Visit with Aunt Joan and Uncle Keith

The girls have such a good time when we go to Uncle Keith and Aunt Joan's house. The girls love to play on their piano, pick out all of Aunt Joan's pigs (she collects them), and play with their basket of balls. They live in a great condo community with a pool. The girls are getting so good at swimming and had a blast in the water. I am sad that we did not get them into swimming lessons this year but I plan to get them in lessons next year and 3 is probably a good age to be learning. We had so much fun and are so blessed to have great family that loves for us and takes good care of us.

Here is our fun from today:

Riley Picture Post

Addie would not model for me so I got a few poses of Riley doing her thing:

Escaping child

Now who pops into your mind when I title a post like that? Who out of our twins would be the one to escape? I will give you one guess......Riley! That girl is my child and takes after me in so many ways. She is so stubborn and strong willed that I have to think about how rough I made my parents lives when I was younger. I feel bad for that now.

So back to escaping....Riley has figured out how to get out of her crib at night and even in the morning. She has scared us the first few times she did it. You hear this loud thump and out runs Riley out of their room. On Monday morning my mom was down stairs washing dishes and she heard a thump up stairs. She thought it was Jesse or I making racket in the morning but she started up stairs to see what made the loud noise. Well she ran smack into Riley who had just closed her bed room door. She looked up at grandma liked this was an every day occurrence (not the first time) and told grandma, "I waked up Grandma". It is so cute to hear her say that - bad grammar and all. She was very proud of herself.

Well then last night Addie woke up screaming from a bad dream and my mom went in to check on her and that made Riley upset so she jumped out of her crib while my mom had her back to Riley. We still have no idea how she is "jumping" out of her crib but I know kids figure it out eventually. Riley then started screaming and running down stairs which woke Jesse and I up. This was all going down at 2:30 am. After a bit of calming down, we go the girls back to bed and we tried to go back to sleep. Riley had other ideas and got out of her crib 2 more times.

So that is the end of the regular crib for Riley. We bought the convertible cribs and today we turned it into a day bed with the toddler bar to protect her from rolling out of bed. So tonight will be the first night of freedom for Riley and I have a feeling we will not get much sleep again tonight. Wish us luck that she needs her rest after last night and will stay asleep and in bed for the night. We are moving the baby gate from the bottom of the stairs to the top to keep her from roaming the house if she does escape.

Phone conversations

The girls are having more phone conversations with me. I am sad about this fact but at least I can hear their sweet voices while I am working away. Today I called to check in on my mom and the girls. First of all, they slept until almost 8am!!!! That is right folks, the girls are doing so much better with their early morning wake up times. We moved their afternoon nap out an hour which was recommended to us from a friend who studies sleep patterns in children and makes recommendations. But wait, it gets better. Then the girls took a nap from 12pm until almost 3pm!!! Holy cow! This is amazing. I am hoping that my mom can keep the girls up until 8:30 when I get home so I can give them a kiss and put them to bed. *crossing my fingers they make it*

Back to the phone conversation. Addie asked to talk to me so my mom handed her the phone, She screams "Hi Mommy" oh how I love that sweet voice. Then I asked her what she was doing and she answers back "Gmama" which is code for playing with grandma. Then I asked her what she had for lunch, she answers, "apples" (they really had Mac n' Cheese), but cute nonetheless. Riley wanted to get on the action after Addie was done. Riley gets on the phone and says, "Hiya mommy" She can't really just say hi, it always comes out Hiya, which is so darn cute. I asked her the same questions and I didn't get much of a response from her as she tried to walk away from the phone while she was talking to me. She is silly. I just love these little conversations and the fact they can communicate on the phone now. I just have to make it through the next 3 1/2 weeks and then I will be home at night for at least a full month. There is also some possible job changes in my future. I hope to post more about these opportunities in the next week or so. Basically I am interviewing for 2 different positions and I will know what happens after these interviews are complete.

I will leave you with two silly pictures. I hope nobody takes offense to them but I thought they were super cute. The girls were outside in the morning and the sprinklers turned on. They wanted to go play in them so they took their panties off and went at it. I didn't get pictures of their naked bums until they were done running but these are the two I got:

Not much to report

Time is just passing us by. I don't have much to report but I feel like I should be posting more to the blog. The girls are growing each day and doing new things. I love that they are talking up a storm and learning their numbers. They just adore reading books and spending time with mommy and daddy.

Jesse started a new position as a full time instructor for Grand Canyon University. His new schedule is 12pm to 8pm Monday-Friday. He will have a few hours in the morning to spend with the girls but will miss out in the evenings as the girls are going to bed around 8pm. We may try to keep them up an extra half hour say they can say goodnight to daddy.

I am also working a 2nd job as an instructor at The Bryman College. I teach in the evenings 5-8pm Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. I would also like to see the girls go to bed a little later so I can say good night as well. I don't plan to teach every month so I can minimize the nights I am away from home but I am enjoying being able to get experience as an instructor so later on I can teach the online courses and be home with the girls in the evenings.

I just adore the silly things the girls say and the sweet things they do. Today I walked down stairs for my first night of my 2nd class. I had on a black dress. Addie looked at me and said, "Mommy wear a pretty dress". That was so sweet. Both girls give each other hugs and kisses and they like to take care of one another. They will get food or grab the other's sippy cup for each other. Now, they also take things from each other and will get mad a hit here and there. We are trying to teach them good behavior and for the most part, they do really well.

They are very into Disney characters and movies. We record as many as the Disney Channel puts on and the girls have many Disney characters to play with. They are very excited for the big Disney trip which is only 4 weeks and 5 days away.

I have a few pictures of the story time the girls participated in when we went to the book store. We only stayed few minutes because the girls had trouble sitting still. They kept wanting mommy or daddy to read a book and didn't seem to understand that the story teller was reading the book. I'm sure as they get a little order they will understand and sit for an entire story. Until then we will just keep trying and reading our own books at home.