Summer is Here!

We are more than excited to have summer finally here! We have sunshine, flowers, and grandparents! What more could a girl ask for?? =)

Oh yeah! Friends and bubbles!

Ellie knows that the big beautiful orange flowers we have outside are Poppies. She gets excited every time a new one blooms! She decided after Mommom and Poppy arrived that the orange ones are called Poppies, so the red ones should be called Mommoms! Silly girl...

Hello, Summer! We've missed you!

Who loves swim lessons??

I do! I do!

Eliana is loving swim lessons this summer! Her teacher is Roberta, who seems to be great with the kids.

Ellie loves using the various things to hold onto and practice kicking and swimming. She also said she loves it when Roberta has them hang onto the side of the pool and kick, trying to splash her. Ellie thinks that's great!

Swim lessons have been going very well, though last week Ellie had to sit out on the side of the pool for a bit because she was having trouble listening. :( She did very well, though, with no fits, and I'm guessing she'll be more careful listening in the future! :)

Daily Dose

of cute...

Father's Day Excitement

We were in Billings celebrating Father's Day with my parents and brother today. After eating a really good meal at Siam Thai we went fishing at Riverfront Park. After a bit, the weather turned nasty. Then it turned really nasty. Then the tornado sirens went off and we decided it was time to run for the hills. As we were driving away, we saw a really weird funnel cloud coming down a few miles away. It was so odd because it went horizontally through the sky for a lot longer distance than the distance from the ground to the clouds bottoms.

On the way home we heard that a tornado had hit the Metra, the biggest non-collegiate stadium for a long way. Now that we're home, I've found a video of it. Impressive. Warning: contains cursing.

Here's a picture from the inside of the Metra.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!

... to a GREAT and silly dad!! Ellie is very lucky to have you!

Swim Lessons

FlickrDroid Upload, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

On Thursday morning, Eliana had her first swimming lesson! Since we only have a hot tub and do not regularly get to pools, we figured it would be good for her to get some professional training on how to swim! ;D We're taking her to Lone Mountain Gymnastics for swim lessons and I was very impressed with her first one! Her teacher is Roberta, and she was very good with the kids! There were just two little kids in Ellie's group, so she got a lot of individual attention. She did a very good job obeying and paying attention, too, for which I was glad! I'm excited to see Ellie learn how to swim better over the next few weeks as we continue lessons. She was excited to swim when we got back to the hotel (where we were staying all week thanks to the renovations being done on our house) and was even confident jumping into the water, going under, and swimming back up to the surface and towards us. Of course, we were there to catch her if she needed, and I wouldn't call what she was doing "swimming," but there was definite method to the flailing and she could keep her face above water. =D

She is definitely our water girl!

Do you see how much I LOVE this??

... she says as she hugs and kisses the strange item in the store.

It looked like a dress and a birdcage and a coat rack all in one. And she wanted it.

She even defended her desire by explaining all the places in her room she could store it.

"On my wood chair thing by my bed!" - then you can't sit on it. "Oh."

"Um... on my toy box!" - then you can't open it. "Oh."

"Um... in my bed!" - it will hurt if you roll on it while you sleep. "Oh."

"How about in my window sill?" - it's too big for your window sill. "Oh."

"How about in my thing where my dress up clothes used to go?" - you want to put it in your armoire? "Yes! In my armoire!"

So... little dress / cage / thing of much adoration came home with us. She loves it, even if we can't figure out exactly what it was intended to be.

Most of the time it is a kitty cage.

And it makes her very happy.

The Garage Sale

Last weekend we had a garage sale. A HUGE garage sale. I stood back, looking at all the stuff we had and though, "Where was all of this before it was in our garage? Oh yeah. That's right. It was IN OUR HOUSE!"

It's nice to clear some stuff out and simplify.

Here's what we had:

Technically, this is 3 people's stuff. But the bulk of it is ours. We got rid of most of it the day of the sale, taking away $341! The other two people took away $50 and $30, so you can see... it was mostly our stuff clogging the garage!

What didn't sell we freecycled or took to a thrift store. And now, we have more room to breathe!

Your Daily Dose of Eliana

FlickrDroid Upload, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

A splash in the hot tub and some fun running around outside. That's how we spend our mornings while there's construction work being doing inside the house!

Its a sad day in Cabbage Patch land...

FlickrDroid Upload, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

... when I come out to living room and see Cory waiting for her fate like this! I have no idea what the kids were playing, but I'm pretty sure Cory was at the wrong end of that toy syringe!

Ellie Discovered a New Tactic

Eliana has discovered the "if mom says no, ask dad" tactic. Twice this evening she tried that one out. We'll see if our quick attempt to crack down on that worked.

Aerial Dance Fabric Work

Here is the video I couldn't get to post earlier. Fabric work in Aerial Dance!

Time with my parents

In May, my parents came out to visit. They were here for about 10 days, and I dare say it was not long enough. While I do NOT miss living in Texas, I do miss living near my parents and thoroughly enjoy the time with them when they come to visit.

I don't think we took many pictures while they were here. I'm sure you've noticed that we've slacked in taking many pictures at all lately, as evidenced by the dearth of bloggage. Sorry about that. I have yet to find a simple solution for uploading picture to Flickr now that our laptop (and its Picasa->Flickr friendly Windows operating system) is dead. So... yeah. Enough with the excuses, and on to some pictures from my ever friendly Droid! Not nearly as good as the pictures we get with the good camera, but easy for uploading! =D =D

One of the things my mom got to do while she was here is come to Aerial Dance with me. For those of you who don't know, for the last year or so I have been taking Aerial Dance lessons and loving them! I call my mom most weeks with giddy excitement on my way home from class to tell her what we did that day. This time, though, she got to come with me and actually participate!! Of course, I DID get pictures of that!

Here we are at the studio, because I wanted "touristy" pictures of the day. =D Thanks for humoring me, Mom!

My mom up on the trapeze, and Cathy, the instructor. Cathy is great because she walks you through everything and makes sure you are safe the whole time. If you're local, I highly recommend you come to a class, just to experience the fun of it!

Look at her, all by herself! This is the "mermaid" pose.

I also made Mom my "personal paparazzi" while she was there, since I rarely get pictures of myself when I'm doing Aerial Dance and it's such a big part of what I enjoy right now! Here are a couple of the poses I did that day:

Gazelle

Straddle Back Balance (I think that's what this is called?)

I also got to do fun stuff on the fabric, including my first drop! I was glad to have mom there to video it, because it's the hardest thing by far that I've ever done in Aerial Dance. It's exhilarating to do something new and challenging, and how fun to have a visual record of it! Not the most graceful thing, by far (!), but fun all the same! I am trying to figure out how to get the video on this post, but youtube isn't behaving itself right now, so it might have to go in a separate post. We'll see.

Nope! Not going to play nicely today. Well, I have things to do, so I'm going to post this and hopefully get the video up later. I will also work on getting more pictures onto the blog in a more timely fashion. Hopefully you'll have more posts soon! =D