Tuesday

"There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child." ~Frank A. Clark

Gracie the Artist

Gracie has the spirit of an artist. She's fiery, unique, tender and intelligent too. Every time I take a moment to ponder the child that is my Gracie, my testimony that God is our father and the creator of our spirits and bodies, grows. She came down to earth with more sass than I've got in my little finger. SOMEONE must have made her that way.

Here's what she did the other night while Joe and I enjoyed our dinner toward the other end of the table. I was surprised at how cool it was! It's Picasso-ish to me. (It's a face, by the way.)

From "The Family: A Proclamation to the World":

"All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose."

Memorial Day/Gracie's Birthday

I am a huge slacker in the "birthday party" department, so when April invited us over for a Memorial Day BBQ, I asked her if we could tack on Gracie's party as well. Here are some pictures from the fun afternoon!

She looks so cute and excited :)

Eatin' a cupcake the Gracie way - frosting only.

Uncle Brad and Aunt April got her the coolest present! Her very own aquarium with two goldfish and a tiny froggy! She was SO excited!

I think this was her favorite present. A Dumbo dolly that she saw on our Disney Cruise. We bought it for her on the sly and smuggled it home without her finding it. (Pretty impressive, if you know how much Gracie is into EVERYTHING!) She was really excited when she opened it. It made me so happy.

The first BBQ of the season! Bring on the warm weather!

Baby Calli, Ryan and Val's newest addition :)

The hosts! They always have such fun stuff planned for us when we come over to their house :)

Janie playing with one of the animal decorations. April got her the cute dress for her B-Day :)

Some More...

Are you guys tired of my vacation pictures yet? This is kind of a journal after all, so I'm just going to keep posting 'em!

Zoe and Gracie in the Walt Disney Theatre waiting for a show to start!

On the water taxi to St. Maarten. Gracie had her mouth open in all the pictures :) They had Bob Marley playing in the taxi and it was just so stereotypical "caribbean" that it was almost funny. I really wonder if they listen to the same CD every single day to please tourists or if they just honestly breathe B. Marley.

Grandma Sue in the back and Daddy and Gracie in the front. You can also see our boat (the smaller one) in the background!

We left Janie in the nursery on the boat for a few hours during the morning and when I went back to get her, the family did this awesome sandcastle! Isn't it cool? The Tanners brought all sorts of cool sand building gear!!

Here's the fam (most of them) with their creation! We saw a couple of other people come and take pictures with the sandcastle :)

Here's Janie just hanging out after we got back onto the boat.

Gracie's trying to make a towel animal! She LOVED seeing the animal on our bed each night. The girls would gobble up the chocolates they would place on the bed and disassemble the towel animal in minutes flat each evening. :)

St. Maarten was really fun! The beach was very beautiful and the girls had a good time playing in the ocean. It was my second favorite day of our cruise (right after Castaway Cay). We had yummy coconut gellato and I bought a pretty necklace and black swimsuit coverup that will help remind me of the good times there!

More Disney...

Here are more Disney Cruise pics!!

This was at the character breakfast where we got to meet Goofy (Janie lovingly calls him Boofy) Mickey and Chip & Dale. All the pictures turned out blurry. This is the best one. Which is good because they adored Goofy :)

All the kidlets (minus Stanley) in the Alexander line. This is in the lobby with a cool statue of Captain Mickey at the helm. (A helm is a ship's steering wheel, right?)

Gracie with Minnie's ears on in the store onboard. They had some cool loot!

We celebrated Janie's birthday while on the cruise! She turned two years old! She got some really fun presents from her Grandma and Grandpa, and Aunties and Uncles. These glasses were actually a gift for Gracie, but Janie claimed them as her own, seeing as how it was her birthday and all! Our server brought out this huge piece of cake for her (we're talking like 6x6" here!!) She dove into it, of course!

Janie cuddling with Grandma Sue. Every morning when we would wake up she'd start calling, "SUE! SUE!" She loves her Grandma and we're glad they're back close to us!

Here's Papa Dave rockin' out to his new iPod that us and the Tanners got him for his retirement. I'm pretty sure he's listening to the Beach Boys here :) I loaded a bunch of music onto it and Andrea made three awesome home movies with their old family photos (with music!) that we put onto it as well. It was a fun surprise to give and I think Mom and Dad really enjoyed it! Now we just need to teach them how to navigate iTunes :)

Julie and Dad! Cute!

Janie's getting some Beach Boys action.

Here's our little fam with Captain Mickey! No, I'm not pregnant, I'm just a chunker, okay? I should maybe avoid profile pics from now on, hm?

In the lounge, waiting for dinner to start.

A pixie by the porthole!

More later...

Disney Cruise!!!

I finally have a few minutes to post some pictures from our AWESOME Disney Cruise that we just returned from! I am so exhausted that everytime I sit down for more than two minutes I fall asleep. Traveling with children is probably the most tiring thing I have ever experienced. It was worth it though! We had a fabulous time and will enjoy the memories as much as we enjoyed the cruise. I'll let the pics tell the story...watch for more in the days to come.


Here are my little bed bugs in the hotel where we stayed in Orlando the night before cruising. Notice that there are no pictures of us actually getting to Florida. Going to the airport and flying with the kids was the definition of "CRAZY." Our bags were too heavy so we had to take things out of them and squeeze them into our already bursting carry-on backpacks. Janie was on this little leash thing that she hated and she was so angry about it that she just prostrated herself on the airport floor and I dragged her little bones around with the leash. People were laughing...it was kind of embarassing...man, I'm glad the traveling part is through.

Here's the fam with Grandma Sue wearing our awesome, Tanner-custom T-Shirts. I'll have to take a good pic of the designs on one of the shirts. They're really cool! They say "Alexander Retirement Celebration 2009" with a picture of a cruise ship on the front. On the back they have little stick figure people representing everyone in the family. They're darling!

Joe and Gracie with our boat, the Disney Magic in the background. I like this picture because it looks like Gracie is flipping me off, which is totally what she would be doing if she knew about said gesture.

It was so bright, she couldn't open her eyes :)

Notice the flat hair! The humidity totally skunked my 'do. :)

Unfortunately, it looks like every single picture we took of us with the characters turned out kind of blurry. I'm irritated with my camera because it didn't live up to it's price tag. Oh well. I'm having our big Nikon worked on this week.

Zoe and Taytem showing Gracie the finer points of the Nintendo DS. She was so into it!

At the sailaway party! Gracie loved the pompoms that they passed around!

We're finally onboard! We've been looking forward to this vacatin for over a year! :)

The girls looking out the porthole in our stateroom! This picture totally reminds me and Joe of an old picture we have of our labs and two cats looking out our front screen just like this. No more labs or cats...just two crazy nuts we call our children!

More pics to come...

Oh, and there was a complete LACK of Jimmy Buffet on the boat. I was seriously dissappointed. So Jimmy will be providing the soundtrack to the memories, if not the actual experience. :)

Halloween Cat

Here's our first attempt at posting a video on the 'ol blog! It's Janie singing "Halloween Cat" which I'm not sure is a real song...I think someone in the family might have made it up. She got a new stuffed black cat that she adores, so she's been walking around the house singing it all by herself! So cute!

Internet Junkie

Gracie is a total Starfall.com and Sesamestreet.com junkie! She hangs out on her grandma's bed and plays on the laptop :) It's too bad they don't have internet on airplanes...otherwise we'd be all set for our long flight to Florida.

Quote of the Day:
"Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks." ~Author Unknown

A 3-Year-Old's World

Today we were outside soaking up some sunshine and it was heavenly! Our grass hasn't been mowed yet this season and it has tall, lush, green spots where Reagan fertilizes for us. Gracie took of her shoes to feel the grass underneath her piggies and said, "It's like a jungle for feet!"

I thought it was such a great description. It painted a vivid picture for me of some huge feet walking around in a jungle all by themselves. :)

I love that my Gracie has such a wonderful imagination. She surprises me every single day with her beautiful view of this old world.

2nd Quote of the Day:
"My feet took a walk in heavenly grass.
All day while the sky shone clear as glass.
My feet took a walk in heavenly grass,
All night while the lonesome stars rolled past.
Then my feet come down to walk on earth,
And my mother cried when she give me birth.
Now my feet walk far and my feet walk fast,
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass. " ~Heavenly Grass, Tennessee Williams

The Binky Wars (Or Lack Thereof)

So Janie's on day 4 of operation: NO MORE BINKY!!! She is such a trooper, it is amazing. I'm telling ya, she is SO MUCH EASIER than Gracie was in almost every single way. The only time she has suffered withdrawls were day 2 and day 3 at nap time. Today she went down without a whimper. Aren't you proud of her? I sure am.

This upcoming cruise is whipping our butts into shape! We're getting basically every aspect of our lives cruise-ready. It includes some (minimal) fat loss, new clothes, shoes, hats, practicing how to walk through an airport security gate, losing the binky, figuring out how to pull up underpants by ourselves (this one's Gracie's thing, not mine :), etc. I swear, we're going to have a meltdown when we get home because we'll have nothing to live for! Maybe Joe and I will just have to put a deposit down while we're onboard for our next cruise...that's just the two of us :)

Anyway, I'm bummed that I don't have any pictures to post. I need to get out that camera and start shootin'!

Quote of the Day:

"We give up leisure in order that we may have leisure, just as we go to war in order that we may have peace." ~Aristotle

The Benefits of an iPod

There are many benefits to owning an iPod, not the least of which are: 1) storing all your music in one place, 2) the ability to take your music with you to ANYplace and 3) getting to listen to that great clicking noise that it makes as you scroll through stuff. But my favorite thing about my iPod is that it lets me rediscover music that I love, but haven't listened to in ages. Hence, the Nanci Griffith tunes on this here blog! CCR is another recent rediscovery. Love it!

Quote of the Day:
"He who sings scares away his woes." ~Cervantes

"He who whistles scares away his woes." ~Heather Alexander :)

The Price of Childcare = My Sanity

Going back to school this semester has been so beneficial for me. I feel like an actual adult person, not just a robot used to clean up spilled cottage cheese and change smelly diapers. My classes were actually fun and really interesting. So I decided that I'll keep on keepin' on and sign up for fall semester too. The catch is that the only classes they are offering in the fall that fit with my major require a prerequisite that I haven't taken yet. Which means that I need to take this one class in the summer to make it possible for me to continue being an actual adult person :) The OTHER catch is that the summer class that I need is during the day. They're not offering any evening classes in the summer. So I had to figure out a place for my kids to chill for a couple of hours each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. (Wow, this story is kind of long and boring. Props to you for getting this far!)

Researching childcare options is not only stressful, it's rediculously frightening and panic-inducing as well! Bonus! First I checked out the University's daycare option (normally for low-income parents, but not in the summer) and freaked out because it is such a hole in the wall that there is no way that I would allow my children to be in a building that old and decrepit for ANY amount of time.

Second I looked into KinderCare which is a professional facility that Myles actually attended when he was a wee one. Well, um, I'd basically have to be a doctor or something with a similar pay scale to afford the place. The cost PER HALF-DAY, PER CHILD is $35. That is a grand total of $210 per week or $840 a month. I mean, really, what do they do with all the money? I've seen the place and it's no Disneyland, which you could justify using as your daycare instead of this place, financially speaking. I was absolutely blown away. I'll tell you what...it makes me feel a bit more valuable as a stay-at-home madre. That's for darn sure.

So my right eye has been twitching non-stop for about 4 days. I'm not even kidding - ask Joe.

But, praise be to heaven, I was talking with Gracie's preschool teacher about needing childcare to fix my eye twitch when she said, very graciously, that she would be more than happy to watch my babies for me during the summer school hours. I cannot even tell you what a relief that is. She is fantastic. Awesome. Amazing. Perfect. Wonderful!!! It is such a blessing that she is just down the street and already knows and loves my Gracie. She has two kids, the same ages as Grace and Jane, so they'll be able to play together and have a whole bunch of fun. (sighhhhhhhh...........)

My eye stopped twitching, thank heavens.

Easter Happenings

As the girls hunted for Easter eggs I was impressed by how much CUTER it all was than I expected it to be. Gracie was absolutely delighted to search around the house for eggs that the bunny had dropped. She adored it. It was magical to watch, actually. Janie was pretty much along for the ride and the fruit loops and fruit snacks that the (extremely boring and mom-ish) eggs contained. My mom and Joe convinced said bunny to give in and get the girls a chocolate bunny each, but that was about the extent of the candy. Why do Holidays have to involve so much enamel-destroying sugar?? Yikes.

Silly Daddy

These two are like peas and carrots...

These two are like chocolate chips and cookies :)

Janie's lovely early morning hair!

I think the bunny over did it on the eggs this year!

I was talking with Grace's preschool teacher, Tecia, today and she was telling me about their upcoming "Safety Kids" program. This year it's about protecting their minds from harmful things. She's been teaching them to avoid unclean pictures, drugs, etc. and asked the kids, "What are some things that we shouldn't look at?" and one of the kids responded, "A dog going poo." I keep thinking of that funny, innocent comment and it makes me laugh every time, so that's the quote of the day.

No Cavities!!

Gracie had her first dentist's appointment today! She did FANTASTIC! All the assistants were impressed with how well she did and how cooperative she was. She even got X-Rays of all her teeth and there's not a cavity to be seen! Yay! She got her teeth cleaned and brushed with flouride too. What a trooper!

She was so tiny in the huge chair. It was cute :)

Here's Gracie and the Doc! He's such an awesome dentist.

Janie hasn't been doing so hot. We took her to the doctor yesterday and she has double ear infections and the sore throat from HE(double hockey sticks). We got her antibiotics yesterday. I actually got the meds from the pharmacy and gave her her first dose in the car. I just want her to feel better. She seems to be on the upswing, thank goodness.

I have my little skit/play in class tonight and I'm kind of nervous. I think it will be fun but I'll be really glad when it's all over. :)

Quote of the Day:
"Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky." ~Fran Lebowitz