Grrr

I have a post talking all about my little brother's wedding but the stupid video won't load on it. This is starting to get annoying. Since I've been totally in the mood to blog, I'll just have to move on with what else I have to say and we will get back to the wedding.

Teaching the boys croquet. It was a hit.

A week and a half ago now, Kristen and her family went on vacation. They left the day after school got out so that was a bit crazy (note to self: if given a choice, give yourself a week after the kids get out of school to go on vacation). The resulting silence was deafening. It's so strange to be here without them. On Sunday, Jason and Anna were both taking naps so I was the only one awake and just felt really alone (they even took their dog so I didn't have her at my feet either). I was telling Jason that when we get our own place, we don't need anything this big.


About a week after they left, my brother Josh's family came to visit. That helped to liven things up a bit (fortunately not too much as everything is intact). I didn't seem to take any pictures while we were out and about playing. Oh well. It was a whirlwind three day trip before they went off to see Megan's parents. It was so nice to be able to have them stay here with us. There was plenty of room and they couldn't ask for a better place to come home to at the end of a long day playing what with the trampoline and swing set. Josh was even able to watch the US win to advance in the World Cup with the projector on the wall.

They crack each other up.

Now we are back to the silence. Poor Anna is not particularly enjoying it. The first day after Kristen's family left, she asked where Baby Luke was. I explained he was with his family in Utah. Another morning, she said she was going off to play with the boys. In my half-awake stupor I said ok. She came back before too long saying the boys were hiding. One afternoon we went upstairs (where we don't usually go when it's just us in the house) and she thought we would see Eric. She did better with Josh's family here but now she is back to being sad with them gone too. Poor kid. Who knows how it will be when we go to Hawaii at the end of the month (before Kristen's family gets back). Then we won't even have Brennan around the corner. So far I've just been trying to play with her plenty and explain things as they come up.

Haircut

The other day, I cut Anna's hair. It's been getting really long and scraggly looking. Even when it was brushed (which was hard to get her to agree to), it looked like it needed to be brushed. I tried to get her to say that she wanted Kristen to cut her hair, with the hope that she would sit still for her, but she wanted me to do it. Nathan suggested we have get watch Dora while I did it and it worked great. She held totally still the whole time I was futzing with her.

So now she has a totally cute, short haircut. Now, watching her run around makes me realize how badly I need a cute, short haircut.

The Art Festival

Working on the community mural. Hopefully no one minds the purple streaks in the ocean.

Yesterday we took a break from getting the yard ready for my brother's wedding on Friday to go to the town Art Festival. It was SO much fun! There were two parts: a bunch of artists had their work set up to look at and there were a bunch of fun art crafts for kids. We spent most of the time on the latter side.

The craft booths were all based on famous painters.

Anna working on her dot picture.

There was a George Seurat booth where the kids had an unsharpened pencil dipped in paint and made a picture with dots. The Mary Cassat booth was fun, they painted on a metal pan then pressed a piece of paper on it to make their picture. On that one, Anna was working with purple and Jason tried to add other colors to it. Each time he did, she would paint over it with the purple so it was back to being all purple. Apparently she knows what she wants.

Painting on her back.

My favorite booth was the Michelangelo booth. They had a picture of the Sistine Chapel and taped papers on the underside of tables. The kids laid on their backs and painted up. I thought that was so clever.

The three stilt walkers getting ready.

Then they had stilt walkers. There were three of them and all the kids loved them. One was a green bug guy who was like the pied piper. He would talk to them and play with them and they followed him and laughed. It was so cute.

Anna following the "pied piper". His wings even went up and down.

Playing the violin at the musical petting zoo. It was a small violin but still pretty big for her little hands.
Thoroughly enjoying playing the drum. It was a great, free community event.

Potty Training Update

( Sorry for the lack of picture but I have refrained from taking an Anna sitting on the potty picture, she doesn't need that around in her life.) Since I know everyone is dying to know how the potty training is going, I thought I would do a little update. It's now been a week and we are doing pretty well. We started last Wednesday and went with the just put underwear on her approach. Fortunately it was warm enough that we could just put on a dress and hang out outside all day. We had some successes so that the next day it was mostly success with only a couple of accidents. I did get pull ups for night time and naps but she hasn't needed them. Funnily enough, her favorite part of going in the potty was calling Daddy to let him know, she would mention it before the candy!

Now, she generally makes it to the potty but only occasionally will let me know when she has to go. I will either ask her or simply tell her it is potty time. For a little while there she would freak out when I said it was time to go potty. We realized the potty chair was hurting her so we took a piece out and now she is generally ok with it (after I tell her she can go back to doing what she was doing when she is done). Poop still has a long way to go. Outings are still a bit dodgy so we're keeping it pretty close to home.

Although I have been told she is doing really well (I don't have a basis for comparison), it is starting to wear on me. I find myself looking at Anna like a ticking time bomb waiting to go off and it's kind of exhausting living that way all the time. While I am generally patient with her when she pees her pants, I get frustrated when I try to get her to go on the potty and she says no or throws a fit and then pees.

So we are marching along and I'm pretty sure she will be ready for the 6 hour flight to visit her grandparents in Hawaii at the end of June.

What's Your Season?

The other day, my world was kind of turned upside down. Let me explain. My grandmother, my dad's mom, used to do color analysis on people. She would sit them down with their hair pulled back, no make up on, and in natural light and put different colored drapes on them to see how they looked in them. Then she would give them a little book with color swatches of the ones that they looked best in and would help them shop for the right clothes.

There are four basic seasons but few people are one pure season. Sometimes someone will look good in a color that isn't in their season per say but something about it just makes them look great. The book Color me Beautiful explains all of this; complete with pictures of the same person in a color that they look good in and one that they don't so you can tell the difference. Sadly, my grandma died before I was old enough to have her do my colors (she only did the 4 oldest in my family) so we have just had to guess what I was.

Our guess was that I am a summer and I bought my clothes accordingly. Well, the other day, I was sitting with Kristen looking at make up colors and she started to question this long held belief. We looked on a web site and found a quiz to determine your season. It was tricky to answer the questions (all two of them) because my coloring is so fair but we figured out that I am, in fact, a spring!

I was shocked. This may not seem like a big thing but one of my first thoughts was "so I've been looking bad my whole life?!?" Apparently my grandma used to say that it's not that I have been looking bad but that I could be looking even better (that woman had tact!). Then that night we got my grandma's color set for Kristen to have. In in was a book that talks more about it all and included personality aspects and eye characteristics. The more I read, the more springy I seemed. Apparently springs have a sunburst pattern around the pupil of their eye. That night, in the bright bathroom light, we checked my eyes and sure enough, I have a nice obvious sunburst around my pupils. It also talked about personality types and that even fits.

The interesting thing is that it's not just the colors you look good in but is often the colors you are drawn too. An art teacher had the students in one of his classes put together what colors looked most harmonious to them and they ended up matching their seasons. Ironically since I thought I was a summer, I liked summer colors because they were the ones I thought I looked good in. Now that I'm looking at a totally different color palate, I look around the store and notice the spring colors. Kristen and I are going to try to do my colors for more specifics. Then I'll do some serious shopping.

The Next Big Step

This week I am attempting to tackle potty training. We went to the store today and got potty treats, juice boxes, and panties. It was vary exciting. Naturally, Anna wanted to have the candy right away and was a bit put out that she has to wait until she uses the potty before she could have any. At one point I asked her what she had to do to get the candy and she replied "get the scissors" (to open the bag).

Anna Painting

Today Jason was painting my parents' ceiling and Anna decided that she wanted to paint too. Since I didn't really want to deal with paint, I remembered an idea that Kristen told me about that she has done with her boys: "painting" with water outside. We got her a pot of water and one of Jason's brushes and let her at it. She had a lot of fun and even sang while she worked.



She's a funny one.