Soccer camp

Just a few images from soccer camp so far this week. Been tough week with a full schedule of activities. We're running Belle to soccer and Lilly to swimming.

A is for ant

Belle: I like the ants. I love them. I want to go to school with them in kindergarten. I could hide them under my desk. They are making tunnels. They are living with their family. I been walking around with them yesterday. They have to have their breakfast. We gave them sugar water to eat.

Lilly: They live in their home. They go to farms. I been squeezing water in them. That's all.

Swimming lessons

Belle: I like my teacher, Whitney. I like jumping in the water and blowing out my nose. Because I just tried it. I learned how to kick back and forth and floating on my back. I like bringing my goggles. I want to bring them every day. I like sitting on the wall and waiting my turn.

Lilly: Sarah’s very good at letting me laying like you’re in bed and laying in the water. Blowing bubbles. She says laying under water and we’re going to do something else. I have to put my hands on top of the board and then she hold on to me tight and I gotta and the board like, I was trying to keep on it but it floated away and Sarah caught it. That’s all.

Happy Birthday to Belle!

Belle got her wish on her 5th birthday -- to meet Mr. Jack Hanna and his animal friends. She and Lilly petted a Fennec fox tonight. Belle was so enthralled with him she then quizzed Jack Hanna's employee on his eating habits.

The girls enjoyed the show. Both loved the cheetah. Belle also enjoyed the wallaby. If this isn't a ringing endorsement for Jack Hanna, I don't know what is -- Belle said after the show, "Daddy lets go into the forest so I can get some animals and have my own animal show."

Hopping for MDA

The girls are participating in a Hop-a-Thon for MDA at their preschool next week. All the students will hop for two minutes. The students solicit pledges for each hop they can complete in two minutes. Here's what the girls had to say about raising money, hopping and helping children who can't walk or hop.

Belle: "I'm hopping so people can give me money. I'm gonna give it to somebody else. It's for people who don't hope. They can't hop because they are in a wheelchair."

Belle has already solicited her first pledge from Grandpa: A quarter for each hop. She says she can do 41 hops.

Lilly is less amibitious with her hopping goal, but has set a higher bar for her donations.

Lilly: "I wanna raise money to help. I'm gonna do this in school. I can do 5 hops. I'm gonna get a $1 per hop."

The furniture

Belle: I like our new furniture. Me and Mommy sit down on it. Me and Mommy play together on the couch. I love that we have new furniture. It's comfy. It's unbelievable.

Lilly: I love it. We always keep it. We always sit on it. I have game. We read on the couch. I love the table.

Recovery is too slow for me

I can learn about much things when I go to school. I have fun with my friends, but sometimes Landon doesn't let me play with him.
My surgery was pretty bad. The little needle didn't hurt so much. Actually it was just a straw. When the doctor took it out, it was kind of bleeding.
I have to stay at home a few weekends because my throat hurts and that's why Mommy told me I had to stay home for a couple of weeks. So my throat will heal very soon and my words will come back ... my real voice will come back in a couple of weeks. But right now it's not normal. The end.

Editorial notes: When the author refers to the "straw" she is talking about her IV. The author is mistaken that her "normal" voice will return. Her voice is a higher pitch now.

New sleeping quarters

Belle: We really want to have it. And Mommy and Daddy won't let us. Actually they will. We have to get another mat on the bottom. That's for Grandma.

Lilly: We need a pillow on the bottom.

Belle: We can hardly wait to have it. There are stairs on it. Sometimes we will play with the bunk bed. We'll play family with it. Sometimes, I be the Mommy and Lilly will be the baby. Sometimes Lilly will be the Mommy and I'll be the baby.
I sleep on the top and Lilly sleeps on the bottom because she'll fall off the bed.
We want bunk beds because our beds are too little.

Lilly: We need a big girl bed because I cry in my other bed.

Belle: I can't hardly wait to go to Grand'ma's house and we will play together. Lilly: No Grandpa and Grandma are going to come here.
That we know each other (both). That Gabby doesn't know my Grandma and Grandpa. Gabby can wait to see me again when we were going to Ms. Kyle's on Spring.

Lilly: No at night.

Belle: And that's all for today, right Lilly?
Lilly: Yes. I want another cookie now.

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss

This is Cat in the Hat, Grandpa. I want you to look at it. I made it in school. Cause we had to make one. Because I had to make one because it was Dr. Seuss's Birthday. For his birthday, I eat cupcakes. And it was so good. I read some books: Cat in the Hat; Green Eggs and Ham; Dr. Seuss on the Loose.

I want them to hug Green Eggs and Ham.

(Because the weather is nice), I have been doing dog poop. (Helped Mommy clean it up) We ride bikes and then we went home.

That's all I want to say.

Ferocious Tiger

Belle: I like the picture. People will know about it. They will love me drawing that picture by making other pictures that people will like. Loving... just like the others. Others can read about Egypt and God and He can know that we love him. Jesus will call you My Hero.

This is a tiger in Heaven and a tree in Heaven and a sun and grass in Heaven. It makes noises in Heaven.

Pocahontas love the boy. And it's just a movie. You can know why Ellie just has mud everywhere. She can make truth. If I try today... I love Mommy. I would rather care about my dog and Ellie will love me because I love her.

I have been getting in trouble, because I be bad all the time.

I'm happy that it's spring because I love the things we can do. We go to Granny's house yesterday. We rode our bikes and made some new friends. Sometimes we don't get to go anywhere because Mommy and Daddy doesn't like us being bad. And we beat each other back (hit). That's all.

In their own words

No more ghost writers... Here are Belle and Lilly in their own words talking about the recent snow days.

I like to play in the snow. So I just roll around and I and I laugh and I like to scream at myself so that’s why that makes me happy. So I just play in the snow. In aftercare they don’t let me play in the snow, so we play in the gym. We all have a great family. The end.

I like to play with Ellie in the snowballs. And me and Daddy hit each other with snowballs. And we like to roll around like Sara teaches us. Normally, Lilly doesn’t like to play with me. So I walked away from her and played in the snow.

******

I played in the snow. Liked the snow and I didn’t want to play with Belle. So I played with Daddy and Ellie. Then I went inside with Mommy and drank hot chocolate and sit down and get soup and get hot chocolate. And then we had a hug and then I went back out in the snow and played in the snow. And then I go inside again. The end.

Snow: The Squeakel

It just keeps on snowing. We're running out of things to do at home. My new Leapster game finally arrived, but I can only play that for so long too. So today, Daddy and Mama took us to see Alvin and the Squeakel. I couldn't wait to see if the girl chipmunks fell in love with Alvin, Theodore and the one in the blue. I can never remember his name.

I've been wanting to see this movie forever. I've been singing the song that the girls sing when they close those things that big people have when they are in school. I can't remember what they are called either. Here's a video of my singing.

Note from Mommy: This was the worst movie, by far, that we've had to endure to entertain the girls. Of course, they loved it!

Cruisin'

We FINALLY got to ride our bikes today. It stopped raining long enough for us to ride out the street. We did very well, Daddy said. Belle has a hard time stopping using her hand to brake, but she can stop by pushing backwards on her pedals. I showed Daddy how well I can stop too.

Then it started raining and we had to come inside to watch Cloudy with Meatballs. We bought the movie yesterday with our Target giftcard from Christmas. And we've already watched it 3 times!

Rudolph The-Red-Nosed Reindeer

We're eagerly awaiting Rudolph, his pals and Santa. We can ha

rdly contain our excitement, which unfortunately is getting us into a bit of trouble!

First Snow of Winter 2009

"Away to the window I flew like a flash, Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below..."

Oh what joy! We woke to a wintry wonderland Saturday morning. There was a whole bunch of snow out my window! Lilly and I couldn't wait to get outside to play in the snow. We made a snowman (Frost the snowman), threw snowballs and went sledding in the backyard. It was so much fun. Lilly's hands got cold, though, and she wanted to go inside before too long. It was so much fun -- even though we had no electricity. We went to Granny's to spend the night because she had electricity and we could watch movies there.

It was a lot of fun until we came home today and found the house in a big mess. Ellie! Ellie had made a big mess. There were muddy pawprints all over the house. We had to help Mommy clean the house this afternoon. Boy, was it hard. We were happy when we could help wrap Christmas presents and decorate sugar cookies. Only 4 more days until Santa comes. We can't wait!

Christmas Montage

Happy Turkey Day!

We're looking forward to eating turkey and visting with family this week.

ALL we want for Christmas

Toys"R"Us Wish List a gift registry for Birthdays, Holidays & special occasions

We had a great time looking through the new Toys R Us catalogue to find what we want for Christmas. Course, we don't have any trouble finding things we like. Mommy told us we couldn't circle the whole book,nor could we ask for toys that were too old for us (like Bratz dolls or skateboards!) Geesh, she's no fun! But here are a few of the items we'd like Santa to bring us.

Go Jump Off a Bridge

Each day, I (Belle) wake up and ask Mommy and Daddy where we're going today. Usually the answer is "school." Today, though, the answer was "someplace special." Daddy told us we were taking a trip to the forest to visit a special bridge. Along the trip, Mommy told us about the gord (gourge) with a river under it. I wanted to make sure there weren't any sharks in the river -- which Mommy said was the New River.

I asked, "New riverbend?" I thought it would be cool to be around the riverbend like Pocahontas. We watched Pocahontas on the way to the bridge to get ready for the forest. First, we had to bundle up because it was very cold and windy and rainy. Daddy brought the wagon to pull us in. Mommy brough a blanket to lay on our laps and keep us warm.

I kept asking how much longer until we get to the bridge. We did a lot of walking. Then we finally reached the bridge and watched on a big TV as people jumped off and flew with wings (parachutes). We saw a picture at the restaurant where we ate lunch of someone jumping off the bridge with what I thought looked like a hotdog.

Once we finally reached the bridge, we saw a lot of people jump down to the river with pretty wings. Some were blue and black; others were green and blue. I thought it looked like fun and said okay Let's jump. Daddy said I wouldn't be allowed to jump for a loooong time. Dirty barnacles!!

It was a lot of fun and a fun trip, but I wasn't happy to be cold. Mommy couldn't get us back to the car fast enough for me!

Fishing weekend

We had a nice trip to the cabin with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa took us fishing on Sunday, but Lilly was the only one who got a fish. She catches all the fish. Before we headed off for the weekend, Grandma took us to get our hair cut and to the WV Book Fstival, where Mommy worked. It was a lot of fun.