It is sunny & warm – I should be able to say that from now through Halloween! Highs of 85 to 90 this week. We tried the squirt guns from Uncle Nathan for the first time yesterday afternoon. Everyone had a good time & dried off quickly! We’re really excited to turn the backyard into a sprinkler park with the other portion of his last birthday gift to the girls.

about our upcoming travel plans. In my last daybook I lamented that we would probably not be able to do all the traveling I’d hoped to do this year, but it is looking like we will! I had a wonderful solo trip to my cousin’s wedding back in April and we have two big trips coming up. First, we are headed to Washington at the end of this month to visit my new nephew and soon-to-be godson, Sean Patrick Kane. The girls are super excited to spend some quality time with Sean’s big sister, Morgan (who is in between Molly & Livy). We are also tacking on a 2 night stay in San Francisco to visit Sr. Rosalie. Our first real vacation as a family – yeah! Three weeks after we get back from WA/CA, we’ll go home to NE for the 4th of July and stay a week with the grandparents & extended families. At the tail end of the summer, we have beach house reservations with friends for a weekend and finally, Rachel is expecting the girls & I when her little bundle of blue is born in October. Hopefully, there will be enough money & vacation days left to go back to NE for Christmas, too! It is our most ambitious travel schedule ever, but it seems like this is the year to go when the girls are young enough to have the freedom to go (and Violet young enough to fly free), but they are also old enough to enjoy traveling & be easier to travel with.

so many things! It is so easy to think about what I don’t have, but I am really quite spoiled when I sit down and think about it. Thank you, God, for my beloved husband and beautiful daughters. Thank you for our common faith, JR’s good job, our comfortable home, our health, our ability to travel, our friends & family. We are truly blessed.

Violet: what a big girl! She is extremely verbal and carries on full conversations with us. She loves to be in the mix with her big sisters and is finally getting old enough to be an active member of the playgroup rather than just a spectator. She would be a TV junky if we let her – she really enjoys Dora and says all the right things on cue. It is super cute to hear her yell, “Map! or “Salta! (jump)” She has a really good Spanish accent so she is inspiring me to use more Spanish with the girls in the hopes that they will all have a good ear for it.

Molly: our little mother! Molly’s favorite passtime lately is playing house. She sweetly informs us of all of her baby’s wants & desires – “My baby doesn’t like to be out in the rain. My baby likes to drive fast.” I’m starting to think Molly & her babies have a whole lot in common. Just the other day, I noticed a smattering of freckles on her nose. For a minute I worried it meant I wasn’t applying sunscreen properly, but now we are just enjoying the additional cuteness.

Olivia: no more naps! Last night, Olivia was up at 11pm wide-eyed & asking if she could have a snack. I guess it’s finally time for her to give up naps. It’s so sad, because even now at 4.5 she is my best napper! We took Liv for a ‘summer cut’ this week and she looks so much older without her long baby hair. She’s been talking about getting a summer cut for weeks and was excited to sit in the chair for her new style. However, several times on the way there she clarified, “For my summer cut, I want it short like Reese’s (her friend), but not short like Daddy’s.” I guess you never know what this crazy mama will do. One of her favorite passtimes lately is arranging flowers. At CGS, they learned how to cut flowers & place them in vases and she loves to go on nature walks collecting pretty things to fill her vases. She also picked up a few silk flower remnants at Garden Ridge and can now have cut flowers at her play kitchen table.

I have the ingredients for Apricot-Glazed Ham With Potatoes and Asparagus and it keeps getting postponed so hopefully I will get that made this week. Thanks to Grandpa Andrews, there is a fresh stock of NaturALL steaks in the deep freeze -  the first batch of ribeyes came out excellent on the grill, if I do say so myself. JR got me a new instant read digital thermometer and it makes grilling so easy. I’m thinking maybe we should get one of those prime rib roasts out of the freezer for JR’s birthday . . .

well, I had to stop here and get dressed, but now I am wearing flip flops, shorts, and a Big Bend tank top from my first primitive camping trip with JR back in 2002.

photo albums for March & April, packing lists, a daily schedule for the summer (trying to finally get that Rule of Life implemented and have some rhythm & order in our life)!

preparations for our trip – hotel reservation in San Francisco, vaccinations for Red so she can go to the “dog hotel”, things to occupy the girls on the plane, etc. Also, just trying to keep up with the girls’ clothes – take the long sleeves & long pants out of their closets, and make sure they have enough summer gear to get them to October! I’m starting to wonder how long it will take before Molly catches up to Livy and they are in the same size – they’re just about one and half sizes different now. In high school, they could easily all 3 be the same size. Not sure if that is a good thing or not.

Introduction to the Devout Life and Getting Things Done (if having those two books on your nightstand for several weeks in a row counts for “reading”). Hope to make progress on both in the coming weeks.

to settle into a nice rhythm this summer and truly enjoy the girls now that their schedules are finally synchronized, they are much more independent and awfully entertaining.

We did switch the girls’ rooms and the big girls got bunk beds from Ikea. So far, so good. Everyone adapted extremely well to their new room. Now we just need to finish/stain the bunk beds and hang stuff on the wall for the final touch. I think our room is next – complete with new bedroom furniture and a revamp of our aquarium. It has so much potential, but really needs some TLC (the room & the aquarium!). Poor little neglected fishes are at the bottom of the family totem pole. The other project will be planting the flower beds to finish our landscaping as it seems our landscaper is not available to do it for us.

My new backyard. I really can’t say that enough. We had the family of one of Olivia’s best little friends from preschool over yesterday. The kids played with squirt guns & watering cans and the adults visited at the patio table and it was so great. A little warm at first, and a few too many flies, but other than that, perfect! It truly makes me happy just to look out the backdoor. It is that inviting and beautiful.

This is our last week of preschool – Thursday is the Spring Program. Also the last week of meeting a friend at the Brushy Creek trail for a run during school. Since I don’t have a triple jogger, I’ll have to come up with a new exercise plan for the summer. The girls have Swim School this week & next and then we will not have any daily commitments for the summer! With our travel schedule, that is probably for the best. There is a Dad’s Night Out and a Mom’s Night Out this week so hopefully, everything will work out for JR & I to both get out and have a little fun. Last but not least, this is Daddy’s birthday weekend and we are going camping with good buddies!! Oh, and Sunday is Pentecost and the last day of the Easter season so this year, we’ll be singing Happy Birthday to Daddy & the Church on the same day!