Celebrate America!

These first few photos are from Memorial Day weekend, but they seemed fitting to celebrate Independence Day as well.

Photo 154 of 365, taken May 26th:

Thank you, veterans and all the servicemen and women who are currently active in all branches of the military! Freedom always comes at a cost and it is humbling to think of what others have sacrificed to make this nation great.




This week we had lots of parades and gymnastics shows to kick off the 4th of July weekend celebrations.

Someone was captivated by her first sparkler ever!

And now for some freedom explosions in the sky ~ I thought some of them looked like flowers and others like planets, but they were all beautiful:








Happy 4th of July!

Ziplines

While in Cave City, we took on an adventure that wasn't initially planned. Alyssa and Emma saw brochures for ziplining in our hotel lobby and immediately had their hearts set on going!

There were two courses, a primary and a secondary course. The secondary course was made for lighter weight {mostly children} riders. I didn't want the girls to go by themselves into the woods, and I just barely made the weight limit for the secondary course, so I went with them. This is us at the end of our zip lining tour. You had to be 50 pounds and Rebekah is not even close, but I doubt we could have convinced her it was a good idea, even if she weighed enough. Dave wasn't able to follow us back there, so we have no actual zipline photos of the girls.

My dad on the first zip of the course.

My mom flying through on her first zip.

These were our tour guides. I think the girls would have stayed out in the woods riding the ziplines all night! It was a lot of fun and super fast!! On the secondary course that the girls and I took, they pitch the lines at a steeper decline so that a light weight passenger cannot get stuck part way through the zip. We were told it is very difficult to retrieve a person who stops out in the middle. The first thing the tall guy on the right said to me as he was helping me with my harness was "Because of your weight, you are going to come flying into the stops, but don't worry, I got you." I wasn't sure how much I could trust a guy who thought it was okay to start any coversation with a woman by saying because of your weight... He was right though, I really did crash into the end points a lot faster than the girls did, and he did successfully stop me before I ran into any trees, I'm just not sure if I have ever felt quite so self conscious of my weight before.

Since we lack pictures of the girls on the Cave City zips, here are some of the girls ziplining in my parents' backyard...








Alyssa and Emma were both totally fearless ziplining in Cave City. Emma insisted on being the first to go on each line, the tour guides thought her enthusiasm was funny and a little crazy too. There were some very wobbly tree house like things we had to wait on between zips, a couple of them we even had to climb up onto from rickety old ladders nailed to the side of a tree. I'll admit, I was scared, and more than a little thankful to jump off and go flying into open air. I was so glad that it worked out for us to do this, because the girls wanted to go so badly...and how cool is it that they can zipline in G&G's backyard everytime they visit?!

Hello and Goodbye

Bright and early on Monday morning I woke to hear Alyssa's excited voice declaring something about a new pet that Daddy brought home. I shook myself awake enough to learn that a turtle had been trying to cross the road right near Dave's gym and after seeing it almost get hit twice he stopped his car and picked it up. He was just going to set it in the safety of the grass on the opposite side of the road, when he thought it looked nice and decided to bring it home for the girls to see. That's my husband ~ the turtle rescuer.

I had to agree that it was a pretty turtle and the girls quickly took to making a habitat for it in an old sand box. I had my reservations about keeping it because before we got our gecko we were almost set on getting a turtle before our research turned up how messy they can be, and that they can also carry diseases like salmonella. With few exceptions, my belief tends to be that wild animals should stay that way. Upon closer inspection we realized that one of his front claws was damaged ~ enter exception numero uno to my above stated general rule. I felt sorry for the turtle and could just imagine it falling prey to an attack cat or worse.

This is how the turtle spent much of it's first two days with us...trying to escape the habitat {a seemingly hopeless endeavor with it's injured foot} that the girls had lovingly freshened with clean water, additional rocks and romaine lettuce on an almost hourly basis. It also hissed at Emma or anyone else who tried to pick it up. It slept in a cardboard box in our living room at night because quite often in it's attempt to get out of the sand box, it would flip itself over and not be able to right itself, so the turtle needed near constant supervision. The neighborhood kids were all taking shifts.

So, the turtle is not making a very convincing argument for us to keep it, and I'm not even sure it wanted to stay with us should we be willing to keep it, when suddenly everything began to change. It started to swim in it's habitat, happy as a little lark. It seemed to be eating some romaine, and it stopped crunching up in it's shell and hissing at the first sight of human hands. On day three of caring for him, we started to read about creating a more permanent habitat for it, and I discovered that this type of turtle {a midland painted box turtle} tends to bond very much with it's caretakers, even responding to their voice. Maybe this wouldn't be such a bad pet after all.

Whether it had just decided to accept it's new life in a purple plastic turtle sandbox, or whether it actually started to like us, remains unknown. He appeared content for three days, never trying to escape it's new home, when five days after Dave rescued him, he went missing. He was either finally victorious in his jail break, or something worse that I don't even think about. It was completely my fault for trusting that he could make it alone outside for the few hours between the time we left for gymnastics and when Dave would return home later that evening. I had debated leaving him in the cardbox box safe in the living room, but decided that he had seemed so much more content the last few days, that he would probably enjoy the outdoors so much more, and it would be fine outside.

The girls were SAD, I was sad. Alyssa, who wouldn't ever even pick him up became very sentimental and cried that we didn't even get to say goodbye. I felt terrible. There has been a weekend long search party conducted by our girls and most of the kids in the neighborhood. They are still hoping it is somewhere in the neighborhood and that it will return in the next few days, but I think they also knew it preferred to be free.

So the brief time the turtle stayed with us has not made for the happiest ending to summer vacation, but the girls are fine, busy playing in the backyard with their friends and getting super excited to start school! I'm working on some vacation posts and feeling slightly overwhelmed going through the over 900 photos we took in order to do that. Happy Labor Day Weekend.

Summerfest

Putting together the photos for the GermanFest post last week reminded me that I never shared our Summerfest pictures from earlier in the month of July...

My parents received some free tickets from their neighbors, which they in turn gave to us, so we headed down to a fun day in the sun.

The girls are not ones to pass up a photo opportunity with the Racing Sausages.

My poor girls...they are always asking me if they can dye their hair strange colors...mostly, I think, because there is a coach at the gym who makes it look very cool. Their dark hair just wasn't made to hold the bright colors ~ this spray in temporary color barely showed up within 5 minutes of application, and I know the magenta, blue and purple colors were caked in there because the girls' hairbrush bristles were full of color as they brushed later that night. At least they were able to savor a few minutes of having rock star hair.

We also spent time at a stage where the kids could do karaoke. Where they rocked the above mentioned super cool hair!

The Marines were there testing everyone's strength:



I can't remember the last year before this one that we went to Summerfest, we've been before, but not often. Thank you, Mom and Dad for the tickets ~ we had lots of fun!!

1001 GermanFest Photos

Rebekah is our little "wildcard" ~ unpredicatable and sweet, and did I mention ~ unpredictable? Day to day that means I'm not sure if I am going to have my quiet little duckie who is content to follow me around, shadowing every move I make in stealth mode as if she's trying not to be noticed by anyone, or if she'll take the role of charming and boisterous chief negotiator of the house. She's very good at both.

At German Dance, this unpredicatable nature usually translates to never being quite sure if she is going to dance at any given practice or performance. Anything from a change in dance partners to the slightest change of direction that the wind is blowing can convince Rebekah that conditions aren't quite right ~ and there is usually no moving her once she has taken that position. I think what it comes down to is that she is a little s-h-y. At GermanFest last weekend, she was all smiles for the entire two days of performances and I would have never guessed her hesitation to be in front of an audience...


The big dance stage.

Check out the happy smile as they march in for their first dance. This is about when I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing she was going to be just fine up there.

I'm not sure exactly what she is doing here, but I thought it looked like she was checking her outfit to make sure everything was in place. So silly.

She and Claire (her most frequent dance partner) are getting pretty good. Their teacher frequently jokes that the little ones have the "cute factor" going for them so not every step has to be perfect. I see so many improvements from their posture on up, it's neat.

Uber concentration during the clap dance.




Kind of an unusual sight to see a floating sea foam green convertible. The kids were all amazed. We were trying to take the group photos from above as the car began to pass by, so you can imagine how well that went.

GermanFest, Day 2:

Emma's friend, Willow joined us on Sunday as Rebekah geared up for a second straight day of parades and dancing.

Sweet friends.



In the children's parade.

Our proud little German girl. She and I ran in the 5K race opening night of GermanFest. Our time was painfully slow, but I'm just happy she'll run it with me!!

No festival is complete without sampling some of the fried food.

And here's our attempt to burn the kid's tongues off with fried mini donuts. Despite multiple warnings of how hot they were, no one was willing to wait.

I love Willow's face in this photo. I'm sure her mom will be sending her over for many more playdates :-)

Rebekah played a game where she spun a wheel to win a prize. She won this awesome foaming beer mug trophy. Very GermanFest and definitely an appropriate raffle prize for a child :-) She sure was proud of it though!

To me this smile says "GermanFest Dancing? Officially conquered!"