warm weather fun part 3 :: randomness

The 'hood:

This is Ethan - one of our neighborhood friends and Emi's potential Prom date in 2025.  He wears wife beater t-shirts, converse sneaks with flames on them and offered Emi a 'super slow ride' on his 4x4.  Her face pretty much says it all.  

Pinterest Camps


We've all been 'pinning' stuff on Pinterest like crazy.  Friday afternoons we get together and have 'Pinterest Camps' - science experiments, art and fun all based off stuff we found on Pinterest.  Good times.

 spray painting with water guns.

 ready for water balloon fun.


The Sunds: 


One of our favorite families, The Sunds, are working hard to adopt a baby girl from China.  A couple weeks ago they had a mega yard sale and raised over $1000.  Emi helped Ky out with the lemonade/baked goods stand.

 could you resist these two?

 emi made these binoculars in vbs camp the week prior.  they were a huge hit.  she's looking for customers.

 blurry cell-phone picture.


VBS Camp:


Our first VBS camp and first time at St. Gabes where, if we win the lottery, our kids will go to school. Camp let out at noon so we would head to the playground for picnic lunches and fun.

Ms. Betsey's


Our dear friends, the Macholz, have an awesome pool in the backyard of their new home.  The 3 mamas had 7 kids in that pool and not one drowning.  We ordered pizza and for a good 20 minutes (long enough for the mamas to have a glass of wine) all you heard were calls for "more please!"  Holy starving children.

 from left - maisie, emi, andres, javier, kyrie, brooks, and liza.

 Time Out:


These next two pictures are super blurry from my phone but had to document.  Emi was eating a snack on Monday after gymnastics camp (animal crackers).  Javier, who normally doesn't bother Emi (Andres does enough of that for him) got in her face, snatched the crackers from her and overturned the plate, spilling them on the floor.  Normally, E's super-good about not reacting (or 'over-reacting') when the boys bug her but she was in a mood (and tired, and, apparently super hungry) and she kinda lost her mind.  She screamed at him and then, *gasp* kicked him in the leg, earning herself a 'time out'.  She was screaming and crying the whole time she went to sit and then this...

 checking on their ñaña

and then this...

he sat next to her and gave her kisses until she stopped crying. *tear*

swimmer girl

Encouraged by several of our friends, I finally mustered up the courage to sign Emilia up for swimming lessons.  The ability to swim is super important for me.  Not only is it good exercise, but I have very fond memories of swim lessons at the K of C pool growing up, as well as taking Nena and Javi to their swim lessons at their neighborhood pool ages and ages ago.  I love swimming and grew up by pools all summer long, eventually even having one in our backyard.  Plus, there’s the factor that we will forever be outnumbered – there are more of ‘them’ than ‘us’ and they need to know how to at least tread water.

Emilia talked a great ‘game’ about how excited she was about swim lessons, but made it a point to tell me she didn’t want to get her face wet, nor did she feel like she needed an actual teacher, but rather wanted mama to get in the pool with her.  I picked Charlotte Aquatics, just down the road from where we are, because several of Emi’s friends (Kate, Maisie, Liza and Zoe) had all taken/were taking lessons there.  When I checked it out it seemed perfect – a very small pool, tiny classes (5 kids with 2 instructors), and very mellow.  They are, however, pretty hard-core in the sense that, when Emilia had the full-on-koala-bear-death-grip-meltdown I knew she would when it came time to take off her dress and get her to the edge of the pool, the teachers essentially ripped her off of me and took her. The wailing was deafening to say the least.  None of these pictures are particularly good as I only had my cell phone and, oh, by the way, two other babies with me, but you get the idea.

emi’s teacher’s name is ms. gigi, from brasil. emi was sobbing at this point and had just barely hit the water.  she wouldn’t even tell the teacher her name she was that upset.

you can’t really tell but there’s a little railing the kids are holding on to.  they were supposed to scoot along the wall, holding the railing, to the end of the pool (maybe 10 feet total) where they would work on a skill).  as you can see, emi continues to scream bloody murder and at this point has upset the little boy next to her.  awesome.

The video is towards the end of the class where she had finally stopped crying.  You can’t hear, but the teacher is asking her how many brother she has (she holds up 2 fingers) and how old she is…

 

emi - first swim from Denise Glaser on Vimeo.

Enter video caption here

not sure if she was smiling because she was a) done with class or b) knew an ice cream was in her future.  stinker.