The Reynolds' Wrap Up

Saturday, July 30, 2011

1 Down, 119 To Go

Jacob just lost his first tooth! He's quite proud, got it out by gnawing on a ribbon that was tied to a balloon. No, I don't know why he was doing that but I'm thrilled I wasn't involved. Now only 119 more baby teeth to go and our jobs as parents will be done right?

Epic Fail

Do you ever get this big plan to make an epic dinner of epic epicness and it is an epic failure? I've been having great success with summer stuff like this:

and then I tried to sneak back in the kitchen and make an "intermediate" level lemon cake by Paula Deen. I'm pretty sure she just put this recipe up to assert her cooking dominance over the common housewife by putting up a recipe that's impossible. I was trying to be this wonderful Betty Crocker wife for Erik's birthday and instead of a fluffy lemon cake he got salvaged-lemon-cake-turned-parfait disaster. Thanks Paula. I thought we were friends, joined with the bonds of butter obsession and now you gotta go and be like this with the impossible, self esteem ruining recipe. Thanks.

Friday, July 1, 2011

The Perks of Growing Up in SoCal

One big perk would be having your birthday party on a beach in Malibu, complete with sunbathing and a sandcastle-building contest.

Daniel told us something was "totally awesome" the other day and we both shivered a bit. As much fun as California is I think we're still more comfortable with "y'all's" and "howdy" than "totally awesome." We happily welcome all Texas relatives to come give the kids regular doses of West Texas Twang and East Texas Drawl. We were so totally excited that Erik's mom came out in June and did a totally wonderful, epic, insert additional superlative job helping us love babies...at the beach.

Thursday, June 30, 2011

'Tis the Season...

...to pick cherries! I don't like cherries and I certainly don't like cobbler but since Father's
Day falls at the opening of cherry season and Erik actually likes that stuff, we picked cherries. And I was reminded of the concrete thinking process of the children as I peered in their buckets to find that they interpreted my "Try them first to see if they are good!" comment to mean "Take a bite out of EVERY cherry before you put it in your bucket." I am again amazed at my ability and gift with words to motivate.

Libby of Green Gables

After calling Libby "Adelheid" for a while we have finally retired the moniker, to her delight, and have decided she must be a kindred spirit with Anne of Green Gables. I've been torturing the boys by reading the Anne books for a couple of months now. They scowl and fuss, the 2 year-olds roam about like scavenging wolves on a seek and destroy mission and Libby sits primly in her pearls and smock dress with contented sighs and dreamy eyes while she imagines herself with puffed sleeves.

Our Libby-girl has been growing again and has decided to turn 4 even though I ordered her not to. But as Anne says, "You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair...people who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is." I've also decided that I cannot handle 6 birthday parties a year and we will be substituting a special "birthday date" for the lucky child according to their particular interests in lieu of a party. When asked what she would like to do, Libby decided a fancy dinner at a restaurant was in order. And not only that but she wanted both of us to wear jewelry and a fancy dress and she wanted Daddy to wear a suit and "shave his pokies (beard)."

And that's what she got and he did pass her thorough inspection, although she told Erik he looked funny as soon as he shaved.

Someone else was a bit jealous...

Another Year Down

We have officially survived Year Two of homeschooling and still like it. Jacob finished up first grade by showing us how to diagram a sentence while Dan finished kindergarten by explaining some intense math facts and both demonstrated their mad geography skillz. Next year we add on Libby and I double my Starbucks budget.