off the summer with Lexi's preschool graduation party. The school had a little ceremony for all the students and a program where everyone was put in a group of 3 or 4 kids. Then when it was their groups turn they went to the front and recited a nursery rhyme. Lexi's group recited "Baa, baa black sheep". She was excited and did an excellent job. Of course. (I mean, she was the class "valedictorian." Okay, maybe I should explain. One of the moms decided Lexi was the smartest of the group and asked her to present Teacher Nancy with the class gift. Of course I didn't argue. Now I tell people she was the class valedictorian:) So, after the ceremony there was a big after party. The biggest hit was the huge blow up pool that had 2 big slides and 2 huge water guns attached. It was a little chilly for June but everyone still had a good time. Ryan was able to take the day off so he got to hang out with the family which was really nice. Here's Lexi with her "ME" book. The moms made one for each kid. It's a scrapbook all about the school year. I even made one for Kendri since I knew she would be devastated if she was left out.

Now Lexi is ready to start kindergarten. She was asking practically every day, "When am I going to start kindergarten?" Luckily, she hasn't been bugging me about it lately. She still wants to know if I'm going to let her ride the bus to school. I was all for it until I started talking to the other parents. Apparently, everyone else is totally against it. I don't really know what the big deal is. It's not like I'm sending my kindergartener off to some inner city school in L.A. where they check for weapons at the door. I mean this is Valley Springs we're talking about, population of approximately 7,000. But now I feel like some delinquent parent who doesn't care about her child if I don't hold her hand and walk her to her desk. So long story short, I still haven't decided about the bus.

This past Saturday was our latest summer fun. Ryan's work paid for all their employees and families to go to Six Flags. Whooooo hooooo! We did have a lot fun and the girls loved going on the rides. Sadly, I managed to come down with a cold after kissing Kyson numerous times before I realized I was getting snotted on. Hmmm. A little disgusting even if it is your baby. So, I spent a lot of time popping cold medicine and blowing my nose. But we were able to see lots of animals and reptiles. They even reserved a dolphin show for us. We were close enough to get splashed. I liked petting the sting ray. Kendri did too, but for some reason Lexi did not care to touch them. Here we are at the dolphin show and penguin home....I know you like our matching outfits.

And last but not least.....You can see what my children were up to the other day while I was cleaning. This is the "before" picture.....

And here you have the "after" picture.....do you see the little matching clip? I knew it was only a matter of time bfore Lexi and Kendri got their hands on Kyson's luscious locks. After I surveyed the "damage" Lexi said, "Mom, don't you think he looks so handsome?" Handsome is not the word I would use...poor baby. I did have to laugh about it though. What a good sport!

We take off for Newport Beach on Saturday. And our summer of fun continues!

Pet Pollywogs

I have to write about our new pets....some of you are probably wondering, "What pets?" because you know that Ryan and I are allergic to animal hair (dogs, cats, and probably any other hairy creature). Our poor neglected child (referring to Lexi here) is always begging us for some sort of pet. She sees all of her friends with their dogs, cats, fish, hamsters, gerbils, hermit crabs, lizards (yes, you read that right) and anything else that can be captured.

So one day while we were on our walk the older neighborhood kids were selling tadpoles. Lexi immediately fell in love with the idea of having pet tadpoles. I, on the other hand, was wondering what on earth you fed tadpoles. Lexi got lucky. The girl in charge decided that Lexi did not need any money for the tadpoles. She got them for free!!! So off we went with our new pets. We let them go a few days later and I thought we were done with them. Boy, was I wrong. We made daily trips to the puddle to check on the tadpoles. Yes, it was a puddle and it was drying up fast. Soon I had been talked into a "rescue mission" so all the little tadpoles wouldn't die. Well, we went with Lexi's friend and caught about 20 for both girls.

Unfortunately after a couple of weeks, Ryan decided they needed some fresh water......just so you know, tadpoles thrive in their gunk. So the next day they were all dead. Devastating. But, once again we got lucky. Lexi's little friend who had captured tadpoles with her still had several. She gave us 4 more and the morphing began. It was actually pretty cool to watch the different stages of tadpole, pollywog, and frog. The girls loved it. And then one day our little babies hopped away. So now Lexi and Kendri have been on the look out for our pet froggies. They are only a little bit bigger than my thumb nail. So far we've seen two different frogs in our backyard. Who knows if they are the same ones we raised but they were awfully well behaved.....

Baseball Buddies...

On Wednesday, I made the trip down to San Francisco with the family so that we could go to a Giants baseball game. Ryan got tickets from work so the whole family went. I do believe the whole goal was to go to a baseball game with Kyson so that we could get some good use out of the Giants paraphernalia that we got when Kyson was born. In fact, the original plan did not even include any females (meaning daughters and wife) until I reminded Ryan that Kyson would probably get hungry some time during the game. Isn't that nice?? (Did I mention that we own about 10 Giants outfits in Kyson's size? Ryan let it be known that Kyson would be a Giants fan, so after Kyson was born we got plenty of orange and black to start our son out with!) Anyway, we actually had pretty good seats and were really close. The bad part was we were so close that we weren't really elevated. Which meant the girls couldn't see over the heads of the people in front of us. Which meant Kendri entertained herself by talking to the people in front of us. Which meant everyone knew who we were. The girls actually did pretty good for most of the game. By the 6th inning, I found out there was a kid-zone with a slide and small baseball diamond for the girls to play on so off we went. We left a little early (top of the 8th) but the game was over by the time we actually made it to the car. We stayed in a motel for the night where Kendri proceeded to play and keep the rest of us awake until 1 in the morning. Fun, fun, fun! Then I got up in the morning and loaded the car and drove home. Ryan, obviously, was at work. Overall, we had a pretty good time. As you can see in the pictures, Ryan loved every minute of it with his Giants baby!

Tummy Time

So when Kyson was first born, he did not mind being on his tummy....in fact, he sort of liked it. However, that only lasted the first month and half. He started realizing he didn't really like it after all and he definitely didn't like mommy leaving him on the floor by himself. But since I try to be diligent in giving him ample "exercise" time he still ends up on his tummy twice a day. The problem is he doesn't DO anything while on his tummy. I rarely can get him to lift his head up. I've tried everything I can think of....dangling bright toys in front of him, laying on the floor and talking to him, making loud noises, but no, he doesn't care about any of my efforts. Usually, it's just cry into the floor or lay his head down and suck his thumb (which by the way is really cute :). This latest time (as seen in the photo) he didn't even bother crying. It was like he resigned himself to the fact the he would be put on the floor. He closed his eyes and was asleep in about thirty seconds. Go, Kyson! This kid is going to be 1 and still not crawling....seriously.

I'm soooo cool........

So, this is my first official time at blogging.....well, forget the word "official" and let's just say first time ever. I know, I'm so cave man days. I decided I'd jump into the the 21st century with a bang and start my own blog instead of living vicariously through my friends blogs. I'm starting out nice and slow and just writing about our day. Today we got up at 6:30 (let me re-phrase that. Kendri, who is 3, got up at 6:30 and was not content until we were ALL up. My usual policy is to not step out of bed until 7:00. I managed to stay in bed until 6:59 which is as close to my policy as I could get with two little munchkins crawling all over me :). Moving forward. We went downstairs to get breakfast which consisted of my all time favorite cereal, Lucky Charms. For those of you who don't know, Lucky Charms plays a significant role in my family. In fact, our little family began with Lucky Charms. That is where I found my engagement ring. Ryan proposed to me over a bowl of Lucky Charms and stuck the ring inside the box. Since then I have had Lucky Charms for many a special occasion. This last one happened to be Mother's Day.

Next, I got Lexi ready for pre-school and in the car with her carpool buddy. On to the clubhouse with Kendri (3 yrs) and Kyson (3 1/2 months) in tow. The clubhouse is where I get my work-out in. After lifting several pounds of weight (I'm serious, several) and running 2.25 miles, I was running home sure that I would not make it for the last circle time at school. I guess I've gotten alot faster at getting ready because we made it. I think it took me 40 minutes from start to finish and that was with giving Kyson a shower and getting him ready too! Then we dropped off our car-pool friend and made it home to make egg sandwiches (Kendri's favorite. Strange for a 3 year old to like egg sandwiches) And that is where we are in the day right now. Anyway, I got this idea in my head to start this silly little blog mainly because I am awful about writing in my journal and I know I will regret not having any of these memories written down. We'll see how well I do. So here we go....