Congrats Fresno!

Congratulations to all of the Fresno side of the family for their win in the college baseball world series!! It sounds like it was a very exciting match up!

Speaking of Fresno, the girls met a dog at the stables today named Fresno who is looking for a home. He is a sweet puppy who is less than a year old and has lived in a shelter his whole life (his mother is a champion who apparently engaged in a little extra ciricular activities with a non-pure bred partner, so the owner dropped the litter off at the pound). The stables' owner foster dogs for adoption and apparently have been very successful at placing them with families who ride there. Unfortunately, he is a boxer so I am afraid he is way too much dog for us, but the girls have convinced themselves that they will convince their Dad to bring Fresno home. Right now, they are making pictures for Fresno, and they have already come up with his new, full name: Fresno Snow-Snow Trix Cereal Kennedy.

Speaking of babies (OK, puppies, kind of the same thing) here is an update on Aunt B : The morning sickness has kicked in and she is feeling very poorly. Plus, she has a cold to boot. She and Uncle J did get to see the baby's heartbeat at their last OB appointment though, and everything looks great. We will try to keep everyone posted on Baby M's progress as we get news from Aunt B!! Hang in there Aunt B -- I remember those days when it felt like it was all I could do to just get out of bed, but they do pass and it is worth it in the end (I also remember being so sick and cranky that I felt like throttling people who told me it would all be worth it in the end, but nonetheless I promise it is!).

And, finally, speaking of being sick, I am and have been for the past three days, but unfortunately it is not the kind of stay home and get better sick. It's the "I feel rotten but just well enough that I can drag myself to work and make it through the day as long as I can collapse on the couch and do nothing when I get home" sickness. Poor Dad has been picking up a lot of slack. Thanks Dad!

Who's In Charge Here Anyway?

New and oh-so-lovely behavior challenge from the Bean. Lately when the boundaries are being tested and we have to explain to the children what is and what is not acceptable behavior, the Bean has taken to responding like this: "No Mommy, that is not right! You don't make the rules! I make the rules! " When I explain to her that that is not, in fact, the case, she reaches out, grabs some air, and pretends to gulp it down. "There, I just grabbed the rules and I swallowed them. They are in my tummy and going down to my toes. Now I make the rules." How do you argue with logic like that??

On a completely unrelated side note, if anyone out there is looking for an adorable, smart, funny, and completely incorrigible three year old, I might know where you can pick one up, provided you are willing to bring her back when she is four.

Summer Swimming and Writing to Obama

We just got back from swimming lessons and the Bean has made the most amazing progress, thanks in part to her Dad's efforts over vacation. No more keeping her head out of the water and going vertical. She is getting those eyes in, blowing her bubbles, kicking her feet, and has her "big arms" going like a champ! We have just started the summer session at Potomac Swim School, and the Bean knew that she would getting a new swim coach, but she was a little dismayed when we got there to see that it was a man! I was taking her to the restroom before class and she whispered to me, "Mommy, my coach is a boy!" But, Coach Ryan won her over pretty quickly and she had the best swimming session yet, so I am very optimistic about her progress from here on out.

The Moo's first lessons of the summer are this afternoon, and this will be her last session at PSS. She has benefited greatly from her time there, but her school offers swimming lessons and swim team, and Dad and I think she is at the point where the benefit of paying for the semiprivate lessons at PSS has probably run its course. She is determined she will be on the swim team come September, but I have been trying to dampen those expectations. They generally don't take them as young as Kindergarten, and to be on the team she has to be able to swim the length of the pool and back by herself. I'm not sure her endurance is quite there yet, although her technique is excellent. She told me, "Mama, you wait and see," so I will! I have certainly learned better than to doubt her and she has the summer to work on it if she wants to make it happen.

The Moo continues to read at an amazing pace. We are almost through the third set of Bob books, and her decoding skills are very impressive (at least, from my admittedly biased standpoint). She will definitely be ready to take off when she gets back to LCDS in the fall, especially since literacy skills are strongly emphasized in the Beantree program. Her basic addition and subtraction skills are also excellent -- I got out some unifix cubes to work with her on rudimentary math yesterday, and she blew the cubes off and did everything in her head.
The Bean saw the cubes and wanted to play though, we worked on some addition with her. She catches on very quickly and never seems to forget a concept once she grasps it. The girls may not have us outnumbered, but it is becoming abundantly clear that they have us WAAAYYY outsmarted.

I have resisted telling this story as I suspect that the majority of our readership is Republican, but the Moo is just so proud of herself that I wanted to recount it. She is a single issue voter right now, and her issue is gender. She was appalled to find out that only boys have been president, and she feels very strongly that it is time that the girls had a chance. She was, therefore, a very strong Hilary Clinton advocate, and was devastated when Clinton dropped out of the race. We tried to comfort her by telling her that maybe Obama would pick Clinton as Vice President, so we could still vote for a girl in November. She decided that she had better tell Obama to make sure to do that, so she wanted to email him. We went to his website and she dictated a letter explaining her very sophisticated reasons for wanting him to pick Clinton. This weekend, we got a reply -- you have never seen a child so self satisfied as the Moo. She is literally brimming with her sense of political efficacy. It almost makes it worth having to wade through all of the spam I am now getting from the Obama campaign!! Of course, the odds of him actually picking Clinton seem pretty slim, so I am guessing that there will be additional, outraged correspondence between Obama and 0ur resident political agitator later in the summer.

We were very relieved to hear that all is much better with Great Grandma and that the incident was not indicative of any serious cardiac troubles!! Hang in there Great Grandma and take it easy please!! We were also thrilled to see a link to Lolo's Log on the Mrs. Englebright website!!!!! YAY AUNT LOLO!! We are looking forward to reading your blog!!!!

Great Grandma!

We just caught up on reading all of the blogs and just read about Great Grandma's health scare. We will try and call tomorrow as we don't want to bother anyone on Grandma's first day back from the hospital, but we wanted to say we love you Great Grandma and we hope that you are feeling much better!!!

(photo courtesy of the Mrs. Englebright blog)

Disney, Days Four and Five: Epcot and Magic Kingdom

This post is essentially the Best of the Rest as we started to get very tired, and we stopped taking pictures. Day Four was spent at Epcot Center, or as the Moo calls it, Apricot Center. We had not taken the children there the years before as we thought there was not much aimed at Preschoolers, but we were very much mistaken. They had a wonderful time, and I particularly recommend that new Discover the Seas with Nemo and Friends ride and the Turtle Talk show with Crush to everyone with small children.

The Crush show is interactive, with a holographic Crush actually responding to the children's questions and joking around with them. Definitely not to be missed! At the Magic Kingdom we went to the Monster's Inc Laugh Floor show, which is the same type of thing with various monster comedians interacting with the audience. The first monster picked Dad and the Bean to joke with, which was great although Mom got concerned that the Moo might feel left out. Not to worry though, as the third monster picked the Moo!! Definitely a high point of the day and also not to be missed.
Other favorites were Soarin' at Epcot (although again I am not sure how thrilled the Bean was with it) and Mickey's Philharmagic show. The Moo also relished her new status as a truly big girl and went into the Haunted Mansion with her Dad. The Bean had no interest in that particular ride, so she and Mom went on Peter Pan, which is just out speed.

Buzz Lightyear remained a popular ride with our girls -- here they are posing with Zurg, or Grrs as Molly used to call him!

Finally, perhaps the most popular attraction of the day given the heat, Ariel's Grotto was our last stop. We didn't mean to make it the last stop but by the time we pulled them out of there it was long past time to get back for naps and --yes--SWIMMING. Next year we will save the money and vacation at our community pool!

That concludes our photo essay of what we did on our Disney vacation! We hope you have enjoyed it as much as we did! At the end of the day, we had a great time, but we are so very happy to be back home (at least until the girls start lobbying to turn the backyard into a pool . . . )

Disney Day Three: Father's Day Celebration

One sign of a great dad is that he puts children's happiness before his own. Dad's sacrifice of his day to take the kids to Disney world was rewarded with a show and ticker tape parade (well, sort of) later on in the room before bed. The girls colored gifts for Dad (a lizard, a crayon, a few others I can't remember but I bet you Dad can), put on a play (that seemed suspiciously similar to the one we had seen at the Playhouse Disney show, but what's a little copyright infringement when you are celebrating Dad?) and then threw confetti all over the room as a sign of love for Dad and disregard for the feelings of the cleaning crew. WE LOVE YOU DAD AND THANK YOU FOR AN AWESOME VACATION!!!!!

Disney, Day Three: Hollywood Studios

(Some scenes from the revamped Playhouse Disney show -- see below for actual text of post, I forgot to add these originally so they got tacked on here! Now you know why we had to go to this Hollywood studios though -- the Bean continues to have a Little Einsteins obsession!)

We started the next day off by sleeping in, as we had decided "Extra Magic Hours be damned, we are on vacation!!" Plus, it was Father's Day, and what Dad said went, and Dad said he wanted sleep. We decided to spend that day at Disney's Hollywood Studios, which was having one of it's Star Wars weekends. We were greeted by Storm Troopers at the front gates, and some other type of evil minion at the actual park entrance, who announced that he had no pants on, and now that he had
our attention, he opened the park!


This was the day that we tried out our "Fast Pass" strategy, which we later perfected at Epcot and the Magic Kingdom. I have to say, it is a GREAT system and allowed to really minimize our waiting times -- with the exception of Dumbo, I don't think we waited more than 20 minutes if that long in line for anything. We grabbed Fast Passes for the new Toy Story ride and then headed over to the new Playhouse Disney show (see pictures above). The girls loved the updated show and really got into dancing and singing along. For those who have not yet had the chance to go on it, The Toy Story ride was a lot of fun (Dad says it was one of his favorites from the whole trip)--it's like the Buzz Lightyear ride from the magic kingdom but more elaborate. We also very much enjoyed some old favorite, like the Muppet 3D and Voyage of the Little Mermaid shows. The Moo got to go on the Star Tours ride with her Dad and loved it, but Mom was not risking taking the Bean on, as she seems to have a real aversion to shaky, bumpy rides with sudden dips (Mom, who has never been a big roller coaster fan, totally sympathizes).

Another new favorite -- multicolored Popsicles that ended up all over the Bean's shirt and shorts. Oh well, what are you gonna do?

And of course no trip would be complete without the purchase of Mickey ears!!

Disney, Day Two: Animal Kingdom

I have an "unauthorized" Disney guidebook for parents traveling to the parks with small children, and we have lived by its admonition that when attending with small children, you have to drastically lower your expectations. We had higher hopes for this trip than in year's past, because the Moo has proved herself capable of taking on almost anything, and the Bean has always been a trooper. This was, however, the first year we opted not to bring a stroller, the heat was unbelievable, and the Bean is in the throws of her terrible threes (for those who kids have not yet turned three, let me be the first to warn you that two has nothing on three). Nonetheless, the girls did an amazing job, we just had to scale back our thoughts of spending all day at the parks.
On average we got in a good five hours before the girls started demanding to be taken back to the hotel to go swimming. We started at the Animal Kingdom, as that has always been a family favorite and they had Extra Magic hours for Disney Resort guests that Day, allowing us to enter the park an hour before the rest of the public. We did the Safari first, which was great as always, although took longer than usual as a rhino decided to hang out in the middle of the road for a few minutes and would not let us pass. After that, we headed over to River Rapids ride, which we had never gone on before.

This is where the difference in the girls' ages really manifested itself. The Moo LOVED the water ride and wanted to go on it again. The Bean would be happy to never, ever see another Rapids ride as long as she lives. She bore the brunt of the soaking, despite the fact that all of us girls wore rain ponchos (thanks Guide Book - it worked for the Moo and me, although the Moo ended up getting soaked playing in a fountain anyway).

After the rapids fiasco it took endless pleading on Mom's part to get the Bean to even go near another ride. Luckily, the next ride was the flying Triceratops ride (pretty much the Dumbo ride with dinos) and once we coaxed her on it she loved it, and we had to go three times. Later the girls played in the "Boneyard" playground (another excellent idea when traveling with little ones: unstructured play, no lines!) and then we decided to try another ride we had never been on before and that the guidebook did not mention, since it is relatively new: Dinosaur! The girls love this movie and we knew the ride might be a little scary, but it sounded cool, and they both wanted to see Aladar.

Big, huge, GINORMOUS mistake. Never, never, never take a child under the age of 12 on this ride. The Moo will tell you that she liked it, but she is LYING -- she closed her eyes and hid in her Dad's side the entire time. It is fast, it is dark, and it is SCARY - it was scary to me. The poor Bean just sat there and shook. After we got off she said, "Mommy, no more dinosaurs, never, ever, never." I figured rides were out for the rest of the day after that, so we went and played Wak-a-Pacycephalosaurus and saw the new "Finding Nemo, the Musical" which is a fantastic puppet show. After that it was home for naps, swims, and dinner. The girls swam for about an hour everyday, which was like heaven for them. Mom and Dad got a little irritated when, after shelling out all the money for park tickets, they kept getting asked "Can we go swimming now?"

Disney, Days One and Two: Animal Friends

In addition to Bella, we made many animal friends on our trip. As Dad and I were putting things away in the room on Day One, we heard the Bean exclaim, "Look who's here!" We came out to look, and there were two ducks who strolled over to our patio in search of food. I don't know if there is a tradition of feeding those ducks in Room 1139, but they came by like clockwork every morning we were there, along with the wild turkeys that have been a mainstay of time at the resort. By the end of our trip, the ducks were literally eating out of the Bean's hands. What you don't see any pictures of are of the next day, when Dad and the Bean decided to have a "duck party" in the room. Yes, as Mom was in the bathroom getting ready for the day, and the Moo was in brushing her teeth, Dad and the Bean opened up the screen door and invited the ducks in -- the ducks were only too happy to oblige! Mom heard the merriment, ran out, and had her first meltdown of the trip!! The Bean led the ducks out ("Come on, ladies, time to go!") with a trail of Cheezits. Also included in these shots is a picture that does not do justice to the MONSTER grasshoppers that were all over the place at the Shades of Green shuttle stop. This is was just one of the surprises we found going to Disney in June as opposed to February, as we usually do. The other main big surprise? Florida in June is, to quote Niel Simon, "Africa hot!"