Grace's haircut

Grace has a real addiction to scissors lately.  She just loves cutting.  She kept giving her My Little Ponies haircuts.  I kept telling  her that it wouldn't grow back but she insisted that they needed haircuts. She finally lost her scissor privileges. 

 So, a couple weeks ago (the same week that I lost Grace at the ortho's office), she decided that it was time for haircuts again.  I had to run one of the kids somewhere and when I got back she came and sat on my lap for a second and I thought her hair looked funny (obviously I wasn't looking very closely to her) but didn't really think much of it.  I got up and went into the kitchen.  There was her Rapunzel doll on the counter with the trash can out and lots of hair on top.  Rapunzel and Grace both have new haircuts.

The picture above is the worst side.  She just chopped away at her hair.  She looked like a bad 1980s haircut.  Yikes.   She cut on all sides and the back.

 Look how happy she is with herself.

 This is after the hairdresser tried to fix her hair.  This one below is of the better side.  The side not showing is still really choppy.  I just make sure the big bows are on the other side.

 I wish she would have waited until after I took her 4 year old pictures.  Oh well.  When she asks me later why I gave her such a bad haircut, I'll just tell her that was all her own doing.

She asked me today if she could cut with scissors today.  No.  I don't know if she should use them for a long, long time.

Megan's Birthday

I can't believe it's already been a whole year.  This year has just flown by (well, except for maybe the first two months of nonstop crying).  Megan is a funny girl.  She talks a lot - you just can't understand a word she's saying.  No mama or dada for her.  It's funny when she gets upset and frustrated and she has this intense look on her face while she's telling you all about it.  She also yells a lot when she's frustrated.  I'm sure she will be so happy when we can finally understand her. 

 Megan weighs 19 pounds 14 oz and is 29 inches tall.  She and Kade are my small babies.  She has been coming in at the 25th percentile the whole time.  She is not walking yet but she has incredible balance.  She stands up without the use of her hands wherever she is to play.  She cruises along the furniture but prefers to stand or crawl.  She crawls with one leg while the other leg is sort-of walking or she'll bear crawl.  Jack says she's just getting ready for football.  Megan loves her bottles.  She's a pretty good eater as well especially if it is from the floor.  She puts everything in her mouth.  I caught her eating bugs from outside a few times.  She loves little polly pocket clothes.  She also really enjoys chalk.  She gets it out of the garage and eats it.  Disgusting.

 She had her birthday while we were on vacation.  We bought her some cupcakes.

 She isn't a very messy cake eater.

 Valerie and Grace had so much fun together.

 We celebrated Megan's birthday at home as well.

 Here is her second cake.  She just wiped the yellow flower on the top to eat the frosting.

 Yummy.  Happy birthday, big girl.

Lake of the Ozarks

This is a really long post with lots of pictures. So, here goes.

 We went to Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri for our family vacation this year.  It was a beautiful place to visit.  The kids had a lot of fun.  Lori and Jimmy invited us to go with them, and Cala and Clark came as well.  It was a five hour drive from our house so not too far.  We followed the GPS (Helga as Clark and Cala affectionately call her) and she took us on quite a ride.  We were on very country roads.  We didn't see stores or gas stations for a long time.  I started to worry that we might run out of gas before we found a gas station.  We also ran into two closed roads that we had to go around in the middle of nowhere.  Kade got carsick.  I felt queasy as well going up and down and back and forth all out in the middle of nowhere.  But, we made it in the end.  We found a much better alternate route home.  Not sure why that wasn't the way to get there in the first place.

 We visited Ha Ha Tonka State Park.  Loved the name.  Beautiful place.

 Valerie and Grace were best buds all week.  Grace referred to Valerie as "the girl", Jace was "the boy" and Uncle Jimmy was "that guy".  It didn't matter how many times were corrected her, she still referred to them by those names all week.  Grace spent every minute with her cousins.  They even had slumber parties every night.

 We visited a castle ruin at Ha Ha park.  It was pretty fun to walk around.

 Cala and Clark

 Cute baby

 We did some hiking.

 On our way to see the natural spring.

 I'm not sure if this is the right picture but the boys walked to the balancing rock.  When they got there, Kade was a little disappointed.  He said that they walked all that way to see two rocks.  Not very impressive to him.

 We saw a natural bridge.  I liked that.

 Muscle man.  Kade was disappointed he couldn't keep his stick.

 This is the view where we stayed.  We were right on the water but a tree was in front of our balcony. I forgot to take a picture.  The lake was pretty.  Not like deserty lakes in the west.  Trees went right up to the waterline.

 Pool time was fun.

 The boys always wrestling.  My mom used to say that they were like bear cubs.  They still are.

 We rented a boat two different days.  The first day was a pontoon boat. Nice and smooth.  Didn't get sea sick at all.  Second day was a deck boat.  Little bit faster and not as smooth.  I did okay until Jimmy tried knocking the kids off the tube.  The kids loved it - me not so much.

 We had so much fun and it was so relaxing.  Cala cooked dinner every night and Lori did the dishes.  I was LAZY.  I know the kids loved our vacation.  We had Andy's frozen custard, took old fashioned photos, walked around, enjoyed the pool and basketball court, and just relaxed.

Are you still reading? That was a LONG post.  Someday I will be computer savvy and know how to block my pictures together into cute collages - but not today.