Summer Reading Contest

The summer reading contest at church ended at the end of July, I guess because school here in Metro started back August 1st (insane). Lilli did great in the contest and ended up with 18 coins to spend in the "store". I think most weeks we turned in about 12 books and the contest lasted for 5 weeks, so that's a lot of books!
Basically everything in the store was no more than 2 coins, so it took us a long time to spend all that money! She got a ton of stuff - from a new doll, to cars, tool sets, paddleball, cupcake, flashlights, bubbles and on and on. Her favorite thing was this little bannery-wand.
She twirled and whirled...And was a happy little vision in satin until....
She stepped on it and broke the banner off the wand, beyond repair.So she moved on to torturing the new baby doll. Probably not a good sign for future brother/sister.That afternoon while Brent was mowing he ran upon/almost ran over the cutest little tiny bunny! All the rain we had had turned the backyard into a massive jungle, and my garden was a wreck of weeds and vines - perfect for little hiding bunnies. This was during Lilli's nap time so she missed it, but....That evening after church both the mom and baby were grazing around in the backyard! I'm still not totally sure how the big bunny got in our massively secure urban yard, but there is a spot big enough towards the front of the yard where the front fence and back fence come together that had a gap large enough for a bunny but too small for Pippin to get out during the fence construction.The bunnies let us get fairly close before they scampered into my jungle of a flower garden and we were sure to keep Pippin inside for a bit until we knew they had probably moved on. It's always fun when we can find some (good) wildlife in the backyard! Bunnies keep snakes away, right?

Fairies and Fencing

Three weeks ago my parents were in town along with my aunt and uncle before their "big" trip to Alaska for their 50th Anniversary cruise. We met them at dinner near the hotel they were staying in. There was one thing that disturbed Lilli a little bit - the fact that dad is a twin and they still look exactly alike (see Uncle L just behind Dad on the right). She really didn't understand "two" Grandaddies and how that could be. She does have some little twins at her daycare, but I think this sort of blew her mind!A friend at work gave Lilli her daughter's old Loving Family playhouse along with a ton of furniture. She has loved it and Batman has moved right on in.
The new front fence is coming slowly along with this busy summer and crazy weather pattern. This is the side "before". We only tore down one side at a time so everything wouldn't be wide open and exposed.
Farmer Tinkerbell was more than happy to help this day.
The leveling string was put to great use.
By the end of the day it looked like this, and it looks quite different now, three weeks later!Perhaps by next summer the entire thing will even be finished! We have managed to give away all of the old fence to two different sets of people who wanted it for various things, one to expand their chicken coup (they live somewhere over here in urban East Nashville...) and the other half to someone who fixes up old houses. Too bad none of them have helped with building the new fence!

Playdates and Princesses

Looking "cool" before water play a few weeks ago....Three weeks ago I had a pass as a new/expecting mom for a local consignment sale, and this sale lets the new/expecting mom's bring a friend. I decided to ask "Serif's mom" if she wanted to go with me. She had never been consigning yet and wanted to get into it and see if it was worthwhile, and since they just live around the block coordinating it couldn't have been easier!
While us ladies were out shopping the evening away, the guys met up over at the playground next door and let the kiddos play. They had a great time together, as always. Lilli loves having a neighborhood friend so close and it's nice to have people you can just text and meet over at the playground.
Lilli really doesn't need much, some new winter clothes and shoes, but even there a lot of last year's clothes will still fit this year, and I always end up overbuying. The main thing I hoped to find were some nice princess dress up clothes, and Snow White in particular. She dresses up ALL the time and covets all the $50 outfits in Disney Store. I got **really** lucky and found Tinkerbell, Jasmine, and Snow White! Jasmine is just a bit too big, since it is a separate top and pants, but she'll grow into it. I also got a few maternity clothes for me, several pajamas for her, and a couple of dresses. Needless to say, the next morning someone was VERY happy with her new dress up outfits! (=So happy that the next evening she put Snow White on and asked if she could wear it to Wednesday night church. We let her do that, there's nothing about it that would cause her from not being able to do anything and why not let her express her creativity? She was a huge "hit" from the adults and got a lot of chuckles. People know she's obsessed with the "Disney life" anyway. In fact, everywhere she goes in princess regalia she gets a ton of laughs and smiles, and if it's a restaurant we usually get a free cookie. So why not encourage that behavior???

Chuck E Cheese

At the end of July, Brent's parents were in town at the end of July and spent the evening taking Lilli out to her favorite fine dining establishment, Chuck E Cheese.

She drove, rode and played the night away.She even tried her hand at Skeeball and while this time she didn't let the ball fly in other lanes or backwards, she never made it up into one of the point buckets, either.
At the end of the night she walked away with her usual pile of "junk" - some plastic bugs and candy, and she was very happy with her haul.
Afterwards Brent's parents took us out to Panera for some dessert. They always have a great selection of desserts, but I think the sugar pushed me over into the queasy zone. I still just can't load up on too much food, and generally can't eat much sweets. It's really not right!We had a fun night and Lilli is already waiting for her next trip to the Cheese!

Painted Lady

A couple of weeks ago Lilli went through a big tattoo phase. As Brent told several people "she really wanted tattoos so we figured we'd start with the temporary ones and see if she liked it before we let her get some real ink". Tattoos, as well as wearing full princess regalia in public, is just not one of those things we get bent out of shape over. There's much bigger parenting hills to die on.

Flexing those muscles.....(on this day she had two Ariel tattoos, 1 ladybug tattoo, the remnants of 2 Nascar tattoos all on her arms and one Spiderman tattoo on her belly button.)
Future biker chick? Who knows!

Bikes and Sweets

A few weeks ago (July 20) Brent took Lilli out for a big bike ride. We haven't gotten our bikes out all summer (since I've been pregnant and am a pretty clumsy person) so she was so excited to get to go for a long ride. First stop was to feed the ducks at Shelby Park.
At this point in the summer people are kind of over the ducks so they were all hungry and she had a big audience!
They rode all the way down to the "new" (a few years old now) bridge over the River.
Cumberland River gazing.
Another cyclist looking for a break saw Brent taking pictures of her and stopped to take a picture of the two of them together.
Then he told her to do a "funny face". I was really surprised that she did for a stranger!Dental hygiene! Very important for all!

That night we had dinner at Rotiers (mmmm, bologna sandwich on rye!) and then stopped at Krispy Kreme for donuts. I'd been dying for donuts for a couple of weeks.
See how happy I look here?Well, Baby was not so much happy. We bought a few dozen to take to church and share in our class the next morning. When we got in Lilli wanted one and when I opened the box to get her donut out the intense sugar smell just hit me and I lost it. So terrible to want something so bad and not even get to eat it before it makes you sick!! I think I literally lost about two pounds that night. And I'm STILL getting sick. Last night I got sick after we had Mexican, and I've been loving Mexican. I am so ready to get out of this sick stage!! (And I'm 16.5 weeks so it should be long over already!) Only 23 more weeks to go!

Art-time

Since TV is not part of our evening time together, we end up doing a lot of creative things after dinner. Since we both work pretty early hours and don't have a rough commute, by the time we're done with dinner we usually have nearly two hours of straight play-time together, which is so nice!

One of our favorite activities - popping bubble wrap! I order a lot of things online, it's cheaper (usually sales tax free & free shipping, which in Nashville saves 9.25%) and I don't have much time to shop. So bubble wrap is a pretty common commodity around here.That "Pippin" shirt is from BabyGap. Love it!!One of the things I found online was a Crayola set of 3-D chalk and paint from Zulily for $8. We love drawing with sidewalk chalk and the 3-D aspect sounded like a ton of fun.

How can anything that comes with these little glasses not be fun??It has several full size bottles of paint, several chalk sticks and some stencils as well as a roller. With the glasses on it really was neat how 3-D it looked! Some of the chalk didn't wash off the sidewalk all that well after a large rain, so I really wouldn't use it on our deck, but it's perfect for sidewalk drawing! (How does that nice front fence look??? No broken or cracked pickets there!)Lilli likes to line up every night to have her "belly" picture made.For some reason, one night all the princesses died. We're not sure why or what happened, but luckily by the next morning they were "not dead anymore". Not really sure where all that imagination comes from!