Kira's Talking up a Storm

Kira has been talking up a storm lately, and seems to be able to do most one and two syllable words....IF she wants to! She doesn't really do it on command for us yet, but I got lucky here in this clip, she is saying "mirror"
Eva has graduated to the next level of swim lessons and is completely comfortable dunking her head over and over again, so now we set our sights on actual swimming in water skills! I am so over going to the lessons myself, but I hate to break the consistency thing for her. Here you can see the strong Simpson gene-pool effect with Pap Pap and Eva...oh those Simpsons!
The beautiful weather has brought us outside to the garden, and EVa is just as excited as me to see adn count all the "baby flowers" poking their heads up through the garden...

Budding Steelers Fans! No one can blame us for early brainwashing! Pap Pap will be returingfor the SUperbowl this weekend...however I have strongly encouraged them to watch it somewhere else so as not to have their colorful language permeating the household soundwaves. Kira is developing like crazy, saying new words all the time. She has recently really taken a interest in dancing. She will start to shake her bon bon as soon as toy turns on or a song she likes. I have started attending a Music Together Class with her too, and she LOVES it too!

Happy B-day Eva - 4!!

Hard to believe she's 4, but they tend to grow rapidly on us, don't they! Eva was very excited about the green cupcakes and pink ice cream. I'd like to point out she's never had pink ice cream, but she melded two of her favorite things together some months back, so we thought we would capitalize on this request for her special day. Strawberry ice cream is pink...so we went with it. We planted some primroses at her school for the party favors and humored her every request!

Swim Grad

Today was Eva's last day of swim lessons for this session. Pictures aren't that great, however, I want you all to notice...her hair is sopping wet! For those of you that have heard the story of Eva's last three sessions of lessons, this is a huge accomplishment! She had some random sub today, and she isn't bat an eye at him, bobbed her whole head under water, and even jumped (without reaching down to grab our hands first) into our arms in the water. What a turn around for her...and she has actually graduated up to the next level now, yahoo! Go Eva!

One Rat Down/Healthy/Snow Day

Boy, I sure feel monotonous, but at least I can stop writing about the kids health! Poop cultures came back negative and Eva has steadily improved over the last three days with no vomiting at all!! Yahoo!! I guess it was a virus, and she caused some sort of injury to her intestinal wall which continued the symptoms when the virus was long gone. Whatever, if she's better, that is all we care!
I would have made my sister Jen proud last night! We finally caught one rat last night on a glue trap. Now of course these things have been my bane for many weeks, but I instantly felt sorry for the terrified creature stuck hard. I promptly put a towel over it to calm it, donned gloves, talked soothingly, and went to work with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. It worked like a charm, and I soon had the creature bounding away into the frozen night with no major injury to it's body. It felt very good to set it free and not kill it...much to my husbands dismay. He was ready to kill the mother "explicative". There is no entrance from the outside, so I felt comfortable with it. Now for other (s), which I proved existed last night with some cereal left out...
Our winter weather is turning into fun as the girls can enjoy it with their new health too. We headed back behind our house to the old golf course yesterday, first just Kira and Mommy, and the with Eva and daddy later. Quite a big hill, which Kira loved and Eva thought better of. We returned to a much smaller hill for her enjoyment closer to the house. Fun stuff!

Weekend in Seattle

We braved Eva's bizarre illness and headed up to Seattle for our xmas/Jen's bday/Santa Train celebrations. Eva really enjoyed herself, but then took a turn for the worse and actually stated acting sick during the day which hadn't happened the previous 11 days. And then Kira started with nighttime vomiting, diarrhea, so we headed home a day early on some treacherous roads to be near our Dr. It took 4 1/2 hours, but we made it home grateful, safe, and a bit miserable.
The train was a highlight. All the kids really loved it, and the snowy blizzard outside the windows made it especially Christmas-like. All the kids shocked us and sat happily on Santa's lap and informed them of their wishes. Eva asked for milk and cookies (to which Santa said (Those are for me, what do YOU want!?") And she answered that she would like a bell. Ella asked for some obscure toy (which Kirst and Lance FINALLY figured out and found), and Nate asked for a BIG orange helicopter...good luck on that one Jen and Andrew!
Everybody send some positive energy our way for some healthy kids.

And The Sagas Continues.......

We couldn't possibly still be dealing with rats and vomiting Eva, right??!! Unfortunately, Eva continues to vomit, and we are waiting to collect a poop sample from her to test for parasites. Never thought I would look forward to a poop so much.....I just want this over for everyone, I feel so bad for her. Kira started ding the same weird things.....so that tells us it's nothing too serious in Eva as it can be passed on. I am thinking giardia....but whatever it is, I want to know, treat, and moveon with being healthy, this has really taken a toll on us all.
Super Rat was caught in a glue trap, somehow escaped it, and then proceeded to push the rest of them out of his way, one flipped up on the refridgersator and you can bet that is not coming off without massive amounts of acetone. Mike and I can not make BUDGE (so how in the heck did the rat get off it??! So both the rat guy AND the they guy who installed the furnace convened here today (we figured the rat must be getting in and out somehwere in it since everything else is sealed), and sure enough discovered some possible entries into the crawl space. Of course they are impossibel to access to seal off, so we have a ring of glue traps out. To get anywhere in the garage, it has to cross one. The thing will probably jump over them knowing our luck. Rat bastard!