Molly's Ballerina Birthday

On Saturday, Lydia attended Molly's ballerina birthday party.  For the first time, Rebekah decided that she was too old to attend a party like this, so she and David did some daddy/daughter stuff while I took Lydia to the party.

I didn't take my camera to the party, but Mary shared these pictures with me.

The girls made necklaces, a craft, painted nails and put on make-up. 

Then they opened presents and ate the biggest pieces of cake I've ever seen dished out to elementary school children!

Needless to say, Lydia had a blast!

Business Day

Today is "Business Day" at Lydia's school.

She is learning about producers and consumers in class.  This afternoon, each child will run a business in which they provide a service or product. 

At first, Lydia had decided that she would provide the service of painting nails.  Then she switched to providing a product - bookmarks.  She is running her business with two of her little friends, Alyssa and Cassidy.  They made a sign in class and they each made 20 bookmarks to "sell."

I must be slipping in my "mommy duties" because it completely slipped my mind to take pictures of Lydia with the bookmarks she made before she took them to school.  She worked on them during the snow day this week.

I did, however, get this pic of her all ready to go in her "business suit" this morning. 

She insisted that this jacket was perfect for Business Day!!  And her hair had to be professional too, so we went with French braids. 

I'm hoping some of the other parents will be able to grab some pictures from Business Day.  If so, I'll add them when I can.

Family vacation

David laid a map of the world on the kitchen table and Lydia asked,

"So...are we gonna talk about our family vacation?"

Ahhh! The joys of being raised a Christopher!  She's her daddy's daughter!

Bekah's Vision Therapy

Despite the onslaught of winter weather that has hit Tennessee this month, we still managed to get Bekah to her annual appointment with the eye doctor.

Rebekah is beyond excited this year, because she is getting contact lenses.  She went to her first contact class last Friday and has another one coming up this Friday.  Learning to put something in your eye is a tough lesson to learn...when you consider how hard you work to keep things OUT of your eye your whole life!!

But we learned something interesting at Bekah's appointment this year:

Bekah told the eye doctor that sometimes she sees double.

David and I looked at each other, silently communicating:

She didn't tell me this...did she tell you?

The doctor (very wisely) continued the exam very nonchalantly (so as not to alarm Rebekah) while adding a few additional tests.  Then she turned to David and me and told us that she was observing what she thinks is a slight exotropia of Bekah's left eye.  Then she showed us what she meant.  She held a pen and asked Bekah to follow the pen with her eyes only.  As she moved the pen closer to Bekah's face, you could see her eyes focusing, and then the left eye just jumped to the left, and stopped focusing.

Hmmm.

So on Monday, Rebekah went to a vision specialist to be evaluated. After the initial evaluation, the doctor shared that he thinks she is experiencing convergence insufficiency, a condition affecting near vision because the eyes aren't working together to focus on near objects.  This usually affects children in their schoolwork because it is difficult to focus when reading and writing.  Because Bekah makes such good grades, it is apparent that she has been compensating for this issue in some way.  However, it is common for children with convergence insufficiency to skip over words when reading, thus bringing down their reading comprehension.

Talk about hitting the nail on the head!  Reading comprehension is the toughest issue for Rebekah in school...and when reading aloud, she does tend to skip over some words.  The same applies when copying text from one page to another.  The trouble with focusing can cause writing errors when copying data from one page to another!

The good news is that if she does have convergence insufficiency, it is one of the easier problems to treat - requiring between 10 and 12 weeks of therapy (as opposed to 24-36 weeks as we had been initially told).   In the therapy, she would do eye exercises to strengthen the muscles of the eye.  I told Bekah that she would be going to the "eye gym." 

We will be meeting with the vision therapist within the next week to find out exactly what's going on with Bekah's eyes and to work out a treatment plan. 

Needless to say, this will be a big part of our week for a while, so we'll keep you updated on how it all goes.  But bottom line, we have to keep those beautiful eyes as strong and healthy as possible!!

Bex?

"Mommy, would you like my autograph?"

This is the question that greeted me Friday afternoon when I got home from work.

"Sure," I said.

So Bekah hands me a notepad and looks at me expectantly.  Eyes blinking.  Expectantly.

Oh! I clued in and asked,

"Rebekah, could I please have your autograph?"

"Sure," she says.

It's actually kinda cool. 

But I'm just not sure what I should think about what she asked me next:

"Mommy, from now on, could you please call me Bex?"

Izzy's Silly 4th Birthday!

The girls were invited to Izzy Burgos' 4th birthday party.  It was a "silly" theme.  The kids wore silly socks and the invitations came wrapped around silly string.

The kids made silly faces with silly masks.

And then got to take their pictures in front of the silly screen.

After a silly game of Simon Says...

...there was a very silly puppet show, which had the kids dying laughing.

Next up was lunch, which was full of silly items.  There were chicken pops, carrot cones, jelly bellies, silly hotdogs, and silly sushi (Rice Krispy treats with Swedish Fish on top, wrapped in Fruit by the Foot).

The kids loved it!

After presents, it was time to sing happy birthday to Izzy.

After singing Happy Birthday, the kids all sprayed silly string!

I think it was a little overwhelming for Izzy!

After the silly string, the kids all enjoyed some cupcakes back downstairs.   The girls grabbed their party favors (complete with silly putty and silly bandz!!)

We had a great time with Izzy at her silly birthday!

So Thankful for Yard Sale Money

Lydia's 2nd Grade Portrait

We took Lydia to Portrait Innovations last night and got this gem of a picture for her second grade portrait.

She was such a natural in front of the camera.  All of the shots were great, making it very hard to choose just one.  We'll get Bekah's made soon and then we'll send these out to the fam.  But in the meantime, I just wanted to share.

We love you more each day.

Thank you Jesus! Glory! Hallelujah! Praise God!

I

have successfully

made

pancakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scoff if you must, but my pancakes have always:

(a) completely desintegrated in the skillet

(b) not flipped properly

(c) stuck to the skillet

(d) been too buttery (if I cooked them with butter coating the skillet)

(e) too oily (if I cooked them with oil coating the skillet)

Even when the Maizes came to visit and I learned that Spencer had been successfully making pancakes for the entire family for some time, I still couldn't learn how to do it properly.

It was shameful.

So shameful, we just gave up trying to make pancakes.

But then Dad bought us this griddle when we were there for Christmas.  I broke it out on Saturday to give it a try.  You should have heard the squeals of delight that I was making PANCAKES!

After we got David to stop squealing (ha ha) we enjoyed

fluffy

not oily

not desintegrated

properly flipped

not overly buttery

not burned

not scraped off the skillet

PANCAKES!!!


Woo hoo!  I made a ton...but the one in the picture was the only one left!  We were so full!

So thank you, Mom & Dad for the skillet!
(And thanks for the Nieves family for letting us borrow some syrup...because I'm serious.  That's how long it's been since we've had pancakes...there was no syrup in the house!)

A sweet letter to Mammy & Pappy

Lydia has been missing her Mammy & Pappy terribly!

In fact, she burst into tears the other day when she saw a carpet commercial, because it reminded her of Mammy & Pappy.

(They are currently replacing the carpet in their house.)

So we encouraged her to write to them.

And write to them she did.

Dear Mammy & Pappy, I miss you so much.  I have so meny things to ask you.  Thank you for Nellie the American girl dall. and everething ells!

P.S. Mammy & Pappy. I wunt to come ovre rit now.

Love
Lydia

New bikes!!

The girls pooled their Christmas money and decided they were ready for big girl bikes.  They've outgrown the bikes we bought them a few years ago...and they're ready (or at least they say they are) to learn to ride the bikes without training wheels.

However, the lack of coordination they displayed in simply wheeling the bikes through the store, made me reconsider just how challenging learning to ride a bike is going to be!

And I won't even get into how much trouble they both had working the kick stand!

So Bekah decided on a purple bike.

And Lydia chose a pink one. 

Once it warms up a bit, we'll get some practice in - all suited up with helmets, knee pads, and elbow pads, of course.

Problem solved!

Lydia tried to make a snowman today, but got frustrated that the carrot wouldn't stay stuck in his face...

so she ate the carrot.

Snow Day!!!

Shortly after the girls went to bed last night, we got the call from the school system that due to impending inclement weather, school would be closed.  It hadn't even started snowing yet...

But we woke up to a winter wonderland this morning!

The girls couldn't wait to get out in it!

They didn't even want to eat breakfast first!!

We got about three inches or so...but it seemed that every time Lydia talked to another grandparent, we got more and more snow.

Ahem...

3 1/2 inches

4 inches

6 inches

The girls pelted each other with snowballs.

And they made a couple of snow angels.

It was really powdery, pretty snow.

It was powdery enough to make HUGE snowballs...but not wet enough to build a snowman this time.

We got our standard family shots in front of the snow covered tree.

Here are some from the past...documented in my scrapbook pages:

February 2004

February 2006

February 2007

February 2007

March 2008

Okay...so enough of that trip down memory lane... 

Lydia set about making a huge snowball.

Bekah was trying to make an igloo...

After taste testing this snowball...she chunked it at Bekah.

Then Bekah retaliated!

It got too cold for us, so we headed in and the girls stayed outside.  They played with the Nieveses and their dog, Shadow.

Bekah and Jordan were scooping snow and throwing it around.  They had a huge snowball fight!

Here's Bekah with Cassidy...and I think that's Shadow Lydia is choking, I mean, hugging.

After playing outside, the girls came in to thaw out a little, eat some snow cream, and drink some hot chocolate.

Later in the afternoon, we had the Nieves family over for some dessert and coffee.  By and large, it was a really awesome snow day.  (I even got some scrapbooking done!)