Nana!

My mother (Nana) is visiting and one day we decided to go for a walk. We tried to leave early in the morning, but alas it was already ROASTING outside, so everyone was was quite red-faced by the time we got home, but we managed to fit them all into this sturdy life-saver of a double-stroller. I know I'm completely biased, but my children are SO beautiful I can hardly stand it. It's been fantastic to have my mother visiting, we've been having a wonderful time.

Erin's Birthday

We had a little birthday party for Erin (my younger sister) and per tradition, I gave her a big chocolate bar with a little piece already sampled (to be sure it isn't poisoned. Many years ago Erin sent me some Toblerone in the mail as part of a birthday or Christmas package and couldn't let it go without a taste. She included a little note taped to it letting me know it was not poisoned and was okay for me to eat. Ever since then, if we ever choose to give chocolate in our gift, it's always got a piece missing :-) ) Cora REALLY wanted to give her a Barbie for her birthday, so I relented. It was too sweet.

Swimming

The girls took swimming lessons at the local Y and really enjoyed them. That's what you do in the summer here. POOL.

Carl's visit

So Carl visited for a week last week and it was great fun. It had almost been 5 years since I last saw him-- he had never met Cora or Soren! So it was wonderful. The kids loved having him here. We went to the beach at Galveston, visited NASA Space Center, saw the Huntsville Prison Museum (the "sample" jail cell was the most intriguing for the girls - "They have to go to the bathroom where everyone can see?" Yep.) Here are a couple of pics:


It takes a Duerichen to meddle with the broken stuff. Soren's been trying to work the DVD player...

Soren's Monkey Sounds

While his Uncle Carl visited last week, he taught Soren how to sound like a monkey, so here it is! I wish I could have recorded Carl, too, it's quite brilliant :-)

Cuckoo!

Here is Soren upstaging his sisters while they perform "So Long Farewell" from The Sound of Music. It's their favorite movie lately and they actually sang the whole song with the actions almost all correctly without any direction from us (OK, so I've let them watch it every day for about a week...) I only put the beginning on here because it's kind of long. Notice that Soren chimes in on Cora's second "cuckoo" completely on pitch and rhythm. His subsequent "cuckoo" not so much, but distractingly cute nonetheless. The girls have also been singing the "Do Re Mi" song from the movie as well, totally learning it on their own from watching and mimicking. I have to say here too that I watched the pilot of this new Fox show which will air in the fall, Glee, that has to have been inspired by High School Musical (although I've never seen it), but it's great fun and I showed Isabelle the two musical numbers in it and she asks for it every day and has recruited Cora again to play out the boy part while she is the girl. It reminds me so much of Erin and I when we would make up plays for Family Home Evening or any other time someone would agree to watch us. Anyway, I LOVE it, they are such delights.

Summer!

The girls and boy love the water!