Next on American Idol

I dare Simon to find something bad to say about this.

Caterpillaree

Abby has/had her first pet. She named him Caterpillaree. We found him eating the leaves on our trees out back, so Grandma fixed up a home for him. Abby was very excited to watch him turn into a butterfly. After about two weeks we figured out that wasn't going to happen. We tried to tell her, but still every day she talked about him turning into a butterfly. Unfortunately, Caterpillaree is no longer with us. He died a week or so ago without ever turning into a butterfly. I think next spring I'm going to order some caterpillars online so hopefully will be caterpillars, and not just worms.

Abby still doesn't quite get it yet, she think caterpillaree's just taking a nap and will wake up later. :( Here's some pictures of Abby's first pet:

Trampoline fun

The kids got this trampoline for their birthday and there has been hours of entertainment in it. This is their newest trick that they love:

And Mommy wins the "worst mommy of the day" award with this one. They were just having so much fun. Don't worry, no one was harmed in the making of this video.

Zoo pics

I'm going to apologize in advance because this post is going to be very picture heavy. My mom and I took the kids to the zoo a couple of weeks ago. We went once last summer when Caleb was about 8-9 weeks old, so this was really his first time to see all the animals. He really enjoyed it. Abby was so excited to see one thing, that she didn't want to move on to the next thing. It was like pulling teeth to get her away from each exhibit.

Here's Caleb checking out the elephants. The baby, Scotty, is over ont he left (kind of behind mom's hair).Abby riding the elephant. I think she liked the fake animals more than the real ones.
Checking out the lions. (She doesn't quite get it yet. She was calling them all sorts of things like tigers, leopards, and jaguars. Apparently they are all the same thing in her mind.)
Comparing herself to the gorilla. I knew she was small for age, but geez... :)
Oh my gosh, she had so much fun with this orangutan. He was literally playing peek-a-boo with her. He would turn his head to the side, then look back at her. The zoo wasn't very crowded and she probably spent 15 minutes just staring at him and playing. He was awesome!
Giving him a kiss. Caleb is enjoying himself too.

Like I said, she enjoys the fake animals. Last year when she was here, Alyce and her were on this same turtle and they fell off and hit their heads. She still remembers that! She has such a good memory. She kept telling Caleb, "Hold on, don't fall off and bump your head."
On our train ride. Caleb really liked it.

She really liked the carousel. The last time we tried to ride one, Caleb was scared to death, so we sat this ride out.
"ninosunouses"
Hey! A picture of me with my eyes open and I don't look drunk! Truly a one in a million shot!

Air hockey

Professional air hockey players they are not. Cute as buttons, they are.

Abby says...

Abby is at that hillarious stage where you never know what's going to come out of her mouth. Some of it is silly, some is sweet, and some is downright embaressing. Here's a couple stories to make your day:

Thanks to our friends, Duane and Dacian, we have a Star Wars book called, "What is a Wookie?" Much to Chuck's delight and my dismay, it has become one of Abby's favorite books. The other night we were reading it and out of nowhere, Abby asks, "mommy, do Jawas wear hoods so they can pick their noses without anyone seeing?"

We were at the grocery store and there was a man in front of us that had several, several tattoos on his arms. Abby said, (very loudly), "Mommy, that man has lots of stamps on his arms. How silly!" The man turned around and laughed. but I was so embaressed.

We were driving out to my mom's house which is a "long drive" so she got to wath her DVD player. She has been asking questions about heaven and Jesus lately and out of the blue, she says, "mommy, heaven is far, far away, right?" I said, "Yep". She said, "Since it's far away, can we watch a movie when we drive there?" After trying to hide my laugh for several seconds, I couldn't contain myself. You know I'm not sure how to answer that question...

Thanks for reading.

Kid's Place stage 2

We finally convinced the girls that they needed to give the "climby thing" a try. Can I just say, that thing was hard work. THe ropes kind of cut into your feet and it was hard to climb and take pictures. The rope course was actually pretty long, but I only got a couple of pictures because Abby was too scared to let go of me most of the time. They did make it through once, and then back to the ball pit they went. Oh well, I'll take my "girly girl" while I can get her.

This was more her speed.
Abby and Alyce in the ball pit

Fritz

Our computer has been on the fritz for over a week. The hard drive crashed-but Chuck ordered a new one so we should be back up and running very soon. In the meantime, some very generous friends have allowed us to borrow a laptop. So now I can update everyone on the great time we've been having lately. It will take several days to get caught up, so stay tuned! :) Our first trip recently was to Kids Place in Lexington. It's a huge place to climb, it has a ball pit, a jumpy thing and all sorts of other interesting things to do. I took Abby with her friend Alyce and her mom, Sarah. We left the little boys at home, although we decided later that they probably would have been more adventerous than the girls. The girls were a little....scared, of almost everything. This is what they liked the best.
Flying the airplane:

Jumping in the bounce house. This actually took some convincing. They were scared of it at first.

What they liked best-the ball pit. They would have stayed in this thing the entire time if we had let them. We did coax them out to do some other things towards the end, but they did spend about an hour and a half in this pit.

Stay tuned, more tomorrow.

Mommy VS. the smoke detector

Our smoke detectors went off this morning-all of them-at 6:25 AM. Chuck had gone to the gym, so it was just me and the kids. I thought at first it was just mine, so I tried to turn it off. When it didn't go off, I realized that all of them were going off. Abby was screaming bloody murder in her room, Caleb was sleeping right through it. Like an idiot, I disobeyed every fire rule you learn in elementary school- instead of getting everyone out of the house, I walked around in my bleary-eyed morning daze looking for a reason for the smoke detectors to be going off. Finding no reason for them to be going off, I then get really frustrated (like I somehow would have been happier had there been a reason for them to go off) and called 911. He told me to get the kids and get out of the house (look how smart that man is...). I already at this point have a screaming Abby attached to my leg, but I had to go wake Caleb up! (how in the world he could have slept through that is beyond me!)
The smoke detectors had been going off for almost 15 minutes by the time the fire dept. arrives and guess what happens? They stop going off right as the fire dept. is pulling up. They did check our house for smoke and also checked for carbon monoxide. THey found neither (thank God!) I almost wish they had still been going off so they would have had a reason for their visit. And that's our adventure for today!

Here kitty, kitty, kitty...

As I said before, Abby really liked the kitty, or "Baby Willy" as she called it. Grandma and Grandad Barnes have a black cat named Willy, so that was, logically, the only name for this cat. Mammaw and Pops Rayborn are not as thrilled with cats, so this is what they told the grandkids to do:

Step 1: Lure the cat into the open.Step 2: Make the cat feel comfortable.
Step 3: ATTACK!
Really, they were just looking at the cat, and Josh's (soon to be) son, Isaiah, just happened to be holding a hammer-but I like my version of the story better...