A full week of fun

Since last Saturday, we have managed to find time for: the girls to have a sleep over at Ama's house, biking as a family, the girls' first fishing trip, a visit to the girls' new school and a visit for Benny at his new school, swim lessons, trips to Costco, Trader Joes, Marsh, the farmer's market, and Target (our usual routine), the girls' last day at Goddard School (after 2 years!) complete with treats and homemade gifts from both us and them, a picnic and splash day at Dillon Spray Park, and (last but not least) the local church carnival for games, rides, cotton candy, and face painting. Here are the highlights in picture form...

Ben in his new bike seat



Dani and Alex love wearing their goggles now



Alex the fisher...


...and her fish! She wasn't so sure about touching it (and after recent reports of toxic algae in area lakes, that's probably for the better...)



Dani loved fishing too! Both girls caught 2 fish.







For their last day, the girls gave each teacher a drawing it painting they had made special just for that person. In return, "the cows room" gave us a mural all the kids had worked on and it now proudly resides in the playroom:




Tonight after dinner all 3 Wei girls had an outing to St. Elizabeth Seton's Setonfest. The highlight for Dani & Alex was getting facepainted:
Alex plans to be an astronaut for Halloween so she picked a rocketship:




And our resident girlie girl picked a princess crown:




I don't have a picture handy, but our other excitement this week has been dogsitting Emma Hildebrand who is a wonderful, calm, non-neurotic shepard mix. Who knew you could have a dog and leave it at home alone now and then! Dogs are fun! The kids ADORE her and will be sad tomorrow when she goes home, I'm sure. Ben walks out to the deck yelling her name and patting his thigh. "Memma! Memma!" I'll post a video of him kissing her soon. It's unreal cute.

All in all, a good week for us. However, it's been a rough week for my grandfather, so everyone please keep him and my grandmother in your thoughts. Opi is in the hospital again for a potential stroke. I'll post more as we know more. The kids and I are going for a visit to Chicago next week which I'm hoping will help cheer him up.

Snacktime Banter

Dani: "Cookie Monster eats his cookies messier. He should eat more neatly."

Alex: "Yeah, and he shouldn't say 'Coookie.' He should say 'Can I have a cookie please?'. And he shouldn't eat so many."

Do I have good kids or what?!

Ben the artist

Bennie has gotten almost as excited about drawing as his sister Dani is, and he's really good at keeping at it for 10-15 minutes at a time! Here are today's products!

Kids Say the Funniest Things, episode 10,886

The girls have been making a lot of books lately stapling together pages of their drawings (I'm so PROUD!) and tonight Dani wanted to read one of her books at bedtime instead of picking a storybook. She said, "The title is "Everything I Do Is Perfect", pictures by Dani, words by Dani." She has used this title before. Apparently it's an idea she likes a lot. (Additional funnies came when Alex said, "Me too!" after Dani said the author and illustrator, to which Dani replied, "No Alex. You didn't help.")

Jack and I both find it generally hilarious that both girls refer to Alexa as "Ow-wah-lex" and Alex often refers to herself in the third person. Yesterday as we drove to the zoo, she accidentally called herself Dani and then said, "Gah! I just called myself Dani by accident!"

When I gave the girls mozzarella cheese on their noodles a few nights ago, Dani gobbled hers up and then, "More Cindarella cheese please!"

As I drove to school one morning, Dani announced, out of the blue last week, "Even when I'm a grown up, I'll still spell my name D-A-N-I."

We've been talking about how old you need to be to do certain things. On that same drive to school, Dani said (again out of the blue) - "People who are 16 can drive. But even though Mommy is - How old are you Mommy? - even though Mommy is 31 she can still drive."

During playtime, Alex will often refer to something needing to be a certain way by saying, "There's a sign that says...." My favorite one so far was during a trip to the park, "There's a sign that says 'No coughing in this park.'"

Kids. They keep you laughing! Which is good because otherwise I might go batty.