tawbubby

We got the kids on the street to clean up four flower pots full of sweet gum balls from our yard, and then almost three grocery bags full of pinecones from our neighbors yard.

They also transplanted a line of ornamental grass from my yard to my neighbor’s. One kid (9 or 10 years old) asked if there was anything else she could help with, and I handed her a rake. She made a nice pile of pine needles for me.
That is awesomeness.
So is this.

Static-y, happy girls in the moonbounce.

This picture reminds me of Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Amelia put a skirt from her Aunt Melissa on her head, inside her birthday crown.  And of course accessorized her dress beautifully.

Then she danced around and told us a really detailed, long story with interpretive dance.  When more people were watching, her arms went higher (= pay attention to me!!!).

At the end, she sang and danced to this song she made up herself:

Tap tap tap on the selfish door

Tap tap tap on the selfish door

Tap tap tap on the selfish door

But there was nobody there.

I didn’t know who was in there

Tap tap tap was in there

Tap tap tap, tap tap tap,

tap tap tap was in there.

And a few more lines complete with a rousing broadway finish.

We got out today to bike a couple of times around a pond.   Some more pictures are here: biking!

The approach looked good, but was very snowy when we got down to the path.  We had to scramble a bit to get to pavement.  3/4 of the trail was bikable.

A water and granola bar break.  Daphne has figured out the coordination of bike pedals and did really well yesterday going back and forth on our front walkway at our house!

Amelia is a pretty good rider.  She has some muscles in her legs.  Her training wheels are slightly above her regular back wheel, so she rides leaning to one side or the other.  Which makes her off balance on a curve.  She took two tumbles.

She said she would wear knee pads and elbow pads when we take off the training wheels, when she is “much much older”.

Daphne is our brave one.  She does things like put her head under the running fawcet!

And help wash the cars on a (really nice) February day.  Amelia wanted nothing to do with it!

The girls have been taking gymnastics.  This was a pretty fun trick for today: Amelia sat on this foam thing, and then rocked back to help learn how to do a back flip.

I love to watch Amelia swinging on the rings, too.

Daph didn’t get to go to gymnastics today, with strep case #2.  But here are some pictures of her from a couple weeks ago (the day we discovered strep case #1, actually!) climbing an inflatable slide.

We hadn’t been there in a while, and she couldn’t climb the slide herself last time.  Very cool for her.

The reward.

Lots of love and lots of candy makes the world go round!

Daph loving all the red!

Amelia’s conversation ‘heart’

Reading the map

This kid…she is so much fun.  She loved the latest batch of snow.

She became a Kid Who Can Sled By Herself.  No surprise, given how much she loves a slide at a park.  She outlasted her sister by 30 or 45 minutes in our first round of sledding, through the snow that was still falling from the sky (onto her eyelashes- so beautiful!).

We made four sled runs down our front yard.  Every time she climbed back up the (small) hill, she would say “I have to use my climbing muscles.  I climb!  I climb! I climb!”

Crazy Kamikaze Amelia really got into sledding head first.  It was fine because we had so much soft snow the first day.  Sort of ok on the second day because there was still a lot of snow.

Tonight she wanted to sled down our neighbor’s backyard head first- with one small pop over a snow pile which would land her in a creek- so I didn’t let her.  She is so fun.

Sometimes they sledded together.  Here, the saucer was toppling and Amelia lost Daphne!  I love this shot.

We spent a lot of time sledding with a kid on our  laps.  Ending in a pile of snow and human. I love how they make us 30 years younger.  Until we are so sore the next day and they are not.

We made snow sundaes with syrup and rainbow sprinkles, reminding Amelia of our trip to Grannie and Grampy’s last year.

The girls and their Daddy the super sled run maker!  He made our best and fastest track and many grilled cheeses and hot cocoas.

Those sweet feet.

The girls had their own ballet practice today since we had a snow day.   It was two hours of mostly “Mama, watch me!”  They danced to Amelia’s Nutcracker record.

My girls are so different.  This one is so much drama (and gorgeous!)…

and always has an inner story going on…

And this one is pure joy, everything on the surface.

This one is for Aunt Melissa.  Remember leaping over the row of shoes with Mrs. Mole?

Amelia enjoyed dancing with her shadow.  And I might have let her try her tap shoes on our wood floors.  She has some tricks I didn’t know about!

Dance class always ends with Dead Bug!

I liked Dead Bug much better than 4 Corners.  According to Amelia’s 4 Corners rules, the teacher never says the same corner number twice, and therefore, the game never ends!  She goes to the corner I just called, each time.

Daphne’s just getting started.  She’s really cute.  But, I really can’t believe how well Amelia moves her lanky limbs.  Maybe this is normal, but this is not her parents.

We are getting the current guest room ready for the girls to share.  It’s a big room with their own bathroom.   Amelia wanted us to paint the room black, because then she would sleep well.  Second choice was to be “like outside”.  So we are kind of redoing her current room (the green below), leaving the wall with windows blue (sky) and decorating whenever we finish.  The green is done but we still have to correct the previous owner’s lack of taping on the molding.

Amelia loved doing this:

Roller was a bit too heavy for Daphne, but she loved painting on the wall, too.

Wonder if there is any correlation to her two recent events of writing on two walls in our house.