What have we been up to..

Well, mostly we have been sick. We will hopefully be fully recovered by Saturday when Alexa and I leave for a week in Arizona and David goes to D.C. for four days to visit a friend. I have finished a sweater (just in time for summer of course.) I have almost finished the front of the aran sweater..this one is going very slowly due to all the cabling, and the fact that I don't work on it as often since I don't like to have to stop in the middle of a row. (Which makes it hard to knit with Alexa around!)

Our bird, Tweety..

And a picture of Alexa (without which, no blog entry would be complete.)

She brought a Mother's Day present home from school yesterday..her teachers are very clever and kind.

My horse Red..

Okay, she is getting older and her hair is turning a bit white, but she is really nice and patient with me. Alexa still loves going to school and getting on the bus..

Alexa Grows TALL

Okay, not really, but doesn't she look very tall in this picture?In other news at our house-I made Alexa a skirt from this tutorial. Unfortunately I should have trusted my instincts, which said "That skirt is way too wide for your skinny daughter!" It looks sort of dumb on Alexa because it is too gathered. Hopefully it will look better on one of her friends! Unfortunate really, since I took my time and sewed it so carefully.

We bought a parakeet this weekend. He is yellow and named Tweety. I know that isn't terribly original, but we wanted something Alexa might be able to say in the near future. Alexa can hardly keep her hands off his cage. We keep telling her.."Just LOOK at the bird, don't touch!"

Some fun/funny friends visit.

We forgot to get Owen a dessert spoon, so he made do with the serving ladle! Caitlyn doesn't like to be photographed.

But she loved the big stuffed dog..always a main attraction at our house!

And everyone smiling at once mostly.

The great outdoors

We got a few sunny beautiful days this week and we enjoyed them thoroughly. Alexa started sneaking out into the backyard when I wasn't looking. She was pulling the heads off dandelions and carrying them around clenched tightly in her fists. Her hands were stained yellow. I also found her in the side yard pulling weeds, although not in a terribly helpful manner. Tayler came up this week to ride again with Alexa, they have so much fun together. I also took a second riding lesson. This week I rode without the saddle to see if it would help prevent my sore bottom. It felt a little precarious at first, but after a little bit your seat sort of melts and forms around the horse, and then it was great. I got to trot around and back and forth through the cones. In a way this seems to resemble driving lessons. Learn to make the horse stop and go, slow and fast, turn right and left through those cones...very fun.

I also got started on a painting project, but that isn't going very well yet. All the trim near the floors in the hall and playroom is beat up and dirty from the scooterboard and the trike and various other things being run into it, the walls have all sorts of little dents and paint and crayon marks. Unfortunately we don't have a sample of the paint that is on these walls and trim. I thought the trim was just pure white, but once I painted part of it that color I realized that it isn't. Now I have to take a piece of the trim to Home Depot and try and match it, because there is no way I want to paint every piece of trim in the house and all the door frames and doors too!

I also have to try and match the wall paint. I took a tiny little bit from behind the light switch cover and tried to match it by eye, they can scan it if the piece is large enough, but I don't really want to pull a big piece of my wall off for this purpose, and the guy at Home Depot said it would probably looked slightly different anyway because it would be the second coat. Sorry to bore you all to death with my paint problems!

We found a great place here called the Little Gym, which is a sort of gymnastics for little kids. It is a noncompetitive program focused on child development, which is exactly perfect for Alexa. She'll be in the 3-4 year old class so as not to get run over by kids who run faster, but they really individualize it, so they should be able to help her if she needs a little extra guidance.

Sunday morning pictures.

I often try for a good picture on Sunday morning when we are clean and combed and dressed nicely.

Here is a little poncho thing I made for Marissa. It is very plain, but she liked the color, and it was fun to do some simple garter stitch knitting.

I had a nice horseback riding lesson. The allergy meds and mask thing worked pretty well. I got to ride a horse named Red, who is a beautiful little strawberry roan mare. Kind of interesting because when we were growing up we had a horse named Blue Jay who was a blue roan (quarterhorse). Anyway, Red is much shorter than Blue Jay was, which is nice-easier to get up and down from. My behind was a bit sore a few days later because I was learning how to trot..and when you don't know how to do it properly you just bounce up and down on a very hard leather saddle!

Alexa has braids

I discovered that Alexa's hairs actually can be braided and stays in very well this way. It is hard to do when she wiggles, but it looked so cute it was sort of worth it. This pictures are too bright and a little fuzzy, I am not sure why, my camera is usually pretty good in spite of me. Alexa got to trot a little bit at her horseback riding lesson yesterday and loved it immensely. I have been having horseback riding envy for a while here, so I am going to try it myself today while Alexa is at school. I am allergic to horses, so we'll see if allergy medicine and an allergy mask are enough to allow me to get away with it. Alexa has apparently made a good friend at school, her teacher says she and this other little girl love to play together and hug and hold hands. So we are going to try and get in touch with her parents and see about arranging playdates outside of school.